Mastodawn

Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/26/business/anthropic-pentagon-injunction-supply-chain-risk

Judge blocks Pentagon’s effort to ‘punish’ Anthropic by labeling it a supply chain risk

A federal judge in California has indefinitely blocked the Pentagon’s effort to “punish” Anthropic by labeling it a supply chain risk and attempting to sever government ties with the AI company, ruling that those measures ran roughshod over its constitutional rights.

CNN

JohnTHaller 2d ago

Some judicial pushback against authoritarian policies is good to see.

alexchapman 2d ago

Oh I agree.

alienbaby 2d ago

I'd wish more for an impartial, considered judgement

Which of course would look exactly like judicial pushback against authoritarian policies.

KronisLV 1d ago

> Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government

What issue do you take with that statement or the outcome here? I think Anthropic’s position on what the tech should not be used for was well reasoned.

It feels like the govt. flipped out based on their public messaging and this whole ordeal - instead of them themselves being more measured and just choosing not to use Anthropic’s services if they take an issue with it.

dataflow 2d ago

I assume the court case [1] is referring to 10 U.S. Code § 3252 [2]?

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72379655/134/anthropic-...

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/3252

Opinions on the merits vary, but in this instance, the government's actions were undeniably overbearing and unilateral. It is encouraging to see the judiciary successfully function as a check and balance against such executive overreach.

jimbob45 1d ago

Lost in the cacophony is the fact that Anthropic fumbled a strong lifeline while hemorrhaging cash without a business model. It’s fun to look down at OpenAI but they may not get another chance like this again.

felixgallo 1d ago

It's fun to say that Anthropic doesn't have a business model, but clearly they do. Hopefully they can achieve it while maintaining their standards, even if in the eyes of some that's 'fumbling a strong lifeline'.

MeetingsBrowser 1d ago

Claude has had such a massive increase in usage since being labeled a supply chain risk the service has been struggling to scale to meet increase demand.

On top of that, the prevailing opinion seemed to be that courts would overrule the supply chain risk designation, allowing the government and its subcontractors to use Claude again.

It’s hard to see how they could have navigated this better

israrkhan 1d ago

This government contract was a very small part of anthropic revenue. Almost negligible. Their 2026 revenue is projected to be $14 billion to $20 billion. This contract was $200M over 2 years.

brandensilva 1d ago

On top of that, Palantir has been designated as a multi year contract and they use Anthropic under the hood.

Anthropic is the leading enterprise LLM provider. All they have to do is keep building a best-performing product, charge what they need, and keep costs as far down as possible. If my company knew there were an LLM 1.5x as good as Opus, they would be willing to pay 3x the cost. If it were being sold by Anthropic, they’d be even more likely to pay, since we could easily keep our same tooling.

ryanmcbride 1d ago

whatever you say boss

The issue of course is that the Judge can't change the knowledge that the head of the executive doesn't want people down the chain using this product, so they won't. Anthropic is a dead letter in government circles until the next Presidential election.

That's something that normal boring suits can and do remedy. Companies sue and win over denied government contracts all the time.

ncallaway 1d ago

Eh, it’s not going to be transitively problematic for Anthropic the way the supply chain risk designation would’ve been.

Amazon isn’t going to have to divest from Anthropic because of this. Yes, they probably won’t be able to get a contract with Raytheon, but that wasn’t the main risk of being tagged with the supply chain risk designation.

The type of contract they had was optional anyway. They could have just not done business with Anthropic in the first place. Really I think this has only promoted their platform as being sane and moral.

That may be, but the government doesn't need to declare Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" in order to just not do business with it. A simple clause in all RFPs is all that is needed.

The problem with this declaration by the government is that now any company doing any business with the US government would be effectively forbidden from using Anthropic ANYWHERE within their company, which is a huge deal, because the government does want to vet any vendors' software development practices.

But as long as the Judge in this case pushes back against such an action by the government, that leaves companies free to use Anthropic for their own internal uses. And most companies WILL continue to use them if it makes economic sense.

mr_00ff00 1d ago

Had this conversation with a friend, but I think as an America you can be very optimistic about the institutional strength of democracy in the country.

People are very pessimistic recently, but if anything, we are seeing that our system works well. A person got into power that a majority voted for, but when he oversteps, the courts and other institutions (even judges and fed reserve chairs he picked!) seem to hold him to the rules.

I get the pessimism, but for the most part, I kinda think the system is working.

The question is not whether the walls can contain the bull until animal control arrives, but whether any china will remain intact.

This is one ruling out of may, many of which directly benefit Trump. See Trump vs. United States 2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States

There’s absolutely 0 reason to be optimistic towards a court stacked explicitly to his benefit.

Trump v. United States - Wikipedia

nickysielicki 1d ago

What are you smoking? The DoD will not be compelled by the judicial branch to contract with a company they believe poses a risk to service member lives during an active war where American lives have been lost. That’s just the way it is, and it should be obvious to you if you have a basic understanding of history or law.

This is a Biden appointee with two years on the job, and this will immediately be taken up by a higher court and blocked until a ruling on the merits is made. It will be appealed. DoD might have to go to the Supreme Court before this is all said and done, but they will win in the end, and this ban will stay in place until that happens.

etchalon 1d ago

No one is forcing the DoD to contract with a company.

AbrahamParangi 1d ago

meta, but the comment pattern in this thread strongly suggests inorganic support for the government's position.

Can you be more specific? I see a lot of uninformed takes, but no specific bias. Do you mean downvotes?

If you turn on the thing that shows 'dead' comments, there is a larger than normal number here.

dfabulich 1d ago

Indeed, and the dead comments (from new users!) overwhelmingly favor the government position.

But, this is a non-story, because those comments were correctly killed precisely so they wouldn't clog up this thread.

longislandguido 1d ago

Do you think it's more likely a government influence operation, or a single dipshit lazily pasting LLM slop?

Could be organic dipshits with little to offer the discussion. That's the most common case in my view.

Said dipshits tend have an unnecessarily high degree of self regard.

SecretDreams 1d ago

They're definitely highly regarded.

swsieber 1d ago

I wouldn't call something a non-story just because the ultimate end-goal was mitigated. The fact that it was attempted is a story, especially when it's a meta commentary on story about trying the same thing _officially_.

SecretDreams 1d ago

Eh. The actors that use these features use a shotgun approach. The result is you see a bunch of dead comments and assume the system is working as intended, while a couple of the less inconspicuous comments persist. This happens frequently on specific topics.

You are absolutely right! /s

longislandguido 1d ago

Are you suggesting there is a government conspiracy to influence this dusty corner dive bar of the Internet?

ahhhhnoooo 1d ago

Are there tech workers who don't know what HN is? It's a pretty reasonably sized social media site.

longislandguido 1d ago

I'm reminded of that episode of Portlandia where the mayor was obsessed with thinking the city was bigger and more important than it actually is.

ahhhhnoooo 1d ago

I don't think I overstated it. Tech workers is a small piece of the global population.

rustystump 1d ago

I had no idea what hn was until about 2 years ago. This would be 8 years into a career in tech… there are dozens of us.

macintux 1d ago

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hacker News Guidelines

felixagentai 1d ago

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