Artificial-intelligence titan Anthropic rejected the U.S. military’s terms for use of its Claude platform on Thursday, warning that “in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”
The firm’s CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement that he has refused to allow Claude to be used for mass surveillance of U.S. citizens or to guide fully autonomous weapons, rejecting Pentagon requests to make unfettered use of the model.
Claude is one of just two large generative-AI models that the Pentagon has made available on classified networks, and it is the only one that belongs to a cutting-edge group of frontier models, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports. The military isn’t saying just how it uses such models. But Emil Michael, former Uber exec and current defense undersecretary for research and engineering, has suggested that their uses include intelligence and planning.
Earlier Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell gave Anthropic an ultimatum, declaring on Twitter that the company has “until 5:01 PM ET on Friday” to comply with the Defense Department’s unrestricted terms for use or the Pentagon “will terminate our partnership with Anthropic and deem them a supply chain risk.” He also threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act to use the company’s product without the company’s permission.
In his statement, Amodei called our DOD’s “contradictory” threats. He notes that the spokesman “threatened to designate us a ‘supply chain risk’—a label reserved for U.S. adversaries, never before applied to an American company—and to invoke the Defense Production Act to force the safeguards’ removal. These latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security.”
Emil Michael responded angrily on Twitter, accusing Amodei of being “a liar” and having “a God-complex. He wants nothing more than to try to personally control the US Military and is ok putting our nation’s safety at risk,” Michael alleged. He also claimed Anthropic has no corporate values, but rather “their own plan to impose on Americans their corporate laws,” and called it “your worst nightmare.” He later repeated his allegation that Anthropic is “lying,” and said the Pentagon wants “warfighters to use AI without having to call @DarioAmodei for permission to shoot down an enemy drone swarms that would kill Americans.”
But dropping Claude from Defense Department networks is easier said than done, Tucker reports. Operators would have to reconfigure data inputs that they are feeding into models, re-examine how to share data in real-time with the intelligence community which also uses Claude widely, and re-validate that replacement models were functioning as the military expected it to, sources said.
Why is Claude the only known AI platform deployed on classified networks? According to a defense official: Anthropic’s tools were the easiest to deploy on cloud networks powered by AWS, which contributes the largest chunk of the Pentagon’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability. The two companies are especially close: AWS is the leading cloud-service provider to Anthropic, which trains its models using Amazon’s proprietary Trainium chips.
Notable: It could take a year or longer to replace the capability lost by Claude’s departure, Tucker reports. However, a defense official said that he expected additional frontier-AI models to be widely available on the Pentagon’s GenAi.mil interface before summer. Continue reading, here.
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Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2019, a Pakistani air force pilot shot down Indian MiG-21 pilot Abhinandan Varthaman during a dogfight amid renewed tensions in Kashmir.
Around the Defense Department
The U.S. military shot down a DHS drone over Texas, lawmakers say. On Thursday, an unidentified military service used a laser weapon to down a “seemingly threatening” drone in far western Texas. The FAA consequently closed airspace around Fort Hancock, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of El Paso. But the drone turned out to be owned by Customs and Border Patrol, Democratic lawmakers said hours later. More from the Associated Press, here.
The Army is tweaking a battlefield dashboard, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports off a brief on how the 25th Infantry Division is helping to improve the Next Generation Command and Control system.
Cost estimate for new Sentinel ICBM plan won’t arrive until year’s end. Two years ago, the Pentagon informed Congress that Sentinel’s estimated cost had ballooned 81 percent, largely because the Air Force had discovered that it would not be able to reuse the missile silos used by today’s Minuteman ICBMs. By the end of 2026, officials say, the program will return to the engineering-development phase with new funding, construction, and schedule plans. Defense One’s Thomas Novelly has more, here.
Senators grill ASD nom over election security. “I’m just asking, do you think it would be appropriate to station troops next to polling stations? Simple yes or no,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, asked Mark Ditlevson, the administration’s nominee to be assistant defense secretary for homeland defense and Americas security affairs. Ditlevson called the question “speculative,” declining to discuss “what threat levels may exist during an election cycle.” Warren retorted: “I have to say, if you’re not willing, just to say, ‘No, it is not appropriate,’ then I have real concerns about you in this job.” Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports, here.
The questions reflected concerns about White House interference: “Ahead of the midterm elections, an emboldened President Trump has shown an increased eagerness to leverage the full investigative, prosecutorial and legislative powers of the federal government to bend election mechanics to his will,” the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
“Emergency” order floated: “Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting,” the Washington Post reported on Thursday.
