Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Monday, March 9th, and I'm your host, Kim Khan. Our top story is so far. Anthropics filed two civil suits against a Department of Defense,

after the Penningon dropped its contract with the

AI startup and labeled it a supply chain risk over ideological differences. Anthropic filed one suit

in the U.S. District Court of Northern District of California and another in the D.C. Circuit

Court of Appeals, accusing the Pentagon of misusing the designation to punish philosophical

disagreement. It's the first time that label has ever been

applied to a U.S. business. This is a necessary step to protect our business, our customers, and our

partners, Anthropic said. We will continue to pursue every path towards resolution, including dialogue

with the government. Anthropic, the developer of the Claude Chatbot, has provided AI systems

for classified Pentagon work since last year,

but the company balked when the DoD sought unrestricted access to its technology for lawful military use ahead of the recent strike in Iran.

Anthropics' limits include banning mass surveillance of Americans and refusing to allow its AI to operate fully autonomous weapons without human oversight.

This could have a ripple impact for Anthropic and Claude on the enterprise front,

analysts at Wedbush Security said.

They note some enterprises may go pencils down on Claude deployments while the legal fight plays out.

Several government agencies, including the Treasury Department,

have already said that will stop using Claude,

and further ripple effects may follow as the lawsuit proceeds.

In today's trading, the action has been pretty wild. Oil surged only $120 a barrel before meeting resistance and has eased back through the day.

That pullback is helping major stock averages almost completely erase sharp overnight losses.

The VIX, Wall Street's

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