The Wall Street Journal reported that US Central Command relies on Anthropic’s Claude for intelligence analysis and target simulations.
The Trump administration ordered agencies to stop working with Anthropic and asked the Pentagon to treat it as a supply chain risk.
OpenAI later secured a Pentagon agreement to deploy AI systems in classified military networks.
The US military reportedly deployed AI software developed by Anthropic during a massive air operation against Iran, even after President Donald Trump had redirected federal agencies to discontinue the usage of the company’s tool. This comes after The Wall Street Journal mentioned about the usage of Anthropic in planning the attacks on Iran with Israel.
SurveyAccording to the report citing sources familiar with the matter confirmed that the military commands worldwide, including the US Central Command, rely on Anthropic’s Claude model for intelligence reviews, target identification and battlefield simulations. The report also added that the command has refused to discuss the specif technologies used in the ongoing operations.
Coming back, the reported deployment came despite an order from the administration telling agencies to stop collaboration with the company and urging the Pentagon to classify it as a potential risk to the defense supply chain. This dispute follows months of negotiations over contract terms, particularly around the scope of permissible military use.
According to the report, Anthropic resisted granting blanket authorisation for all lawful applications that the Defence Department might pursue. This standoff caused defence officials to consider alternatives, resulting in agreements with the developers of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and xAI models for classified environments.
Tensions rose after Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth set a deadline for the unrestricted use of AI tools for any lawful military objective. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei publicly rejected the request, citing certain applications as ethical boundaries that the company would not cross, even if it meant losing federal contracts.
After that Sam Altman’s OpenAI has partnered with the Pentagon to deploy artificial intelligence to the classified networks. “Yesterday we reached an agreement with the Pentagon for deploying advanced AI systems in classified environments, which we requested they also make available to all AI companies,” the company stated on its blog post.
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Ashish Singh
Ashish Singh is the Chief Copy Editor at Digit. He's been wrangling tech jargon since 2020 (Times Internet, Jagran English '22). When not policing commas, he's likely fueling his gadget habit with coffee, strategising his next virtual race, or plotting a road trip to test the latest in-car tech. He speaks fluent Geek. View Full Profile
