Trump administration denies unlawful retaliation in Anthropic AI blacklisting

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The Trump administration on Monday denied unlawfully retaliating against Anthropic, while acknowledging that U.S. agencies moved to cut off the artificial intelligence company’s products after it resisted Pentagon demands over military uses of its Claude chatbot, according to a court filing in a lawsuit.

The filing marked the government’s latest response to Anthropic’s March 9 lawsuit, which accuses President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of blacklisting the company for protected speech.

The U.S. Department of Justice also challenged Anthropic’s lawsuit on procedural grounds, saying in a filing in San Francisco federal court that the ban is not subject to court review because the company is not challenging a “final agency action.”

An Anthropic spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Anthropic in March asked a federal court in California to bar the government from placing it on a national security blacklist and to block federal agencies from enforcing the ban, saying the designation was unlawful and violated its free speech and due process rights.

That lawsuit came after the Pentagon slapped a formal supply-chain risk designation on Anthropic, limiting use of a technology that two sources said was being used for military operations in Iran. Hegseth imposed the designation after the startup refused to remove safeguards preventing its AI from being used for autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco on March 26 temporarily blocked the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic.

The dispute is seen as a test of the administration’s power over business and whether the government or AI developers control how the technology is used. The company on June 1 said it has confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering.

Anthropic also has a second lawsuit pending in Washington, D.C., over a separate Pentagon supply-chain risk designation that could lead to its exclusion from civilian government contracts.

(Reporting for Reuters by Karen Sloan; Editing by Caitlin Webber and Himani Sarkar)