Trump administration in a court filing Tuesday, it argued that it did not violate Anthropic’s First Amendment rights by designating the AI developer as a supply chain risk, and predicted that the company’s lawsuit against the government would fail.
“The First Amendment does not provide a license to unilaterally impose the terms of a contract on the government, and Anthropic cites nothing to support such a radical conclusion,” wrote lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice.
The response was filed in federal court in San Francisco, one of two places where Anthropic is challenging the Pentagon’s decision to sanction the company with a label that could prevent the companies from entering into defense contracts due to concerns about potential security vulnerabilities. Anthropic claims the Trump administration exceeded its authority by placing the label and preventing the company’s technology from being used within the department. If the name sticks, Anthropic could lose up to billions of dollars in expected revenue this year.
Anthropic wants to resume operations as usual until the dispute is resolved. Rita Lin, the judge overseeing the case in San Francisco, has scheduled a hearing for next Tuesday to decide whether to grant Anthropic’s request.
Justice Department lawyers, writing in a Tuesday filing for the Defense Department and other agencies, described Anthropic’s concerns about the potential loss of business as “legally insufficient to cause irreparable harm” and urged Lin to deny the company a waiver.
The lawyers also wrote that the Trump administration was motivated to act by “concerns about Anthropic’s potential future conduct if it retains access” to government technology systems. “No one claimed to limit Anthropic’s expressive activities,” they wrote.
The government argues that Anthropic’s efforts to limit the Pentagon’s ability to apply artificial intelligence technology led Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to “reasonably” conclude that “Anthropic personnel may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted features, or otherwise disrupt the design, integrity, or operation of the national security system.”
The Department of Defense and Antropia is fighting over potential restrictions placed on Claude’s AI models. Anthropic believes its models should not be used to facilitate broad American surveillance and are not currently reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons.
Several legal experts have already told WIRED that Anthropic has a sturdy case that the supply chain measure amounts to illegal retaliation. But courts often side with the government’s national security arguments, and Pentagon officials have described Anthropic as a contractor that has gone rogue and that its technologies cannot be trusted.
“In particular, DoW expressed concern that allowing Anthropic continued access to DoW technical and operational combat infrastructure would introduce unacceptable risks into DoW supply chains,” it states in Tuesday’s filing. “Artificial intelligence systems are extremely susceptible to manipulation, and Anthropic may attempt to disable its technology or preemptively alter its model behavior prior to or during ongoing hostilities if Anthropic – in its sole discretion – determines that its corporate red lines have been crossed.”
The Department of Defense and other federal agencies are working to replace Anthropic’s artificial intelligence tools with products from competing technology companies over the next few months. People familiar with the matter told WIRED that one of Claude’s most common uses in the military is the Palantir data analysis software.
In Tuesday’s filing, lawyers argued that the Pentagon “cannot simply flip a switch at a time when Anthropic is currently the only AI model cleared for use” on the department’s “classified systems” and intense combat operations are underway. The department is working on implementing alternative AI systems from Google, OpenAI and xAI.
A number of companies and groups, including artificial intelligence researchers, Microsoft, a federal workers’ union and former military leaders, have filed lawsuits in support of Anthropic. None of them were submitted in support of the government.
Anthropic has until Friday to submit a response to the government’s arguments.