Anthropic AI model is known to have been involved in a classified military operation. (Photo: AI-generated)
The United States military used Claude, an artificial intelligence model developed by Anthropic, during its operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in early January, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. This is the first time an Anthropic AI model is known to have been involved in a classified military operation.
What is Claude and Anthropic?
Claude is a large language model created by Anthropic, an AI company that builds systems to understand and generate human-like text. The model can read and summarise documents, answer questions, help with research and analyse data. Anthropic has developed versions of Claude that can be used in government and defence settings.
Anthropic’s usage policies say the tool should not be used to support violence, help design weapons, or conduct surveillance.
How Claude was used in the Venezuela operation
According to the report, the US military accessed Claude through a partnership between Anthropic and Palantir Technologies, a data firm with long-standing defence contracts. Palantir’s platforms are widely used by the US Department of Defense and federal law enforcement, and they enable secure access to AI tools on classified networks.
The specific ways Claude supported the operation have not been made public. It may have been used to process intelligence, analyse communications or help with planning and decision-making, tasks for which large AI models are valued.
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Neither the Pentagon, the White House, Anthropic nor Palantir has publicly confirmed the model’s use in the operation. Reuters said it could not independently verify the Wall Street Journal account.
The US and other militaries increasingly deploy AI as part of their arsenals. Israel’s military has used drones with autonomous capabilities in Gaza and has extensively used AI to fill its targeting bank in Gaza.
The US military has used AI targeting for strikes in Iraq and Syria in recent years.
Critics have warned against the use of AI in weapons technologies and the deployment of autonomous weapons systems, pointing to targeting mistakes created by computers governing who should and should not be killed.
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The reported use of Claude comes at a time when the US military is increasing its investment in artificial intelligence. The Pentagon has worked with several AI firms, including OpenAI, Google and xAI, to enable their models to run on classified systems for defence purposes.
This more cautious stance has apparently rankled the US defence department, with the secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, saying in January that the department wouldn’t “employ AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars”.
The Pentagon announced in January that it would work with xAI, owned by Elon Musk. The defence department also uses a custom version of Google’s Gemini and OpenAI systems to support research.