The Pentagon Blacklisted Anthropic. A Judge Struck It Down. Now the Commerce Secretary Says the Administration Trusts Them Again.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says the Trump administration now trusts Anthropic, which is "back on the right side" after months of conflict.

The dispute went further than most corporate-government friction. The Pentagon blacklisted Anthropic as a supply chain risk — the first time an American company received that designation. A federal judge struck the designation down in August, ruling that it violated Anthropic's constitutional rights.

Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown is credited with repairing the relationship. This week he stood beside Lutnick at the G20.

The sequence is unusual in its speed. A supply-chain-risk label is normally applied to foreign suppliers and is normally difficult to reverse; here it was applied to a domestic company, overturned in court within months, and followed by a public rehabilitation. Whether the ruling or the diplomacy did the work is not clear from what has been said.

Sources: Venture Capital channel, 3 September 2026.

> Editorial note: the blacklisting, the August ruling and Lutnick's remarks are as summarised by the source channel. Each should be confirmed against court filings and Commerce Department statements before republication.