United States’ success in its precision during the strikes that took some Iranian leaders has been tied, majorly, on artificial intelligence (AI). The reported success by the US on Gulf country is pointed at, especially Anthropic’s AI model, Claude. Artificial intelligence can be exploited for vast amounts of data analysis and precision on direct targets, rank threats and suggest priorities.
Israel is believed to have explored AI systems to flag potential targets and help prioritise operations in its military campaign in Gaza. The US military reportedly used Anthropic’s Claude during its operation leading to the arrest of former Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro. Reports have it that despite disagreement with the Department of Defence over how AI should be used in war, Anthropic still saw its Claude used by the US military in strikes on Iran, alongside suicide drones and B-2 bombers. Experts are of the view that the “missiles flying over Tehran today are being targeted by systems powered by AI.”
A senior lecturer in Political Geography at the Newcastle University, Craig Jones, said “AI is changing the nature of modern warfare in the 21st century. It is difficult to overstate the impact that it has and will have. It is a potentially terrifying scenario.” Butressing the importance the US military places on AI in its operatuons, the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth in a memo sent to all senior military leaders early this year, insisted on America maintaining Dominance in AI exploration in warfare.
“I direct the Department of War to accelerate America’s Military AI Dominance by becoming an ‘AI-first’ warfighting force across all components, from front to back,” Mr Hegseth wrote. Yet the scenario in question is not the one that might first spring to mind. Undeestanding AI systems capacity in pulling together satellite imagery, intercept communications, logistics data and social media streams – thousands, even hundreds of thousands of inputs – and surface patterns far faster than any human team, America uses such tools to cut through the fog of war, allowing commanders to focus resources where they matter most while potentially being more accurate than tired, overwhelmed, stressed human soldiers, say analysts, with Dr Jones acknowledging that they are not just a tool, but a new way of making decisions.
“AI, as we see in our own lives, is more like an infrastructure. It’s built into the system. “We have this ability to collect that surveillance that we’ve been doing for some years. “But now AI gives a stability to act on that and to kill the leader of Iran and to take out serious adversaries and serious enemies and find them in improbable ways in which they may have not been found before,” he said.
Prof. David Leslie from AI Ethics at the Alan Turing Institute at Harvard also agrees that the new systems are extremely capable from a military perspective. “The race for speed is what’s driving this uptake. Making decision-making cycles faster is what brings military advantage of lethality,” he said. CBS News reported that two sources familiar with the US military’s AI use, confirmed that America used Anthropic’s Claude AI model two weekends ago for the attack on Iran “and is still using it.”
While the Pentagon is yet to disclose exactly how the AI tool is being deployed, sources said it was being used despite a government-wide ban on the technology announced 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 use of the AI model in the Iran war was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, but it’s not yet clear if the Israeli army is also using Claude during this conflict. An IDF spokesperson did not respond to The IDF does use AI in conducting warfare and has its own ‘Lavender’ targeting system, which it used in the Gaza war.
