02/03/2026
US Military Used Claude AI in Iran Strikes Despite Trump’s Ban — What’s Going On?
The latest news from several sources has brought to light a very surprising new use-case for advanced artificial intelligence within the realm of modern warfare: The U.S. military has been using the Anthropic AI model (Claude) during airstrike operations against Iran, within hours after President Trump ordered all federal agencies to cease using Anthropic’s technology.
According to various media outlets, Claude - a machine learning model created by Anthropic - has been assisting military personnel with tasks including intelligence analysis (determining the location of targets), planning air strikes, and simulating various scenarios for ground operations. According to the Wall Street Journal, even though President Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology, U.S. Central Command used Claude as part of their planning for attacks against Iran.
This incongruence demonstrates the depth of ingraining advanced artificial intelligence tools into military operational processes. Experts estimate that once artificial intelligence is integrated into military operations it takes an extended period of time to then remove those tools from the military operational planning process after they have been integrated.
The tensions between government policy and practical use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evident in this incident, where Trump’s ban on AI was framed against national-security grounds with Anthropic being labelled as a "supply chain risk". However, this creates significant barriers in obtaining the assets that Decision Makers (DM) require to conduct their normal course of business while executing an operation, as prompt decisions must be made in real time.
While this matter was in public debate, the AI industry continued to function on the basis of monitoring what direction the AI industry was going, and more importantly, what Open AI’s movement would result in for it, as Open AI has, prior to the public announcement, partnered with the DOD in supporting their own AI capabilities classified under DOD’s classification system.
This situation raises some key questions regarding how AI is used in national security, how policy shapes the way in which it is used, and what serve as ethical lines relative to how AI technology is used as it continues to grow and play a role in the outcome of high stakes decisions.