The Right Remedy in the Anthropic Case

(Alan Z. Rozenshtein – Lawfare) On Tuesday, March 24, Judge Rita Lin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California will hear Anthropic’s request for a preliminary injunction against the Department of Defense, the White House, and 16 other federal agencies. After Anthropic refused to remove usage restrictions on its Claude AI model—restrictions on lethal autonomous warfare without human oversight and mass surveillance of Americans—the Trump administration designated the company a “supply-chain risk to national security” and ordered every federal agency to stop using its products. Having read the government’s opposition brief—and having filed an amicus brief myself arguing that the supply chain risk statutes were never designed for this kind of dispute—I think the case comes down to a simple question: Can the executive branch use extraordinary national security authorities to bypass the ordinary procurement system Congress built for run-of-the-mill contract disputes? The answer is clearly no, but the remedy should be surgical. Judge Lin should set aside the supply chain risk designation and enjoin agencies from implementing the government-wide ban and—critically—prohibit the Defense Department from pressuring defense contractors to sever commercial relationships with Anthropic. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth originally declared that “no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic,” and Anthropic’s complaint alleges that a Pentagon official threatened to “require that all our vendors and contractors certify that they don’t use any Anthropic models”: a secondary boycott that goes well beyond anything Section 3252 authorizes. But Judge Lin should leave the government free to stop buying from Anthropic through ordinary procurement channels: Terminating contracts for convenience, declining renewals, directing prime contractors on specific contracts not to use Anthropic as a subcontractor, and, in the extreme case, seeking to debar and exclude Anthropic as a government contractor under the proper statutory authorities. The government doesn’t need extraordinary powers to break up with a vendor. It just needs to follow the law. – The Right Remedy in the Anthropic Case | Lawfare