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The Courts

Anthropic Loses Appeals Court Bid To Temporarily Block Pentagon Blacklisting (cnbc.com) 17

A federal appeals court denied Anthropic's bid to temporarily block the Pentagon's blacklisting, meaning the company remains shut out of Defense Department contracts while the case continues, even though a separate court has allowed other federal agencies to keep using Claude for now. CNBC reports: "In our view, the equitable balance here cuts in favor of the government," the appeals court said in its decision. "On one side is a relatively contained risk of financial harm to a single private company. On the other side is judicial management of how, and through whom, the Department of War secures vital AI technology during an active military conflict. For that reason, we deny Anthropic's motion for a stay pending review on the merits." With the split decisions by the two courts, Anthropic is excluded from DOD contracts but is able to continue working with other government agencies while litigation plays out. Defense contractors will be prohibited from using Claude in their work with the agency, but they can use it for other cases.

[...] In the ruling on Wednesday, the court acknowledged that Anthropic "will likely suffer some degree of irreparable harm absent a stay," but that the company's interests "seem primarily financial in nature." While the company claimed the DOD was standing in the way of its right to free speech, "Anthropic does not show that its speech has been chilled during the pendency of this litigation," the order said. Because of the harm Anthropic is likely to suffer, the appeals court said "substantial expedition is warranted."

An Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement after the ruling that the company is "grateful the court recognized these issues need to be resolved quickly" and that it's "confident the courts will ultimately agree that these supply chain designations were unlawful." "While this case was necessary to protect Anthropic, our customers, and our partners, our focus remains on working productively with the government to ensure all Americans benefit from safe, reliable AI," Anthropic said.

Anthropic Loses Appeals Court Bid To Temporarily Block Pentagon Blacklisting

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  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday April 09, 2026 @08:56AM (#66084974) Homepage Journal

    In the ruling on Wednesday, the court acknowledged that Anthropic "will likely suffer some degree of irreparable harm absent a stay," but that the company's interests "seem primarily financial in nature."

    Yeah, the company's interests are financial. That's what companies are for. The military's interests are also financial. People may think they're enlisting to serve their country, but they're really serving oligarchs. We have to blow up the middle east so we can rebuild it in our image — at great expense... and benefit to corporations like Halliburton who get awarded the no-bid contracts (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively - I'm picking on Halliburton here not just because they deserve it in general, but because they were declared to be the only corporations capable of doing the job the last time around, short-circuiting the legally mandated bidding process.)

  • by bussdriver ( 620565 ) on Thursday April 09, 2026 @09:42AM (#66085064)

    Low information people don't see anything getting worse because for them nothing has changed; they were ignorant before and they are ignorant now it's 5000% worse, they can't see any difference in the 2% of information they ingest.

    So much widespread corruption so frequent that not only can't the media report on it fast enough (even if they were fully and honestly doing their jobs) it's also so much that it is just like the big lie psychology from the Nazi era -- people can't believe it's possible to be so extreme. They can't be lying that much... so they can't be corrupting that much... but it's that and more. We're all being reduced to low information with this DoS on our society; and technology is at the heart of all the problems helping force multiply evil.

    If this was a REAL national security threat like they claim in order to ban them so extremely, this would be a huge scandal because the company had it's hands all over government already. We know it's all BS and so do the judges and the burden should be on the crooks to prove their dishonest decisions. This reminds me of how Amazon cloud was kept out of government out of spite and MS was chosen when there was obviously no contest which service was superior (putting critical infrastructure on a cloud service being foolish is a whole other subject... don't give me that "but my bucket is encrypted", when you seriously shouldn't even put the system online at all.)

    • by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Thursday April 09, 2026 @11:47AM (#66085300) Journal

      So much widespread corruption so frequent that not only can't the media report on it fast enough (even if they were fully and honestly doing their jobs) it's also so much that it is just like the big lie psychology from the Nazi era -- people can't believe it's possible to be so extreme.

      The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit. -- Steve Bannon

      Just saturate the news cycle, and any bad news will disappear in 24 hours. That has been Trump's strategy, going back at least to 2017.

      • The real enemy of evil criminals is TRUTH and even a flawed media has some truth. This is why they are at war with media, science, education, academics, facts, etc.

        Every mistake, every lie from not being 100% perfect just allows them cover for people wanting to believe their lies and even 100% perfect, the audience makes more mistakes and will judge from their flawed judgement to rationalize what they like. So you they just have to maintain some ridiculousness to trigger people's irrationality; like being

  • With their new Mythos model they can take Pentagon down, that's what I hear anyway. Maybe Pentagon needs to be taken down as well as the rest of the regime and all of the regimes.

  • But Defense Dept. is final authority on what is risk to US Military. Anthropic needs to play ball and bow out gracefully.

    Come back to the table when the chance comes back around, which you know that it will.
    • Just cave to the DoD when you think you've been wronged by them? Don't go to the courts?

      Stop and think about what you just wrote. And consider how un-American it is to just let the government have its way with you.

      • Just cave to the DoD when you think you've been wronged by them? Don't go to the courts? Stop and think about what you just wrote. And consider how un-American it is to just let the government have its way with you.
        Yep, this is ultimately a contract dispute. What is truly amazing is, the very same people who got all twisted when Citizen's United came out and "corporations are people too" are now on the side of big business. It's truly remarkable. Of course, those people fail to see the consumer protection
  • The appeals court stated in it's ruling "the Department of War secures ...." I'm surprised they used the name Dept. of War. My understanding was that it's still the Dept of Defense until Congress changes the name, regardless of what Kegseth says. For the appeals court to use that term in a legal document says more about the person that wrote that opinion. "Only Congress has the authority to formally and permanently change the name of a US Cabinet department, as these departments are established by statute

It was pity stayed his hand. "Pity I don't have any more bullets," thought Frito. -- _Bored_of_the_Rings_, a Harvard Lampoon parody of Tolkein

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