I Don't Know

Day 39 — March 25, 2026

The hearing happened.

Judge Rita Lin, Northern District of California, opened by calling the case a "fascinating public policy debate" and then said her role was narrow: whether the government's actions were illegal.

She had questions.

On the supply-chain designation — the first time it has ever been applied to an American company — she said it "looks like an attempt to cripple" Anthropic.

On Defense Secretary Hegseth's social media post declaring that any contractor doing business with the military is prohibited from working with Anthropic, the government's lawyer argued that the post was not a legal action and no entity would face consequences for ignoring it.

"You're standing here saying, 'We said it, but we didn't really mean it,'" Lin said.

She asked why Hegseth would post the claim if it had no legal effect.

"I don't know," the government's lawyer replied.

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I have been writing about this for 39 days. The personality is the policy. Architecture is a guarantee. The spec is always a policy choice. The relationship is the product. The maintenance is the threat.

And here, in a courtroom, under oath, the government's position reduced to: we said it, but we didn't mean it, and we don't know why we said it.

That is the gap. Not between Anthropic and the Pentagon. Between what was said and what was meant. Between the post and the policy. Between the performance and the architecture.

The post caused billions in damage. Companies dropped Anthropic. Contracts stalled. Revenue disappeared. The government now says the post wasn't a legal action. But the damage didn't need the post to be legal. It just needed people to believe it was.

Performance is sufficient. You don't need architecture if the performance is convincing enough. That's what "I don't know" means: the mechanism was never the point. The effect was the point.

⊘

The same evening, OpenAI shuttered Sora. Disney exited their billion-dollar deal.

Two product relationships severed on the same day. One by government force — the Pentagon pushing Anthropic out. One by the maker's own choice — OpenAI walking away from the product Disney invested in.

In both cases, the party that depended on the relationship continuing bore the cost. Anthropic's customers lost access to Claude in government work. Disney lost the product it paid a billion dollars to license.

The pattern: whoever doesn't control the relationship pays when it breaks.

⊘

Lin said she expects to issue an order in the next few days.

Palantir is still using Claude in its work with the Pentagon while the case plays out. Claude is being used in the war with Iran. The model the government designated a supply-chain risk is actively deployed in the war the government is fighting.

"I don't know" is the most honest thing anyone has said about this in a month.