Employees from rival firms OpenAI and Google (GOOGL) have filed a legal brief defending Anthropic in two federal lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), now Department of War (DoW). Filed March 9, the cases challenge the Pentagon’s decision to designate Anthropic a “supply-chain risk,” a label historically reserved for foreign adversaries.
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More than 30 OpenAI and Google employees, including DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, co-signed a brief filed hours after Anthropic launched its lawsuits, calling the Pentagon’s action “improper and arbitrary.” Notably, this builds on prior open letters from hundreds of employees at both firms, pressing their own executives to reject unrestricted AI use and to support Anthropic’s ethical stance. There has also been backlash from employees from top tech companies such as IBM (IBM), Slack, and Salesforce (CRM), who are pushing back against Anthropic’s supply chain risk designation.
The core claim is that the government launched an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” against Anthropic for refusing to let Claude be used for bulk surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons, restrictions the DoW called “ideological controls. The employees warned that the Pentagon action threatens the U.S. AI competitiveness and chills open debate on AI risk.
Claude AI Pentagon Dispute Triggers Dual Lawsuits
Negotiations between Anthropic and the DoW collapsed in late February, after the Pentagon, led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, demanded unrestricted “lawful” use of Claude AI. Anthropic refused, maintaining strict safety limits it considered non-negotiable. Following this, the Pentagon ended the company’s $200 million contract and quickly shifted to a competing deal with OpenAI after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei missed a deadline set by Hegseth.
Anthropic responded by filing two lawsuits. The first was filed in a California federal court, challenging the Pentagon’s designation and alleging retaliation against the firm for maintaining ethical safeguards. A second petition was filed in the Washington, D.C., federal appeals court, challenging the Defense Secretary’s procurement determination. The AI private company is now seeking emergency relief to suspend the designation, with an initial hearing expected as early as March 13 in San Francisco.
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