Anthropic has filed a federal lawsuit against the administration of Donald Trump after the government labeled the company a national security “supply chain risk” and barred Pentagon contractors from working with it.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, challenges actions taken after federal agencies were directed in February to stop using Anthropic’s technology following a dispute over military use of its AI system Claude.
“The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech,”
Attorneys for Anthropic wrote in the complaint, arguing that no federal statute authorises the government’s actions.
The conflict began after Anthropic refused Pentagon requests to remove safeguards preventing Claude from being used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons systems.
Anthropic had previously secured a $200 million contract with the Department of Defense, but the dispute escalated after the company declined to grant unrestricted military access to its AI tools.
The lawsuit names several senior officials as defendants, including Pete Hegseth, Scott Bessent and Marco Rubio.
Anthropic is asking the court to block enforcement of the designation and declare the government’s actions unlawful, arguing that the blacklist causes immediate economic harm and threatens broader debate over how artificial intelligence should be used in warfare and surveillance.