Photo Credit; Getty Images
Anthropic has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the US government after being designated a "supply chain risk." The legal action follows a public dispute between CEO Dario Amodei and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the military's access to Anthropic's AI tools. In the lawsuit filed Monday against multiple agencies, the company argues that the government's designation—the first ever applied to a US firm—is "unprecedented and unlawful.”
"The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech", Anthropic wrote. "No federal statute authorizes the actions taken here."
Anthropic's lawsuit is against President Donald Trump's executive office; several government leaders, including Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick; and 16 government agencies, including the Department of War, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy.
Liz Huston, a spokeswoman for the White House, told reporters that Anthropic is "a radical left, woke company" attempting to control military activity.
"Under the Trump Administration, our military will obey the United States Constitution – not any woke AI company's terms of service," Huston said.
Anthropic argued against this in its legal complaint filed Monday morning in California federal court. The company said that Hegseth demanded it remove any usage restrictions from its defence contract, despite limitations on "lethal autonomous warfare" and "surveillance of Americans en masse" always having been part of its government contracts.
Anthropic has been used by the US government and military since 2024 and was the first advanced AI company to have its tools deployed in government agencies doing classified work.
Claude is one of the most popular AI tools in the world, with Claude Code being an almost ubiquitous part of work done by some of the biggest technology firms in the US, including Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.
Those companies also do work with the government. Last week, Microsoft, Google and Amazon said they would continue to use Claude outside of any work for defence agencies.
Nevertheless, Anthropic claims that it has been "irreparably" harmed as a result of Trump and Hegseth's comments.
