# Anthropic Petitions Full Appeals Court Over Pentagon Risk Designation AI developer challenges national security blacklist after refusing mass surveillance and autonomous weapons deployments. - **Source:** [The Next Web](https://brifing.si/source/afe24b20-b275-4c19-b9a6-8bb3c8babae7) - **Published:** 2026-10-14 - **Topic:** [Business](https://brifing.si/c/business) - **Original article:** - **On Brifing:** https://brifing.si/s/c5135f1a-9fd8-4bf4-a5ba-6755f237536c ## En Banc Review Petition Anthropic petitioned the full federal appeals court in Washington to rehear its challenge against the Pentagon. The filing contests a 2-1 panel ruling from September 25 that upheld the company's designation as a national security supply-chain risk following disputes over acceptable model use. ## Split Panel Legal Reasoning Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao formed the majority supporting the Pentagon. In her dissent, Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson argued the underlying statute targets hostile foreign states committing sabotage or espionage, not domestic commercial contractors openly enforcing acceptable use terms within public commercial agreements. ## Contractual Safeguards Dispute The conflict erupted during procurement negotiations over Claude. Anthropic demanded binding contractual guarantees that its AI models would not power autonomous weaponry or mass surveillance against Americans. The Pentagon refused any operational restrictions, leading to an immediate policy stalemate between both parties. ## Retaliation Claims and Precedent Anthropic argues the designation lacks pre-decision procedural due process and represents direct retaliation for its outspoken positions on AI safety. A federal judge in California reached a similar conclusion regarding retaliatory motives in August during a parallel proceeding examining related national security designations. ## Executive Orders and Migration A June presidential memo barred vendors from modifying or disabling deployed defense models without government consent. The Pentagon chief technology officer confirmed that roughly 90% of classified AI workloads migrated away from Anthropic by September, with remaining dependencies targeted for total elimination shortly after. ## Global Access Repercussions Defense blacklists carry extraterritorial effects across commercial developer ecosystems. When Washington ordered Anthropic to suspend two models in June, Indian enterprise developers unexpectedly lost platform access overnight, demonstrating how national security designations immediately disrupt global enterprise software supply chains without judicial intervention. ## Divergent European Defense Approaches European regulations handle defense workloads differently because the EU AI Act explicitly exempts military applications. Consequently, European vendors like Mistral actively develop specialized defense architectures alongside German firm Helsing, framing sovereign military AI development as an imperative response against foreign strategic adversaries. ## Commercial Repercussions and IPO Direct government contracts represent less than 1% of Anthropic's total revenue. However, leadership warned prospective IPO investors that official security risk labeling threatens lucrative commercial contracts, as enterprise clients often mirror federal compliance standards across private sector software procurement channels. ## Sources covering this story - https://thenextweb.com/news/anthropic-pentagon-rehearing-bid — --- _Summary written by Brifing from the original reporting. Copyright in the original article belongs to its publisher; read the full piece at the link above._