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.