A federal judge in California has ruled against the Department of War’s designation of AI firm Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, an authority normally reserved to protect U.S. systems from foreign adversaries. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin described the Pentagon’s justification for its sanction of Anthropic as “an Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government.” The judge’s ruling is delayed for one week to allow the government to appeal.
“This is a win for the whole innovation ecosystem and for our national security,” said ARI VP of Policy Morgan Plummer. “The Pentagon’s supply-chain risk designation sent a message that any company refusing to provide unrestricted access to their systems could trigger punitive government action. For tech companies, big and small, that raised a serious red flag. As we move into a new era of AI technology, policymakers should be looking for avenues to encourage tech innovators to work with government, not scaring them off.”
This week, Plummer published an op-ed in DefenseScoop on the threat that the Pentagon’s supply chain risk designation poses to the integration of new technology at the Department of War. Read the full op-ed: A policy gap is threatening the Pentagon’s AI innovation pipeline.
Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of former defense and intelligence officials, including ARI President Brad Carson and Morgan Plummer, sent a letter to Congress calling for an investigation into the supply-chain risk designation. The group warned that labeling a leading American AI company as a supply-chain risk is “a category error with consequences that extend far beyond this dispute.”
###
