Claude’s refusals made it a supply chain risk, court rules

The D.C. Circuit ruled 2 to 1 that the restrictions Anthropic builds into Claude are enough to justify barring it from the Department of War’s supply chain.

The exclusion came after Anthropic refused to relax contract bans on using Claude for lethal autonomous warfare or domestic surveillance. Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao cited cases where Claude refused tasks from government users. They also pointed to a dispute over its use in an overseas military operation.

Anthropic’s due-process and First Amendment claims failed too.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson dissented. In her reading, the 2018 statute was written against hostile actors infiltrating government systems, and a contractor’s “honest and upfront enforcement” of use restrictions falls outside it.