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https://www.engadget.com/2246131/judge-rules-that-pentagon-anthropic-ban-illegal-and-baseless/
A US federal court has ruled that the Pentagon's designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk was illegal, CNBC reported. US District judge Rita Lin found that the US Department of Defense's restrictions placed on the AI company and its Claude model were "illegal and baseless." As part of the ruling, the judge barred certain federal agencies from enforcing President Trump's order to stop using Anthropic's tools.
"The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Judge Lin said in a 59-page decision. "Neither the Constitution nor the federal statute invoked by Defendants allows them to impose sweeping penalties based principally on Anthropic's critique of the Administration's views."
"We welcome the court's ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful," an Anthropic spokesperson told CNBC. "We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology."
The dispute arose in late February, after the Department of Defense and its Secretary Pete Hegseth pressured Anthropic to remove certain safeguards from its AI systems. Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei, however, made it clear the company would refuse to allow its model to be used for mass surveillance or the development of autonomous weapons.
Late in February, Trump ordered all US government agencies to stop using Claude and other Anthropic services, escalating the feud. On social media, the president said there would be a six-month phase out period for federal agencies to migrate off of Anthropic's products. Subsequent talks collapsed and Anthropic became the first US company to be designated as a supply chain risk.
After saying it would challenge the decision, Anthropic sued the White House in two federal courts (for two separate designations) to reverse the ban. Today's ruling by Judge Lin gave the company a victory on one of those counts, but Anthropic is still considered a supply chain risk pending the second decision. Even if it wins both cases, though, the Pentagon would not be required to restart its work with the company.
The supply chain designation hasn't slowed Anthropic's march toward a likely near-record IPO later this year. Earlier this month, the company's revenue surged to a record $11.5 billion, 14 times more than it earned in the same quarter last year. Engadget has reached out to Anthropic for additional comment.
(Score: 2, Troll) by VLM on Monday August 31, @01:56PM (9 children)
Having the judicial branch declare the executive branch can't perform its functions is weird.
I know its entirely being reported as flaming the fans of TDS, but WRT separation of powers its weird to see the judicial branch declare they're the new executive branch and they're giving the orders now.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, @02:35PM
Judicial branch not very loud when the spying or rights infringing happens to actual citizens. Wins come every few years but trumpo can't even fire his own government departments enacted by previous presidents' executive orders. A stupid ballroom gets an injunction overnight while warrantless wiretapping lasts a veritable lifetime.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, @03:44PM
You may want a king, most do not
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, @06:06PM
Well, since the sycophants in the legislature have abdicated, the courts are all we have left for now to defend ourselves. Not that they are really helping, as toothless as they are, but it makes us feel like it's not too late. The real chaos begins in November.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday September 01, @04:02AM (5 children)
Not when those "functions" are breaking the law. For starters, my view is that if the Trump administration can't perform its alleged functions without breaking the law, then it's time to replace them with someone competent who can perform those functions in compliance with the law.
Here, it's quite clear that the determination of being a "supply chain risk" was merely a punitive action against Anthropic rather than good faith enforcement of law - 14th Amendment.
Breaking the law without repercussions would bypass both the Legislative and Judicial branches. That's the real separations of powers problem.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 01, @02:26PM (4 children)
To an extent, the executive branch has been practiced as a bit "above the law, temporarily" - such as the war powers act, the President can order military action, but cannot allocate funding to support a war without the support of Congress.
The recent foolishness has tested boundaries and found them to be ... slow to respond, which is a bit by design, but in 250 years never had been abused to this level before.
Ultimately, it's bad for business - in my corner of reality, Intel has broken its word regarding LTS (long term supply) of certain parts which they promised to make available for 15 years, but in practice they put us on last-time-buy three years ahead of that promised deadline. Replacement parts we might have just dropped in for a 3-5 year extension are mostly out of production as well, so we're facing a potential deep re-design cycle that wasn't supposed to come for 5-10 years here in the next 2-3, and the global regulatory implications of that may take our products off the market for a significant period of time while we apply for permission to market this "major redesign." You can certainly point the finger at the "evil AI empire" sucking up all the chips, but the bigger hurdle we're facing at the moment is 4-6 week delays getting parts that used to arrive overnight, delays mostly due to Tariff mechanisms that didn't exist 2 years ago. "Buy American"? How much more American do you get than Intel? Another corner of our reality uses American display panels which are similarly going End-of-life somewhat earlier than expected. The "overseas" equivalent parts are still avaialble without a redesign, and at 1/5th the cost, but thanks to choosing an American supplier, we're locked in to the premium cost parts and a costly re-design because their smaller selection of options just decided to "improve" our display with a "better" one that needs a different pixel clock. Small change in software, huge headache in process-control paperwork.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 04, @07:10AM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 04, @09:38AM (2 children)
As previously practiced, such as by Jimmy Carter handing off control of his peanut farm, the office of President of the United States was a rather weak institution, all kinds of rules and traditions to respect, standards to uphold, appearances of ethics to keep up.
Whilst attempting to transform that to "the most powerful office on the planet" - in contention with figures like Putin who have taken actions like mobilization of ~1.5 million soldiers (out of a total male/female population of only 144 million) in bloody conflict (estimates run around 1 million wounded + 450,000 dead) - outstripping the Russian Afghanistan death toll by over 30:1 - it takes a lot of wealth extraction to compete with that kind of demonstration of power. In a way, we're following in the footsteps of Russia in Afghanistan, taking huge economic losses for that consolidation of power. I hope China is impressed /s
And, as terrible as all that sounds, remember: the US mobilized over 1.25% of our total population in-theater in Vietnam, but we "only" killed off about 60,000 of our own in that conflict - of the remaining ~2.7 million 150,000 were acknowledged to have sustained serious injury including 75,000 severe disabilities, another 150,000 "less serious" injury, and over the decades since roughly 1/3 deployed have been acknowledged to suffer significant PTSD - the kind of gift that keeps giving back to society not only in lost productivity of the ex-soldier but also in domestic struggles, drug addictions, and other rather ugly follow-on effects. But Vietnam was far from the end for the US - since then another 3.5 million + have been deployed to active combat zones, and that's not even counting those "in harms way" such as the drone pilots who never leave the continental US but still suffer PTSD from their duties.
A significant part of those actions have been "keeping the supply chain safe for Democracy," particularly fuel/oil - it's only fair to take a little back, right? /s
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 04, @01:47PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 04, @04:48PM
The US doesn't discuss politics, it pontificates - back and forth between (ever more appropriately named) red team and blue team - each parroting their echo-chamber trained lines. These are the majority of our voters, and the majority rules. One thing that both sides have successfully implemented (regardless of rhetoric) is decimation of the US education system's budding flower of teaching independent evaluation: thinking for one's self, which started to bloom in the 1960s. 60 years of continued assault and I think they're starting to regain control of the younger generations' ideas of ideals. It's sad for me, my father spent his 40+ year teaching career promoting independent thought - and of course a bit rubbed off on me - was essentially all I knew from birth. And now, he's retired bitter and defeated on that front (but he remarried well, so he has all the toys he ever wanted and more...) As for me, it has been a steady path of continued disillusionment across the decades. I'm pretty sure I don't want Kurzweil's singularity to come and make me immortal, such high probability of that amounting to an eternity of disappointment.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]