Anthropic on Tuesday asked a US federal appeals court to reconsider a ruling that had upheld the Department of Defense's decision to designate the artificial intelligence company as a national security supply chain risk over a dispute concerning its technology safety safeguards.
Last month, a US appeals court voted 2-1 to uphold that designation, agreeing with the Department of Defense's view that the company's safety restrictions could endanger military operations. Anthropic said the Pentagon's blacklisting of the company has cost it billions of dollars in business.
The court's majority opinion stated that the Pentagon's response was reasonable after Anthropic refused to allow its AI technology to be used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance systems; the court also rejected the company's allegation that it was retaliated against by the Department of Defense because of its stance on AI safety.
On Tuesday, Anthropic filed a petition for rehearing with the US Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., arguing that the panel majority misunderstood and distorted a federal law, turning a provision originally "aimed at hostile foreign entities" into one "presumptively applicable to all government contractors."
The company said the court allowed the Pentagon to act against Anthropic "without any predesignation process and while ignoring conclusive evidence — namely that the designation was in fact retaliation against Anthropic for its speech about AI safety."
In a separate lawsuit in August, a federal judge in California overturned a similar designation made under a different law.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for regulation of all US frontier AI companies, while the Trump administration has favored a growth-promoting policy approach.
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