Olson: Claude AI helped bomb Iran. But how exactly?

"U.S. Central Command used Anthropic's Claude AI for intelligence assessments, target identification and simulating battle scenarios during the strikes on the country, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Hours earlier, President Donald Trump had ordered federal agencies to stop using Claude after a dispute with its maker, but the tool was so deeply baked into the Pentagon's systems that it would take months to untangle in favor of a more compliant rival."

"But what does intelligence assessments and target identification mean in practice? Was Claude flagging locations to strike or making casualty estimates? Nobody has made that disclosure and, alarmingly, no one has an obligation to."

"Last November, Anthropic partnered with Palantir Technologies Inc., a data-analytics company that does a lot of work for the Pentagon, turning its large language model Claude into the reasoning engine inside a decision-support system for the military. Then, in January, Anthropic submitted a $100 million proposal to the Pentagon to develop voice-controlled autonomous drone swarming technology."

Anthropic's Claude AI model, commonly used for civilian tasks like drafting emails and recipes, has been utilized by U.S. Central Command for military intelligence assessments, target identification, and battle scenario simulations during strikes on Iran and operations in Venezuela. Despite President Trump ordering federal agencies to cease using Claude, the tool was so integrated into Pentagon systems that replacement would require months. The specific functions Claude performed—whether flagging strike locations or estimating casualties—remain undisclosed with no mandatory transparency requirements. Anthropic partnered with Palantir Technologies to embed Claude into military decision-support systems and proposed a $100 million Pentagon contract for voice-controlled autonomous drone swarming technology, demonstrating expanding military applications of large language models beyond traditional AI warfare uses.

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