The government’s case for barring Anthropic from federal work is still short on evidence, a federal judge said during a hearing, raising the prospect that a temporary block becomes permanent.
US District Judge Rita Lin pressed the administration’s arguments at the center of Anthropic’s lawsuit over its supply-chain risk label. The fight grew out of broken contract talks with the Defense Department, which wanted to use Anthropic’s models in military operations. Anthropic refused to permit uses tied to mass surveillance of Americans or lethal targeting, saying the technology was not dependable enough, and the Pentagon responded by branding the company a risk and cutting it off.
Lin challenged the claim that Anthropic’s public criticism of the DOD is itself grounds for the ban, calling that logic troubling and warning it could penalize contractors for dissent. She also questioned the Pentagon’s assertion that Anthropic could tamper with delivered models or trigger a kill switch, saying she saw no evidence to support it.
The hearing covered one of two suits Anthropic filed in March. Lin, who blocked the ban temporarily in the spring, will now decide whether to make the injunction permanent. The companion case proceeds in Washington.
