A federal court in San Francisco has issued a preliminary injunction barring the Trump administration from designating the tech giant Anthropic as a “supply chain risk.” Judge Rita F. Lin, a Biden appointee to the Northern District of California court that covers Silicon Valley, issued the order in a 43-page ruling on Thursday.

I’ve outlined the dispute between Anthropic, whose AI system is known as “Claude,” a few times (including this piece in the last issue of NR Magazine). The Defense Department (referred to by the administration’s preferred monicker, the “Department of War” in the litigation) has incorporated Claude into its classified systems, as have U.S. spy agencies. According to subject-matter analysts, Anthropic’s product is better than other AI for the purposes involved, so the collaboration has been a boon for national security. Consequently, notwithstanding the standoff between the company and the government, the Defense Department continues to use Claude in its warfighting operations against Iran.

Nevertheless, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump chafed at two restrictions the company contractually imposed on its AI. First, because the technology is advancing at a more rapid pace that even its expert producer’s capability to confidently control it, Anthropic prohibits the use of Claude to operate fully autonomous AI control of weapons systems — i.e., there must be human operators in the loop. Second, because of AI’s unprecedented capacity to process........

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