A federal judge is pushing back on the Trump administration's decision to brand AI company Anthropic a supply chain risk, saying the government still hasn't shown its work.
At a hearing on Thursday, the judge said "I don't see additional evidence" from the Pentagon to justify the designation, according to Axios reporter Maria Curi. Axios reported that the judge signaled she has become even more skeptical of the Pentagon's decision to blacklist Anthropic than she was previously.
TechCrunch reported the same conclusion from the hearing: the judge said the Trump administration has not presented enough evidence to support the supply chain risk label, casting doubt on the government's ban on Anthropic's AI technology.
A "supply chain risk" designation is a serious label in federal contracting. It is the kind of finding that lets agencies keep a company's products out of government systems, and here it underpins a ban on the use of Anthropic's AI. The judge's comments suggest the record supporting that finding is thin — or at least that the Pentagon has not put enough of it in front of the court.
Neither source reports a final ruling, and the government could still supply more material. But a judge saying twice, in effect, that the evidence isn't there is a difficult starting point for the administration's position.
Why it matters: as the federal government becomes one of the biggest buyers of AI, this case tests whether Washington can shut a major AI company out of government work without showing the evidence behind that decision.