---
type: source
title: "Anthropic Wins Preliminary Injunction Against Pentagon's AI Blacklist — Judge Calls Designation 'Orwellian'"
author: "CNBC"
url: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/26/anthropic-pentagon-dod-claude-court-ruling.html
date: 2026-03-26
domain: ai-alignment
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: processed
priority: high
tags: [pentagon-anthropic, DoD-blacklist, preliminary-injunction, supply-chain-risk, First-Amendment, judicial-review, voluntary-safety-constraints, use-based-governance]
---

## Content

A federal judge in San Francisco granted Anthropic's request for a preliminary injunction on March 26, 2026, blocking the Trump administration's designation of Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" and halting Trump's executive order directing all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's technology.

Judge Rita Lin's 43-page ruling found that the government had violated Anthropic's First Amendment and due process rights. She wrote: "Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government." Lin determined the government was attempting to "cripple Anthropic" for expressing disagreement with DoD policy.

The preliminary injunction temporarily stays the supply chain risk designation — which requires all Defense contractors to certify they do not use Claude — and the federal agency usage ban.

**Background**: Anthropic had signed a $200M transaction agreement with the DoD in July 2025. Contract negotiations stalled in September 2025 because DoD wanted unfettered access for "all lawful purposes" while Anthropic insisted on prohibiting use for fully autonomous weapons and domestic mass surveillance. Defense Secretary Hegseth issued an AI strategy memo in January 2026 requiring "any lawful use" language in all DoD AI contracts within 180 days, creating an irreconcilable conflict. On February 27, 2026, after Anthropic refused to comply, the Trump administration terminated the contract, designated Anthropic as supply chain risk (first American company ever given this designation, historically reserved for foreign adversaries), and ordered all federal agencies to stop using Claude.

**Pentagon response**: Despite the injunction, the Pentagon CTO stated the ban "still stands" from the DoD's perspective, suggesting the conflict will continue at the appellate level.

**Anthropic response**: CEO Dario Amodei had stated the company could not "in good conscience" grant DoD's request, writing that "in a narrow set of cases, AI can undermine rather than defend democratic values."

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** This is the clearest empirical case in the KB for the claim that voluntary corporate AI safety red lines have no binding legal authority. Anthropic's RSP-style constraints — which are its most public safety commitments — were overrideable by government demand, with the only recourse being First Amendment litigation. The injunction protects Anthropic's right to advocate for safety limits; it does not establish that those safety limits are legally required of AI systems used by the government.

**What surprised me:** The injunction was granted on First Amendment grounds, NOT on AI safety grounds. This means courts protected Anthropic's right to disagree with government policy — but did not create any precedent requiring AI safety constraints in government deployments. The legal standing gap for AI safety is confirmed: there is no statutory basis for use-based AI safety constraints in US law as of March 2026.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Any court reasoning grounded in AI safety principles, administrative law on dangerous technologies, or existing statutory frameworks that could be applied to AI deployment safety. The ruling is entirely about speech and retaliation, not about the substantive merits of AI safety constraints.

**KB connections:** Directly supports voluntary-pledges-fail-under-competition, institutional-gap, coordination-problem-reframe. Extends B2 (alignment as coordination problem) — the Pentagon-Anthropic conflict is a real-world instance of voluntary safety governance failing under competitive/institutional pressure.

**Extraction hints:** Primary claim: voluntary corporate AI safety constraints have no legal standing in US law — they are contractual aspirations that governments can demand the removal of, with courts protecting only speech rights, not safety requirements. Secondary claim: courts applying First Amendment retaliation analysis to AI safety governance creates a perverse incentive structure where safety commitments are protected only as expression, not as binding obligations.

**Context:** Anthropic is the first American company ever designated a DoD supply chain risk — a designation historically used for Huawei, SMIC, and other Chinese tech firms. This context makes the designation's purpose (punishment for non-compliance rather than genuine security assessment) explicit.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: voluntary-pledges-fail-under-competition — this is the strongest real-world evidence for the claim that voluntary safety governance collapses under competitive/institutional pressure
WHY ARCHIVED: The clearest empirical case for the legal fragility of voluntary corporate AI safety constraints; the judicial reasoning creates no precedent for safety-based governance
EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on the legal standing gap — the claim is not that courts were wrong, but that the legal framework available to protect safety constraints is First Amendment-based, not safety-based. That gap is the governance failure.
