Federal Judge Blocks Pentagon's Anthropic Blacklist in Landmark Ruling
In what may become a defining moment for the relationship between AI companies and the U.S. government, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin on Thursday indefinitely blocked the Pentagon's designation of Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" — a label typically reserved for foreign adversaries.
"Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government," Judge Lin wrote in a stinging 43-page ruling.
The conflict erupted after Anthropic refused to let the Department of Defense use its Claude AI models for mass surveillance of American citizens or autonomous weapons systems. The Pentagon responded by blacklisting the company — a move that threatened to cut Anthropic off from billions in government contracts.
Anthropic sued the Trump administration on March 9, and the case attracted remarkable industry solidarity: more than 30 employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind, including Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, filed an amicus brief warning that the blacklist threatened the entire American AI industry.
Judge Lin also blocked a presidential order to cut all government contracts with Anthropic, describing it as "classic illegal First Amendment retaliation." The ruling is paused for one week to allow the administration to seek an appeal.
Apple to Open Siri to Rival AI Assistants in iOS 27
Apple is preparing a major strategic shift: opening Siri to competing AI assistants beyond its existing ChatGPT integration, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
Under a new "Extensions" system coming in iOS 27, users will be able to route Siri queries to Google Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, or other AI services installed on their device. The feature will be managed through a dedicated settings panel, with a new App Store section for discovering AI assistants.
The move effectively ends OpenAI's exclusive Siri partnership — an arrangement that was reportedly contentious within Apple from the start, with former AI chief John Giannandrea favoring a Google deal. This is separate from Apple's deeper collaboration with Google to rebuild Siri's underlying technology using Gemini models.
Apple is expected to unveil the new capabilities at WWDC on June 8, with a full rollout alongside iOS 27 later this year. The approach also positions Apple to earn revenue from third-party AI subscriptions through the App Store.
OpenAI Shuts Down Sora, Ends Disney Partnership
OpenAI has officially shut down Sora, its AI video generation platform, in a dramatic cost-cutting move ahead of a potential IPO. The API endpoints have been hard-coded to reject all requests.
The numbers tell the story: Sora was burning an estimated $15 million per day in inference costs — roughly $5.4 billion annually — while generating just $2.1 million in total lifetime in-app purchase revenue. Downloads peaked at 3.3 million in November 2025 but cratered to 1.1 million by February 2026.
The shutdown also killed a $1 billion Disney partnership announced in December 2025, which would have licensed over 200 Disney characters for Sora-generated videos. Disney was reportedly "blindsided" by the decision, learning about it just 30 minutes after a Sora-related meeting.
OpenAI says it will redirect the freed-up compute toward its core language models and autonomous agent systems — a pivot that has already tripled the reasoning speed of its flagship LLMs.
OpenAI's Pentagon Deal Sparks #QuitGPT Movement
Adding to the week's drama, OpenAI's decision to deploy its AI on Pentagon classified networks — reportedly agreeing to the very terms that Anthropic rejected — triggered a massive public backlash. The #QuitGPT movement attracted over 2.5 million supporters, and ChatGPT uninstalls surged 295% overnight.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called OpenAI's approach "safety theater" and described Sam Altman's public statements as "straight up lies." OpenAI robotics leader Caitlin Kalinowski resigned over the deal.
While the two companies traded blows, Google quietly expanded its own Pentagon work, securing a contract to provide AI agents to the DoD's 3-million-person workforce for unclassified work. "OpenAI looked opportunistic. Anthropic got blacklisted. Google gained the most ground and nobody's talking about it," noted analyst Patrick Moorhead.
Despite the controversy, the financial picture remains bullish across the board: OpenAI has surpassed $25 billion in annualized revenue and is eyeing a late-2026 IPO, while Anthropic approaches $19 billion.