{"id":890136,"date":"2026-10-22T00:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T00:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/890136\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T00:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T00:20:09","slug":"former-u-s-officials-urge-d-c-circuit-to-reconsider-decision-in-anthropic-pentagon-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/890136\/","title":{"rendered":"Former U.S. officials urge D.C. Circuit to reconsider decision in Anthropic-Pentagon fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bipartisan group of 17 former senior national security officials, diplomats and intelligence professionals filed a legal brief<\/a> on Tuesday urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to rehear Anthropic\u2019s challenge to the Pentagon\u2019s designation of the company as a supply-chain risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeft undisturbed that ruling will threaten all defense contractors,\u201d they argue in the 26-page submission.<\/p>\n

This brief marks the latest move in the messy saga between the Defense Department and Anthropic. The two remain at an impasse over safety guardrails and unrestricted military use of the company\u2019s frontier AI models.<\/p>\n

Anthropic was positioned as a premier AI partner for the U.S. government between 2024 and mid-2025. Through collaboration<\/a> with Palantir and Amazon Web Services, Anthropic\u2019s Claude was the first frontier AI model to deploy inside highly restricted, classified government networks.<\/p>\n

But DOD\u2019s alignment with Anthropic shattered<\/a> in early 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s leadership refused to accede to new demands from Pentagon leadership that would permit the military to deploy commercial AI models for \u201call lawful use cases\u201d \u2014 without limitation. In particular, Anthropic took issue with the government potentially using its models to surveil Americans en masse, and for applications of autonomous weapon systems that can attack targets without human intervention.<\/p>\n

Following a series of failed negotiations, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in February officially designated<\/a> Anthropic as a \u201csupply-chain risk to national security.\u201d That severe regulatory label is typically reserved for foreign, adversarial entities and functionally bars defense contractors and components from doing commercial business with Anthropic.<\/p>\n

The firm subsequently sued<\/a> the federal government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This summer a federal judge in San Francisco ruled in favor<\/a> of the Claude maker, deeming the Pentagon\u2019s actions against Anthropic<\/a> to be troubling and retaliatory. However, last month, the federal circuit court in D.C. ruled 2-to-1 in favor of the Pentagon in a simultaneous challenge.<\/p>\n

In the new legal brief, the 17 former officials noted that \u2014 because Congress vested that specific court with exclusive jurisdiction over supply-chain risk designations \u2014 the panel\u2019s decision is the governing law nationwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo other court can revisit it,\u201d they wrote. \u201cIf it stands, it will establish how DOD may deal with every defense contractor from here on out. Few questions could be of more exceptional importance for this Court to rehear en banc.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crew of subject matter experts behind this brief said they share \u201cdecades of combined experience\u201d in federal procurement, supply-chain security, and protecting America\u2019s technological edge in matters of national defense. The brief states that many held senior roles \u201cin both Republican and Democratic administrations, at the White House, National Security Council, Departments of State, Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security, Office of Management and Budget, and other national security and intelligence institutions, where they implemented or advised on the statutory and constitutional authorities at issue here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of the more prominent members of the group include former Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, among others.<\/p>\n

The officials warned that the court\u2019s decision \u201cwould set a dangerously erroneous standard\u201d for supply chain risk designations moving forward, if a rehearing is not set.<\/p>\n

Their key arguments include that the Pentagon\u2019s national security risk label \u201cwas pretextual.\u201d The brief points out that DOD announced the penalty and public denunciations on social media, before generating any administrative steps or formal justifications.<\/p>\n

The experts also contend that the designation was made in retaliation against Anthropic for its leaders\u2019 public comments, policy stances, and refusal to meet certain government demands \u2014 essentially serving as what they see as an unconstitutional warning to other military contractors and frontier AI makers.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurther, had DOD engaged in a lawful process, it would have considered the specific risks posed by the two capabilities Anthropic refused to provide: mass domestic surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons. DOD has not explained why DOD should have the first, much less how it could exercise it lawfully. Nor has DOD reconciled the second with the United States\u2019 commitment that [its military use of AI be in compliance with applicable international laws],\u201d the brief stated.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the former officials argued that if \u201cthe panel decision stands, this Court will validate a sham process that not only weakens national security but gives this and future administrations authorization to punish any company that falls out of favor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pentagon spokespersons did not immediately provide comments on the matter before publication.<\/p>\n

FedScoop Senior Reporter Madison Alder contributed reporting.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Brandi<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWritten by Brandi Vincent
\n\t\t\tBrandi Vincent is a Senior Reporter at DefenseScoop, where she reports on disruptive technologies and associated policies impacting Pentagon and military personnel. Prior to joining SNG, she produced a documentary and worked as a journalist at Nextgov, Snapchat and NBC Network. Brandi grew up in Louisiana and received a master\u2019s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. She was named Best New Journalist at the 2024 Defence Media Awards.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bipartisan group of 17 former senior national security officials, diplomats and intelligence professionals filed a legal brief…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,184,4514,373196,373197,257282,373198,198410,3,1572,26928,133708,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-890136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-anthropic","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-avril-haines","tag-contracting","tag-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth","tag-frontier-ai","tag-jake-sullivan","tag-news","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-supply-chain","tag-susan-rice","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}