Trump Set to Dine With Anthropic CEO Days After Pentagon Blacklist Ruling

President Donald Trump was set to have a private White House dinner with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Sunday, CNBC reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. The planned meeting comes two days after a federal appeals court upheld the Pentagon’s blacklist of Anthropic technology. A dinner is not a settlement, but it would bring the two sides together while their dispute remains unresolved.

A dinner after a courtroom loss

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2–1 in favor of the Pentagon’s decision. Anthropic had argued that the Defense Department’s ban on its Claude models was arbitrary, unauthorized and unconstitutional. The panel rejected its challenge.

The case began after the administration ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products and barred defense contractors from doing business with the company. Anthropic challenged the government’s actions in court. The immediate question before the appeals panel was whether the Pentagon had legal authority to treat Anthropic as a supply-chain risk.

The majority treated the possibility that Anthropic could prevent Claude from performing authorized military work as a supply-chain risk. It pointed to restrictions built into the model that had stopped it from carrying out some government requests. The judges said the Pentagon reasonably feared the company might prevent Claude from performing national-security functions it considered necessary under its contract.

The limits at the center of the fight

Anthropic says it would not drop restrictions on using its products for lethal autonomous warfare and mass surveillance of Americans. It alleges the administration retaliated over that refusal. A federal district judge in California agreed that the blacklisting was unlawful under the supply-chain provision before that court, finding that the provision required a risk involving an adversary’s bad motive.

The D.C. Circuit reviewed the Pentagon’s designation under a different law. Its majority said that law’s broader definition of supply-chain risk did not require Anthropic to have malicious intent. The rulings therefore reached different outcomes under different legal provisions; Friday’s decision did not erase the California judge’s finding.

The dissenting appeals judge disputed that broader reading. In her view, the law addressed interference with technology already in the federal supply chain, not a contractor openly enforcing restrictions the government disliked. That disagreement goes to the heart of the case: when does a supplier’s control over its product become a risk the government can blacklist?

What the meeting cannot settle on its own

Anthropic could seek review by the full appeals court or petition the Supreme Court, according to Ars Technica. The planned dinner creates an opportunity for a conversation outside the courtroom, but its reported scheduling says nothing about what Trump and Amodei intend to discuss or whether either side will change position.