Anthropic takes U.S. government to courtPLUS: Auto-generate video from written content with ManusZach Mink, +4

Anthropic, a prominent AI partner of the Pentagon, has filed two lawsuits against the U.S. government in federal court. The company is challenging the 'supply chain risk' label and a White House directive to cut ties, arguing that it is being retaliated against for speaking up on AI safety.

The lawsuits, filed in two separate courts, ask judges to throw out the blacklist label and block the government from forcing agencies to cut ties. Anthropic claims that the 'supply chain risk' label was designed to counter foreign adversary threats, not punish a U.S. company over policy disagreements.

The company also claims that the Pentagon violated free speech rights by retaliating for publicly advocating AI safety limits on weapons and surveillance. In support of Anthropic's lawsuit, over 30 employees from OpenAI and Google have signed a legal brief, warning that the blacklisting threatens U.S. AI leadership.

The case could decide whether the government can move against a domestic company for speaking up on safety, a precedent that all labs will be watching. Whatever side you take on who controls AI in warfare, the federal response has looked a lot like retaliation.

The case is also significant because it involves Microsoft's Claude-powered Copilot Cowork, a new M365 feature built on Anthropic's Claude system. Copilot Cowork operates in the cloud, pulling from emails, meetings, files, and chats across M365, and is available in a limited research preview.

The $99/user E7 tier bundles Copilot with agent management and security tools, giving it something that Claude Cowork can't easily match - deep, integrated enterprise context across 450M users' worth of emails, calendars, and files.