Anthropic has asked a federal appeals court in Washington to rehear its challenge to the Pentagon's decision to blacklist the AI company.
The move escalates a months-long confrontation with the Trump administration over how the military may use the company's Claude models.
In a petition filed on Tuesday, Anthropic's lawyersreportedly argued that the company was branded a national-security risk because it refused to allow its technology to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons, and said so publicly.
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They contend that a divided panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was wrong to uphold the designation. They also say the court overlooked evidence that the action was retaliation for the company's public stance on AI safety.
The panel ruled 2-1 in September, rejecting Anthropic's argument that the Defence Department's ban was arbitrary, unauthorised and unconstitutional. Anthropic is now seeking a fresh hearing of the case.
The Defence Department, led by Pete Hegseth, applied the "supply chain risk" label in March.
The tag has traditionally been associated with foreign adversaries. It bars defence contractors from using Anthropic's technology in work for the Pentagon, and it followed the collapse of negotiations over the terms on which the military could deploy Claude.
Chief executive Dario Amodei has cast the dispute as one of principle. Ahead of the designation, he said Anthropic "cannot in good conscience accede to" the Pentagon's demand for unrestricted access to its systems.
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He has maintained that the company accepts the military, not private firms, must make operational decisions, and that the exceptions it sought "relate to high-level usage areas, and not operational decision-making".
On autonomous weapons, he has argued that today's frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough for such use.
The relationship was not always adversarial. Anthropic signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon in July 2025 and was an early AI partner to several US agencies.
Talks broke down in September last year, when the company began negotiating the deployment of Claude on the department's GenAI.mil platform.
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The standoff came to a head in late February and early March, on the eve of the US-Iran war, when the administration announced a series of punitive measures against the company after Amodei refused to back down.
The outcome of the petition could determine whether Anthropic's technology remains off-limits across the defence supply chain.
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