Anthropic seeks rehearing of case over Pentagon’s security risk branding

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Anthropic asked a US appeals court on Tuesday to reconsider a ruling that upheld the Pentagon’s decision to ​label the AI company as a national security supply ‌chain risk over a dispute about safety guardrails on its technology.A federal appeals court in September upheld the designation in a 2-1 decision, ​agreeing with the Pentagon that the firm’s safety restrictions ​could compromise military operations. The Pentagon’s blacklisting of ⁠the company has cost it billions of dollars in lost ​business, Anthropic has said.The court’s majority said the Pentagon acted ​reasonably after Anthropic refused to allow its AI to be used in autonomous weapons or mass surveillance, and the court rejected the firm’s ​claim that it faced retaliation by the Defense Department ​over its views on AI safety.In its petition on Tuesday to the ‌US ⁠Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, for a rehearing, Anthropic argued that the panel majority misinterpreted and transformed a federal law “aimed at hostile foreign actors into one that presumptively reaches ​every government contractor.”The ​court let ⁠the Pentagon take action against Anthropic “without any pre-designation process and despite straightforward evidence the designation ​was retaliation for Anthropic’s speech about AI safety,” ​the ⁠company said.In a separate lawsuit in August, a federal judge in California struck down a parallel designation under a different law.Anthropic CEO ⁠Dario ​Amodei has called for regulation covering ​all US frontier AI companies, while the Trump administration has favored a pro-growth ​approach.