Techno-Fascism: After Feuding With Anthropic, Pentagon Uses Its AI Model Claude To Strike Targets In Iran That Led To Civilian Deaths
"The military will continue using its technology as it waits for a replacement to be phased in, said two of the people," The WaPo reported.
In the days leading up to the war with Iran, Pentagon and Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly rebuked AI firm Anthropic for not allowing the company to let the DoW have full access to the company’s AI LLM Claude, in order to be used in final attack scenarios and full surveillance.
“Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei [has] until the end of this week to give the military a signed document that would grant full access to its artificial intelligence model” without constraints, CBS reported.
The Associated Press said “Amodei repeatedly has made clear his ethical concerns about unchecked government use of AI, including the dangers of fully autonomous armed drones and of AI-assisted mass surveillance that could track dissent.”
“A powerful AI looking across billions of conversations from millions of people could gauge public sentiment, detect pockets of disloyalty forming, and stamp them out before they grow,” Amodei wrote in an essay last month.
While Amodei eventually did give some concessions, the Trump administration was ultimately not impressed and still wanted more control.
Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson stated on that Friday March 6th deadline: “America’s warfighters … will never be held hostage by unelected tech executives and Silicon Valley ideology. We will decide, we will dominate and we will win.”
In an interview with CBS, Amodei stated his reasons for not wanting to comply with the Pentagon’s demands. He argued that “we,” the company, “are patriotic Americans.” “We believe crossing those red lines is crossing those American values and we wanted to stand-up for American values.”
Appearing to be unintimidated, Anthropic did not comply and the Trump administration blacklisted Anthropic as a “Supply-Chain Risk to National Security” — an unprecedented move as this marks the first American company hit with this designation.
Trump announced that he is giving the government “six months” to phase-out the use of Anthropic’s products.
That same Friday, it was revealed the Pentagon was already working with Sam Altman and OpenAI to work out a deal to do what Anthropic wouldn’t. When the public caught wind of this, many Americans began to immediately uninstall ChatGPT and switch to Claude instead.
Vanessa Wingårdh provides more details in her video report on the subject.
However, after Hegseth made a big stink about Anthropic’s unwillingness to comply with the administration’s demands, it was later revealed that on the same night the Pentagon still used Anthropic’s Claude to launch attacks on Iran the first day the war began.
The Washington Post first reported:
The military’s Maven Smart System, which is built by data mining company Palantir, is generating insights from an astonishing amount of classified data from satellites, surveillance and other intelligence, helping provide real-time targeting and target prioritization to military operations in Iran, according to three people familiar with the system.
Embedded into the system is Anthropic’s AI tool Claude, a technology that was banned by the Pentagon last week after heated negotiations over the terms of its use in war.
Over the last year military planners have seen Claude, paired with Maven, mature into a tool that is in daily use across most parts of the military, according to two of the people.
As planning for a potential strike in Iran was underway, Maven, powered by Claude, suggested hundreds of targets, issued precise location coordinates, and prioritized those targets according to importance, said two of the people. The pairing of Maven and Claude has created a tool that is speeding the pace of the campaign, reducing Iran’s ability to counterstrike and turning weeks-long battle planning into real-time operations, said one of the people. The AI tools also evaluate a strike after it is initiated, the person said.
[…] The military will continue using its technology as it waits for a replacement to be phased in, said two of the people.
Military commanders have become so dependent on the AI system that if Amodei directed the military to cease, the Trump administration would use government powers to retain the technology until it can be replaced, said one of the people.
“Whether his morals are right or wrong or whatever, we’re not going to let [Amodei’s] decision making cost a single American life,” the person said.
Read the rest of the report here.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
I wanted to be sure I did not ignore this story because what the Pentagon did is in fact unprecedented. I am not on either team here, I have no ponies in this race, as I wish none of this AI stuff existed in the first place, and I recommend everyone to greatly limit their exposure to, if not completely avoid these LLMs at every chance possible.
Having said that, the administration has set yet another dangerous precedent: that if you don’t do what they say, bend the knee, kiss Trump’s sweaty ring, and powder Hegseth’s tush and do his makeup for him, then they will blacklist that company and essentially give it the same designation the government gives to foreign companies it deems an adversary and threat to the American economy and society — that is, at least publicly, they will shame you…
The merger of corporate and state power — that, by definition, is fascism as defined by Benito Mussolini. We’ve seen this with Trump and the administration considering/taking stake and percentage shares in different companies such big-tech, AI and chips, defense contractors, pharmaceuticals, real estate and more; or Trump signing executive orders that provide impunity to tech companies to essentially do as they wilt, attempting to override state laws.
The Pentagon’s hypocrisy regarding Claude is not surprising at all; and with the inherent flaws of Claude and these LLMs is another reason why I don’t condone these companies either. But we’ve seen this same thing play out in Israel with their autonomous AI targeting systems that have gone unchecked with next to no oversight. Their AI, built on the same hardware used here in the U.S., has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents in Gaza alone; and lo and behold, unmanned AI is once again deployed, this time for Iran, and it results in the deaths of schoolgirls and other civilians. Kosher.
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Amodei's "ethical concerns about unchecked government use of AI" are akin to tony montana warning about the dangers of cocaine