Anthropic Sues Defense Department Over Supply Chain Risk Designation
On March 9, Anthropic filed a civil complaint in the Northern District of California against the Department of Defense over its designation of the frontier artificial intelligence (AI) firm as a supply chain risk. The five-count complaint followed weeks of tensions between Anthropic and Pentagon officials over the firm’s two ethical red lines for the Defense Department to use its AI model, Claude: autonomous lethal warfare and mass surveillance of Americans.
The suit states that Anthropic was “founded based on the belief that AI technologies should be developed and used in a way that maximizes positive outcomes for humanity, and its primary animating principle is that the most capable artificial-intelligence systems should also be the safest and the most responsible.” It then adds, “Anthropic brings this suit because the federal government has retaliated against it for expressing that principle.”
The complaint outlines the dispute and the government’s purported retaliation against it in turn for not acquiescing to the Pentagon’s demands to drop Anthropic’s limitations. It further states, “The Constitution confers on Anthropic the right to express its views—both publicly and to the government—about the limitations of its own AI services and important issues of AI safety,” arguing that the government “may not employ ‘the power of the State to punish or suppress [Anthropic’s] disfavored expression.’”
The first count alleges that the Department of Defense violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) by designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk without following the procedure set by Congress. The second and third counts argue that the designation unconstitutionally retaliates against the firm’s protected viewpoints. Finally, the fourth and fifth counts are filed under the Due Process Clause and the APA for the purported lack of procedure in designating it as a risk and the unilateral contract cancellations by other executive branch departments and agencies.
Also on March 9, Anthropic filed a petition in the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit requesting review of the Pentagon's supply chain risk determination.
Read the civil complaint here or below:
