Appeals Court Upholds Pentagon Blacklisting of Anthropic's Claude Over AI Safety Guardrails

A federal appeals court on September 25 ruled 2-1 that the Pentagon can maintain its designation of Anthropic as a national security supply-chain risk, upholding the Trump administration's blacklist of Claude from all Defense Department systems and contracts. The decision represents a major setback for the AI developer after a San Francisco federal judge had declared the blacklist "illegal and baseless" just weeks earlier, revealing a stark judicial split over whether the government's treatment of Anthropic amounts to unconstitutional retaliation for the company's refusal to remove safety guardrails.