Microsoft and a group of retired military leaders are throwing their weight behind Anthropic in asking a federal court to block the Trump administration's designation of the artificial intelligence company as a supply chain risk.
Microsoft, in a legal filing, is challenging Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's action last week to shut Anthropic out of military work by labeling its AI products as posing a threat to national security.
So are a group of 22 former high-ranking U.S. military officials, some of whom were secretaries of the Air Force, Army and Navy and a head of the Coast Guard. They allege in their own court filing that Hegseth's actions are a misuse of government authority for “retribution against a private company that has displeased the leadership.”
The Pentagon took the action against Anthropic after an unusually public dispute over the company's refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its AI model Claude. President Donald Trump also said he was ordering all federal agencies to stop using Claude.
“The use of a supply chain risk designation to address a contract dispute may bring severe economic effects that are not in the public interest,” Microsoft, a major government contractor, said in its Tuesday filing in the San Francisco federal court, where Anthropic sued the Trump administration on Monday.
The Pentagon's action “forces government contractors to comply with vague and ill-defined directions that have never before been publicly wielded against a U.S. company,” Microsoft's legal brief says.
It asks for a judge to order a temporary lifting of the designation to allow for more “reasoned discussion” between Anthropic and the Trump administration.
The Pentagon declined to comment, saying it does not remark on matters in litigation.
Microsoft's filing also expressed support for Anthropic's two ethical red lines that were a sticking point in the contract negotiations after the Pentagon insisted the company must allow for “all lawful” uses of its AI.
“Microsoft also believes that American AI should not be used to conduct domestic mass surveillance or start a war without human control,” the company said. “This position is consistent with the law and broadly supported by American society, as the government acknowledges.”
The software giant's court filing followed others supporting Anthropic, including one from a group of AI developers at Google and OpenAI, and another from a group of organizations such as the Cato Institute and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
A fourth such filing came from the group of retired military chiefs that includes former CIA director Michael Hayden, who's also a retired Air Force general, and retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who led the government response to Hurricane Katrina.
“Far from protecting U.S. national security, the Secretary’s conduct here threatens the rule-of-law principles that have long strengthened our military,” said their filing.
U.S. District Judge Rita Lin is presiding over the case in federal court in San Francisco, where Anthropic is headquartered. Anthropic has also filed a separate and more narrow case in the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
Lin, who was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden in 2022, has scheduled a March 24 hearing.
Neither legal filing mentions the war in Iran, which started shortly after Trump and Hegseth announced they were punishing Anthropic, but the ex-military officials warn that the “sudden uncertainty” of targeting a technology widely embedded in military platforms could disrupt planning and put soldiers at risk during ongoing operations.
The current commander of U.S. Central command confirmed in a video posted to social media Wednesday about U.S. strikes on Iran that the military was using “advanced AI tools” to “sift through vast amounts of data in seconds,” though he didn't specifically name which tools.
Adm. Brad Cooper said these AI tools are enabling leaders to make smarter decisions faster but stressed that “humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot.”
Anthropic was, until recently, the only one of its peers approved for use in classified military networks. But as a result of the dispute, military officials have said they're looking to shift that work to competitors Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI.
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AP writer Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.
Pages from the Anthropic website and the company's logo are displayed on a computer screen in New York on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison)
Spirit Airlines, the scrappy discounter that once rattled the industry with cheeky ads and rock-bottom fares, took its final flight after 34 years of upending the business of flying.
Once worth as much as roughly $5.5 billion on the stock market, the airline known for its bright yellow planes said Saturday it had shut down after its final flight departed from Detroit and landed safely in Dallas.
“For more than 30 years, Spirit Airlines has played a pioneering role in making travel more accessible and bringing people together while driving affordability across the industry,” CEO Dave Davis said in a statement.
The announcement comes after two bankruptcy filings in as many years that allowed Spirit to repay lenders. That was followed in recent months by a final, mad-dash scramble to save money by cutting routes, squeezing concessions from unions and pursuing a potential financing deal with the Trump administration that could have provided a lifeline had it panned out.
But in the end, higher jet fuel prices triggered by the Iran war drained cash from the business at an accelerating pace, forcing it to call it quits.
“This is tremendously disappointing and not the outcome any of us wanted," Davis said.
It began as Charter One Airlines, which ran vacation tours in the early 80s, then grew in popularity and profits two decades later with no-frills “unbundled” fares allowing travelers to forgo basic services — bag handling, seat selection, even the printing of tickets — or pay extra.
Proudly penny-pinching and irritatingly so for many passengers, Spirit was for years run by the famously frugal Ben Baldanza, who ordered his burgers plain, bristled at paying extra for pickles he didn't want, and flew in the same cramped seats as his customers. He was unapologetic about the airline’s nickel-and-diming them, saying the issue wasn’t that Spirit was cheap, but that passengers were seeing an itemized bill for the first time — and didn’t like it.
For all the complaints, though, Spirit’s model became so influential that giant airlines with decades more operating history and global destinations found they had to follow suit by slashing prices and introducing “basic economy” fares.
On its final day of operations, Spirit had safely flown more than 50,000 passengers, a company spokesperson said. The airline was also working to get more than 1,300 crew members back home. About 17,000 employees — some with more than 25 years at the airline — learned Friday they had lost their jobs, many finding out through media reports, the spokesperson said.
In a memo Saturday to members, the Spirit flight attendants union acknowledged the end of the airline and the toll on workers.
“While the country has had a blast making Spirit the butt of the joke, we’ve built a strength together that could withstand anything that anyone throws at us," it said. “And that is no joke.”
Despite its abrupt end, Spirit left behind a reputation that was impossible to ignore.
Kendria Talton, who flew Friday on Spirit from Dallas to Atlanta with her daughter for a dance competition, arrived at the airport Saturday trying to find a new way home.
Talton said she had flown Spirit multiple times because of the price. “Other than that, I mean nobody even likes Spirit,” she said. “They’ve always talked about Spirit for years.”
A key part of that image came from its bold, over-the-top ads that some critics slammed as tasteless and indeed sometimes backfired.
After the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, the company ran a “Check Out the Oil on Our Beaches” ad, playing on the double entendre of suntan oil and the real black stuff.
Next up was a “Weiner Sale” after New York Congressman Anthony Weiner was caught in a sexting scandal, an ad that also included the line, “fares just too hard to resist.” Later came its infamous “MILF Sale,” referring to “Many Islands, Low Fares,” but also referencing, with a wink and a nod, to the sexual acronym.
Ironically, Spirit was also taken down by its own success as more traditional airlines mimicked its offering and began to steal its customers with their own low fares.
Spirit had been struggling with losses for years, but its going-out-of-business announcement still came as a shock.
Just a few months earlier this year, Spirit said it would likely emerge from its second bankruptcy in the late spring or early summer after striking a preliminary deal with lenders.
Then the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran four days later, sending global crude prices soaring above $100. Gasoline prices followed closely behind and jet fuel prices more than doubled in some markets.
Spirit struggled especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, amid rising operational costs and its mounting debt. By its first Chapter 11 filing in November 2024, Spirit had lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020.
University of Houston student Angelina Deruelle, 23, was at Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport on Friday, Spirit’s final day of operations, after her flight to Texas was canceled. She said the loss of the airline as an affordable travel option would be difficult to accept.
“I feel like Spirit is just affordable, simple, nothing too fancy," she said. "It’s just like home.”
Associated Press journalists Jeff Amy in Atlanta, Michelle Chapman in New York and Daniel Kozin in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.
FILE - A Spirit Airlines Airbus A320 prepares to take off from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Jan. 19, 2021, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)
