Why are you absolutely convinced the government requesting a contractor (Palantir) no longer use a technology they've determined to be unsuitable for their needs would be "extremely illegal", yet demanding every single company engaged in government contracts can no longer use Anthropic for any use whatsoever is totally fine?

I cannot follow the logic there at all. It's like being concerned that asking your neighbor to move their car would be too rude so your solution is to bulldoze their entire driveway. A federal judge evidently disagrees with your legal theory here so perhaps you're off the mark (in fact they specifically call out that the DoD failed to attempt less drastic remedies in violation of the law behind the designation):

  Defendants’ designation of Anthropic as a “supply chain risk” is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious. The Department of War provides no legitimate basis to infer from Anthropic’s forthright insistence on usage restrictions that it might become a saboteur.

  There are other serious procedural problems with the government’s actions.    Anthropic had no notice or opportunity to respond, which likely violated its due process rights. And the Department of War flouted procedural safeguards required by Congress before entering the supply chain risk designation, including that it consider less intrusive measures.

I don't understand how to square your story about what motivated the government against what actually happened. This is the statement that the President of the United States made when announcing that Anthropic would be cut off:

> THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military. The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.

> Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels. Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.

> WE will decide the fate of our Country — NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Perhaps you've not seen this statement before; there are a number of people who find it inconvenient that US policy is driven by insane social media rants, and prefer to make up more sensible rationales for the same policies. But there's no part of the actual published announcement that discusses the relationship between Palantir and Anthropic.

They can say "sorry Palantir, we will only sign a contract with you if you commit not to use Claude to provide services" and then Palantir is free to decide if they want to accept the terms of the contract or not. This is how business works.

Why are they entitled to have a mechanism to force a private company to deal in weapons and surveillance?

I think the whole entire point of this is they shouldn't be excluding Anthropic as an entity, they should be excluding all suppliers on equal terms on the basis of whether they satisfy requirements or not. If it is a requirement that they be able to conduct mass domestic surveillance then they should put that into their contract with Palantir, not "You can't use Anthropic".

So I agree with you, it ought to be illegal for them to tell a supplier what other suppliers to use. But that is exactly the larger point here in the first place that they should not be doing that at all.

> DoD would like to use Palantir. DoD also believes Anthropic is pursuing posttraining in future models that will limit the effectiveness of Palantir tooling, if used by Palantir, for the purposes of DoDs mission.

> What other legal mechanism do they have to prevent Palantir from specifically not subcontracting out to Anthropic, other than a supply chain risk designation?

Even assuming the stated concern was justifiable, and even assuming that there was no alternative mechanism, that does not:

(1) Justify them failing to what is explicit required for the supply chain risk designation,

(2) Create an exception to the 5th Amendment Due Process Clause, which (for reasons stated in the ruling) merely meeting the facial standards in the statute for the supply chain risk designation does not do when the supplier is (contrary to the motivating justification for the statutory provision) a domestic supplier where the government has no special evidence that it can demonstrate for exigency,

(3) Justify the other challenged actions covered by the injunction (like the Hegseth Directive ordering a much broader ban than is imposed by the supply chain risk designation, or the earlier Presidential Directive ordering an even broader ban than the Hegseth Directive.)

(4) Really, do anything at all legally, because it is not a principal of US law that the government, if it has a good motive, is free to act outside of the law merely because there is no provision inside the law which meets its desires.