When U.S. troops asked Claude Anthropic AI to help strike Iran

The United States Army was reported to have sought assistance from Artificial Intelligence (AI) in a joint military operation with Israel to attack Iran. The attack on Iran is said to have been aided by Claude AI from Anthropic. Interestingly, the revelation came after US President Donald Trump formally issued a ban on Anthropic AI. The US Central Command is known to be one of the parties using Anthropic’s services on the ground. The large language model Claude is confirmed not to be used for piloting drones or determining bombing targets autonomously. The AI is instead focused on back-end data analysis work, including parsing intelligence data, instantly translating intercepted enemy communications, and optimising the military logistics supply chain. Claude has proven highly capable of sorting and processing raw data in extremely large volumes. This analytical capability is deemed invaluable for military personnel in the heat of combat. The use of Claude on the battlefield is ironic; not long ago, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth labelled Anthropic a “national security risk.” However, the blocking instruction apparently provides a six-month transition period to gradually decommission the system. The US government’s anger toward Anthropic stems from the stance of its CEO, Dario Amodei, with the company firmly refusing to grant the US government access to Claude if used for autonomous weapons systems and mass surveillance programs. Interestingly, this stance was not followed by Anthropic’s main rival, OpenAI. CEO Sam Altman recently drew heavy criticism after announcing his company’s deal with the US Department of Defense to host the ChatGPT model on a government secret network. The OpenAI-Pentagon deal triggered protests under the banner “Cancel ChatGPT” on social media such as X and Reddit. The public worries that OpenAI technology could become a massive mass-surveillance tool under post-9/11 law. The controversy has, in turn, influenced AI industry trends. Business Insider notes that Anthropic’s principled refusal to bow to military demands has won broad public sympathy. Many users are cancelling their ChatGPT subscriptions en masse and switching to Claude. The exodus has propelled Claude to the No. 1 spot in Apple’s free apps ranking on the App Store over the past weekend.