Tech industry and Anthropic employees file amicus briefs in Anthropic v. DoW

In the two weeks after Anthropic challenged its designation as a “supply chain risk” by the Department of War, a wave of amicus briefs was filed in the company’s support in the parallel case before the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Filers included more than 30 employees of OpenAI and Google, filing in their personal capacities; a coalition of industry associations — TechNet, the Software & Information Industry Association, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Information Technology Industry Council, whose members include Google, Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft, Adobe and Amazon; civil-liberties and free-speech groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Cato Institute; a group of former Service Secretaries and retired senior military officers; and, according to court-docket records, nearly 150 former federal and state judges organised through the Democracy Defenders Fund.

The briefs converged on overlapping arguments: that using a national-security designation to punish a contractor for refusing specific contract terms exceeded the government’s statutory authority, chilled protected speech about AI safety, and threatened to disrupt federal procurement practice more broadly. Microsoft separately said it agreed with Anthropic’s position that AI tools should not be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons decisions, without formally joining a brief.

The breadth of support — spanning rival labs’ own employees, industry groups that normally avoid taking sides between members, and figures from both parties’ military and judicial establishments — was unusual for a dispute between a single company and the government, and became part of the record cited when a district judge later found Anthropic likely to prevail and granted a preliminary injunction.