Trump admin sued as company claims 'extreme punishment' for defying president

The Trump administration was hit with a major lawsuit on Monday by AI developer Anthropic after it enacted an “extreme punishment” on the company over its refusal to allow its AI system to be used for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, NBC News reported.

“This is a necessary step to protect our business, our customers, and our partners,” an Anthropic spokesperson told NBC News. “We will continue to pursue every path toward resolution, including dialogue with the government.”

Last month, Axios reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was getting “close” to cutting ties with Anthropic and classifying the company as a supply chain risk, a classification that would bar any business working with the federal government from maintaining ties with Anthropic.

The issue, Axios reported, was Anthropic's insistence that its AI technology wasn’t “used to spy on Americans en masse, or to develop weapons that fire with no human involvement.”

That insistence was apparently too much for the Trump administration, which ultimately cut ties with the company earlier this month and made good on its pledge to classify the company as a supply chain risk.

Now, Anthropic is hitting back with a lawsuit over what it described as the Trump administration’s “unlawful campaign of retaliation.”

The lawsuit, filed in California, accuses the Trump administration of violating its First Amendment rights, Politico reported, and of acting unlawfully in designating it as a supply chain risk.