During a 90-minute hearing in San Francisco federal court on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin repeatedly pressed the Trump administration on why it had denounced Anthropic—a fast-rising Silicon Valley artificial intelligence company—as a supply-chain security threat, despite an underlying fight over how the technology can be used in war. The judge’s focus, according to the proceedings described in court coverage, was whether the steps were actually connected to national security concerns rather than something else.
Lin was weighing an emergency request from Anthropic to remove what the company alleges was a “scarlet letter” stigma applied without sufficient justification. Anthropic said the designation and associated actions were part of what it described as an unlawful campaign of retaliation, and the company sued the Trump administration earlier this month.
At the hearing, Lin probed the government’s rationale for the labeling after the administration took what the coverage described as an unusual step of denouncing Anthropic as a supply chain risk following an impasse about the deployment of its AI technology. The reporting said the judge questioned why the administration’s actions followed an earlier dispute in which Anthropic sought to prevent its technology from being used for fully autonomous weapons or surveillance of Americans.
Lin did not issue a ruling on Tuesday. Instead, the judge asked both sides to file additional evidence by Wednesday and indicated she would decide before the end of the week, according to the account of the proceedings.
The court battle also extends beyond what the judge described as a public-policy debate over AI’s boundaries in warfare and surveillance. Lin said at the outset of the hearing that it was not her role to decide who is right in that policy debate, and she indicated her focus was on whether the administration acted improperly in applying the stigma to Anthropic.
Anthropic also cited government statements tied to the February 27 announcement by President Donald Trump. The reporting said Anthropic contended it suffered reputational damage from a Feb. 27 Trump statement that blamed the company as part of the “radical, woke left,” alongside an order that federal employees stop using Anthropic’s technology, including its Claude chatbot.
The reporting said Trump gave the Pentagon six months to phase out Anthropic’s technology and that the technology is already embedded in classified military platforms, including those used in the Iran war. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also made remarks on Feb. 27, according to the account, and the reporting said the administration initially raised the specter of Anthropic losing other deals even though it later stepped back from a broader government ban in filings made in the litigation.
In court, Anthropic’s lawyer Michael Mongan argued that the company’s reputation had already been stained by the administration’s actions and that the company faced further harm absent emergency relief. “Anthropic has suffered irreparable and mounting injuries,” Mongan told Lin, according to the proceedings described in the court reporting.
The Justice Department, through attorney Eric Hamilton, argued that the company had shown itself to be “untrustworthy and unreliable” in recent negotiations, and Hamilton said the administration should receive “substantial deference” in deciding what qualifies as a security risk. Hamilton also argued, according to the coverage, that the Defense Department “will continue to direct its operations without tech company influence,” as the case proceeds.