U.S. court declines to block Pentagon’s Anthropic blacklisting for now

A Washington, D.C. federal appeals court on Wednesday (April 8, 2026) declined to block the Pentagon’s national security blacklisting of ​Anthropic for now, a win for the Trump administration that comes after another appeals ‌court came to the opposite conclusion in a separate legal challenge ​by Anthropic.

Anthropic, developer of the popular Claude AI ⁠assistant, alleges that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth overstepped his authority when he designated the company a national security supply-chain risk, a label that blocks Anthropic from Pentagon contracts ‌and could trigger a government-wide blacklisting. Anthropic executives have said the designation could cost the company billions of dollars in lost business ‌and reputational harm.

A panel of judges of the U.S. Court of ‌Appeals ⁠for the District of Columbia Circuit denied Anthropic’s bid to ⁠pause the designation while the case plays out. The decision is not a final ruling. The lawsuit is one of two Anthropic filed over Mr. Hegseth’s unprecedented move, which came after Anthropic ​refused to allow the military to ‌use AI chatbot Claude for U.S. surveillance or autonomous weapons due to safety and ethics concerns.