Two sources familiar with the U.S. military's use of artificial intelligence confirm that the U.S. used Anthropic's Claude AI model over weekend for the attack on Iran — and is still using it.
The Pentagon has not said exactly how the AI tool is being deployed, but it's being used despite a government-wide ban on the technology after a dispute last week with the Pentagon. The conflict centered around Anthropic's push for guardrails that would explicitly prevent the military from using Claude to conduct mass surveillance on Americans or to power fully autonomous weapons.
The Pentagon demanded the ability to use Claude for "all lawful purposes" and contended that Anthropic's usage concerns were not material because it's already illegal for the Pentagon to conduct mass surveillance of Americans, and internal policies restrict the military from using fully autonomous weapons.
And beyond those laws, "At some level, you have to trust your military to do the right thing," the Pentagon's chief technology officer, Emil Michael, said in an interview with CBS News Friday.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CBS News that Anthropic had sought to draw "red lines" in the government's use of its technology because "we believe that crossing those lines is contrary to American values, and we wanted to stand up for American values."
"Disagreeing with the government is the most American thing in the world," Amodei said. "And we are patriots. In everything we have done here, we have stood up for the values of this country."
President Trump announced Friday that he's ordering federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's technology, allowing them six months to phase it out, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has declared the company a supply chain risk.
National security news site Defense One, citing multiple sources familiar with the DoD's spat with Anthropic, reported it could take three months or longer for the Pentagon to replace Claude's capabilities with another AI platform.
Pentagon chief technology officer Michael told CBS News the Defense Department uses Claude for synthesizing documents and making logistics and supply chains more efficient, among other tasks.
Jennifer Jacobs and Jo Ling Kent contributed to this report.
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