Appeals Court Backs Department Of War's Anthropic Blacklisting In Blow To Dario

The Trump administration scored a legal victory Friday morning after a federal appeals court rejected Anthropic's challenge to its designation as a national-security supply-chain risk. This means the Department of War can blacklist the AI frontier firm from all contracts.

In a 2-1 decision today, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit found sufficient grounds for the DoW to designate Anthropic's products a supply-chain risk. The court pointed to restrictions embedded in Claude that prevent it from performing certain critical tasks.

"The Department had ample support for its conclusion that the continued integration of Claude into the Department's information systems, by the Department or its contractors, presented a statutorily covered national-security risk," the court wrote.

It continued, "As Anthropic admits, the company encodes restrictions into Claude that prevent the model from performing tasks that Anthropic wishes to prevent."

Anthropic has opposed allowing its AI to be used for autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance.

Dario Amodei's Anthropic has warned that such a designation could cause significant "reputational stigma" and cost it hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Or perhaps it could complicate things as the company pushes for an IPO debut after the US midterm elections in November.

Last night at the White House, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, and Tim Cook were among those invited to the state dinner with President Trump and Melania Trump, as well as Trump's Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, and his wife.

Dario was not invited.

If Anthropic were smart they would terminate Dario tomorrow https://t.co/Dxtv011mzk

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) September 25, 2026

Will Chamberlain noted on X, "If Anthropic were smart they would terminate Dario tomorrow."