WASHINGTON — By blasting Anthropic on social media and in the press, President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other top officials have given the AI titan a ton of ammunition to overturn administration’s attempt to sanction Anthropic as a “supply chain risk,” legal experts told Breaking Defense.
These statements, four experts agreed, could undercut what could have been a strong case for the government — and at a crucial time: The two sides are preparing for a key hearing Tuesday afternoon, when a judge will decide whether to grant Anthropic an injunction that would pause the Pentagon’s punishments from going into effect.
Those DoD sanctions came after negotiations between the company and the Pentagon broke down over contract language governing permissible uses. Pentagon officials publicly declared Anthropic an unreliable partner and ordered an end to any use of its products, not only within the Defense Department, but by any contractor working on a defense contract. Trump further banned Anthropic’s use by any federal agency. Anthropic filed two lawsuits on March 9, one seeking to overturn the Pentagon supply-chain-risk designation and the other to reverse Trump’s government-wide ban.
“Anthropic’s got a strong case, stronger than it should,” said Sean Timmons, a former military JAG who now represents troops and veterans against the government. “And the case is strong primarily because the President’s made ‘admissions against interest,’” he said, meaning public statements that are admissible for the opposing side to cite in court.
Indeed, “if you read Anthropic’s complaints, they lean very heavily on statements by Pentagon officials, both on social media and stuff anonymous officials have been quoted in the press,” said Charlie Bullock of the Institute for Law & AI. “Courts do generally give the Pentagon a lot of deference when it comes to national security decisions, and that’s what makes me think the Pentagon has a chance. [But] I would give Anthropic greater than 50 percent odds of securing some kind of preliminary injunction.”
The court will have to consider extensive social media postings by Trump, Hegseth, Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, and even acting Under Secretary of State Jeremy Lewin. Trump denounced “the Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic,” Hegseth spoke of the company’s “arrogance and betrayal,” and Michael called its CEO “a liar [with] a God-complex.”
Without such “statements against interest” in the record, the government would have had a huge advantage, the experts agreed. Even with them, Timmons argued, “Anthropic is running uphill because the government’s given a lot of leeway [and] the courts are excessively deferential.”
Contrary to some of Anthropic’s loftier arguments that it’s being unconstitutionally punished for exercising its freedom of speech, for example, an agency can even decide to cancel a contract solely because a contractor publicly voiced its disagreement with administration policy, he said: “The First Amendment protects speech, but it doesn’t compel the government to give you money.”
Also, in this particular case, the relevant statutes give federal agencies wide latitude to determine whether a company is “supply chain risk.”
The Defense Department in particular even has the authority (under Title 10, Sec. 3252) to declare its reasons are classified on grounds of national security and therefore cannot be subjected to judicial review.
But by stating its reasons so publicly and in so much detail, argued University of Minnesota law professor Alan Rozenshtein, the government effectively waived its right to keep them secret and immune from challenge. “The classification [power] does not apply here because the government did not classify the basis for action: It talked about it loudly on X,” Rozenshtein told Breaking Defense. “So that cat’s out of the bag.”
The tone of these public statements also makes it tricky for government lawyers to argue the determination was made on the dryly rational grounds laid out in the law, the experts said.
“There’s limitations to what the government can do vindictively, and the president often goes on these vindictive tirades on social media,” Timmons said. “It might rise to the level of … ‘extreme and outrageous’ targeting that is beyond the scope of permissible due process.”
Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law at George Washington University, agreed.
“If ever you were going to argue the use of the statute was a pretext … they have statements on the record right now that feel very much like this is a punitive, retaliatory act,” she told Breaking Defense. “Trump saying ‘I fired [them] like dogs,’ that’s Exhibit No. 1. [And] when I saw the Secretary’s statement I was like, I’m sure the lawyers for Anthropic could have it framed.”
Pentagon officials declined to comment on a pending legal matter, while Anthropic has not replied to multiple queries from Breaking Defense.
One Fight, Two Cases
The first opportunity for the administration’s statements to blow back on them in court would come at a key hearing Tuesday afternoon in the Northern District of California. That’s where Anthropic is seeking an injunction to pause Hegseth’s declaration — first posted on X.com — of the company as a “supply chain risk” whose products are unsafe for any contractor to use on any work for the Defense Department.
The relevant statute used by the DoD, Title 10, Sec. 3252, has only been invoked once before, just last year, against a Swiss company. The statute defines “supply chain risk” as “the risk that an adversary may sabotage … or otherwise subvert” key defense technology, which experts said suggests it only applies to foreign adversaries, not US firms.
“The way these statutes are written, it defines ‘supply chain risk’ very narrowly,” Bullock told Breaking Defense. While the language doesn’t explicitly distinguish foreign companies from domestic ones, he said, “these statues have never been invoked against an American company before, and I don’t think anyone thought they would be.”
Rozenshtein made an even blunter assessment: “Anthropic is just not a supply chain risk as the statute understands it,” he told Breaking Defense. “The clear purpose was to prohibit foreign companies that pose a threat of sabotage. Anthropic is a US company that just does not want its product used in certain ways.”
Anthropic has also filed a second, parallel lawsuit in the Washington, DC federal circuit court seeking to overturn Trump’s order — posted on Truth Social — “directing EVERY Federal Agency,” not just the Pentagon, to stop using Anthropic “immediately” (albeit over “a Six Month phase out period”) and “not do business with them again.” Subsequent, more formal administration statements have justified that ban under a different supply-chain-risk statute, Title 41, Sec. 4713.
Unlike the Title 10 language, Title 41 Sec. 4713 applies to all federal agencies. But, in contrast Title 10’s streamlined process, Title 41 requires a more extensive “debarment” procedure that the administration has not followed, Tillipman told Breaking Defense.
“Even if what they want is justifiable — a product/service that doesn’t do what they need it to do — we have other ways to deal with this: don’t contract with a company or terminate the contract,” Tillipman said. “We don’t blacklist by tweet in the United States. We have a process and none of it was followed.”
Come Tuesday afternoon, it will be much clearer whether the courts agree that the Administration has overstepped or will give wide deference to the executive branch.