WASHINGTON — In the latest twist in an escalating clash between Silicon Valley and national security authorities, a U.S. federal appeals court on Friday ruled that the Pentagon can legally designate artificial intelligence lab Anthropic as a supply chain risk.

The 2–1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit hands a significant victory to the Department of Defense. It upholds the military's authority to purge Anthropic’s flagship Claude AI models from its systems and prohibit defense contractors from utilizing the company's technology for official military work.

“Today's DC Circuit Court ruling completely validates the Department's position,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon's top spokesman, declared in a social media post.

The high-stakes dispute erupted in February when President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly accused Anthropic of undermining national security, swiftly placing the company on a supply chain risk blacklist. The friction began when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei drew a hard line against potential military deployments of the company’s technology, raising intense ethical concerns over whether Claude could eventually be co-opted for mass surveillance or autonomous armed drones.

Friday’s appellate ruling stands separate from a parallel legal battle played out in California earlier this summer, where a federal district judge found that the Pentagon acted unlawfully by penalizing Anthropic out of retaliation for its public critique of defense-related AI policies. However, the D.C. panel focused strictly on a separate regulatory framework utilized by the Pentagon to issue the supply chain designation.

Writing for the majority, Judge Gregory G. Katsas asserted that the Department of Defense had “ample support” for its tactical maneuvers. The court pointed out that Anthropic openly admits to programming intrinsic behavioral guardrails into Claude to block specific operations.

“The Department reasonably feared that Anthropic might manipulate Claude's design to prevent it from performing national-security functions that the Department deems contractually authorized and necessary,” Judge Katsas wrote.

Judge Katsas and Judge Neomi Rao, both nominees of President Trump, formed the majority. The lone dissenting vote came from Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, a nominee of President George H.W. Bush.

While the majority acknowledged they had “no reason to doubt” that Anthropic operates with “noble intentions” concerning user privacy and safety, they emphasized that the legal definition of a supply chain risk turns strictly “on what Anthropic does, not why Anthropic does it.”

Responding to the verdict, a spokesperson for Anthropic stated that the company “respectfully disagrees” with the outcome.

“Another federal court has already held the government's parallel designation unlawful,” the spokesperson noted in a written statement. “We remain confident in our position and are considering all options, including further review.”

Though the ruling validates the removal of Claude from defense workflows and contractor pipelines, Anthropic's products are not restricted from the wider federal civilian government. The White House has yet to issue a formal comment on the appeals court's decision.