Nearly 150 retired judges take Anthropic's side in Pentagon fight

• A group of former judges gave Anthropic their vote of confidence in its lawsuit with the Department of War.
• They said the DOD was free to choose its contractors but should not punish Anthropic "on its way out."
• In February, the DOD labeled Anthropic a "supply-chain risk to national security."

A group of nearly 150 retired judges has joined the list of Anthropic's supporters in its fight with the Pentagon.

In a brief filed on Tuesday, 149 retired federal and state judges said the Department of War's labeling of the AI company as a "supply chain risk" was unfounded. Anthropic is the creator of the Claude LLM.

The judges wrote that the department "misinterpreted the statute and ignored the necessary procedures," and they were duty-bound to call the label unlawful.

"More fundamentally, as a practical matter, no one is trying to force the Department to contract with Anthropic," the judges wrote. "To the contrary, Anthropic and the Department have already agreed that the Department is not interested in Anthropic's services in the form that Anthropic is willing to provide them."

"Instead, Anthropic is asking only that it not be punished on its way out the door," they added.

The judges concluded that the department is free to choose its contractors. But it cannot use the law to "punish Anthropic in its dealings with the rest of the world—including other government agencies whose functions are unrelated to national defense and private businesses."

The brief is the latest development in several weeks of back-and-forth between Anthropic and the defense department, which was renamed the Department of War.

On February 27, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's technology, calling it a "radical left AI company."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added in an X post that no contractor, supplier, or partner of the US military should have any commercial activity with Anthropic, calling it a "supply-chain risk to national security."

In response, Anthropic said in a statement later that day that it was "deeply saddened" by the developments, adding, "We believe this designation would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government."

Anthropic's lawyer said during a March 10 conference that the department was pressuring the company's customers to switch to rival AI providers, and that its decision to blacklist Anthropic was causing "real and irreparable harm" to the company.

Representatives for Anthropic and the Department of War did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.