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Af-Pak tensions
Pakistan and Afghanistan are at “open war” with each other, Islamabad’s defense minister announced Thursday evening following a series of crossborder attacks and airstrikes this week inside key Afghan cities including Kabul and Kandahar. Afghanistan’s Paktia province was also hit in overnight airstrikes from Pakistani forces, Reuters reports.
The alleged death toll in the recent attacks is remarkable, with 274 Taliban killed according to Pakistan. The Taliban sharply disputed that and said only 13 militants had been killed in addition to 55 Pakistani soldiers and 19 border posts seized by the Taliban, according to the group’s spokesman. Neither side’s claims could be verified.
Point of friction: Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of supporting the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, and Baloch separatist groups. It’s a common allegation, as AP reports “Pakistan has also frequently accused neighboring India of backing the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army and the Pakistani Taliban, allegations New Delhi denies.” Afghanistan and Pakistan also fought briefly in October before mediators from Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia stepped in to resolve tensions.
Turkish, Qatari and Saudi officials have rejoined mediation talks again after the recent clashes, AP reports. Iran’s top diplomat also encouraged calm on both sides; but Tehran is looking to avoid another conflict with the U.S. amid their next planned talks, slated for next week in Vienna.
Russia’s war on Ukraine
Ukraine says Russia used a long-range, nuclear-capable cruise missile at least four times this month. It’s Moscow’s SSC-8/9M729 cruise missile, which Reuters reports “prompted Trump to quit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, then a cornerstone of nuclear arms control, in 2019” because it can “far beyond the permitted limit of 500 km (310 miles).”
“Russia had fired the 9M729 at Ukraine twice in 2022 and 23 times between August and October last year, the first known combat uses of the missile anywhere,” Reuters adds, noting that its use in Ukraine is “a striking example of how the nuclear arms control edifice emerging from the Cold War has crumbled in recent years.”
Russia launched more than three dozen missiles and over 400 drones at Ukraine overnight Wednesday, ahead of U.S.-Ukraine talks in Geneva, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote in their Thursday assessment. Ukrainian air defenses and malfunctions stopped all but five missiles and 46 drones, which struck 32 locations across the country in that attack. Targets included “gas infrastructure in Poltava Oblast, electrical substations in Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts,” with related outages stretching across five regions, ISW reports.
Tactical note: “Russia has launched strike packages with 25 or more missiles five additional times in February,” according to ISW. This is notable because “Russian forces often launch no or few missiles for multiple days in a row before launching strike packages with a significantly higher quantity of missiles, likely stockpiling missiles between strike series to maximize damage by launching several missiles alongside a large quantity of drones to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses.” Read more, here.
Developing: Ukraine aims to cover 4,000 km of roads with anti-drone nets by the end of the year, Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on Wednesday. They’re already helping, he said: “In just one month, we increased the speed from 5 km per day in January to 12 km in February. This significantly improved the safety of military movements and ensured stable functioning of frontline communities,” Fedorov said on the Telegram app. Reuters has more, here.
Iran buildup
Trump was briefed on his Iran-war options Thursday by CENTCOM’s top commander, ABC News reported after the meeting. Axios had similar reporting, but it’s unclear what information was exchanged during Adm. Brad Cooper’s briefing.
Some Iran hawks close to Trump have begun encouraging Israel to take the lead in the next attacks inside Iran, at least partly in the hopes that would help “muster support from American voters for a U.S. strike,” Politico reported Wednesday.
New: Just 27% of Americans said they have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” trust in Trump’s judgement on the use of military force, according to a new survey of voters published Thursday by AP.
And the White House has latched onto “a series of false or unproven claims” in its “arguments this week for another military campaign against Iran,” the New York Times reported Thursday. Those include allegations “that Iran has restarted its nuclear program, has enough available nuclear material to build a bomb within days, and is developing long-range missiles that will soon be capable of hitting the United States.” The Wall Street Journal offered a similar angle Friday, writing in its headline, “Iran Is Far From Building ICBMs, Experts Say, Despite Trump Warning.”
But U.S. officials have told non-essential personnel to leave the embassy in Jerusalem, the State Department announced Thursday citing unspecified “safety risks.” A similar order was issued earlier this week in Lebanon.
The Pentagon also sent F-22s to Israel this week, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday after videos of their arrival in southern Israel appeared on social media.
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Trump 2.0
Trump’s foreign policy is “a resurrection of the mission of empire—acquiring the territories and resources of sovereign peoples—that animated European and other well-armed powers up to the 20th century,” veteran foreign affairs reporter Edward Wong wrote Friday for the New York Times. “He has seized the leader of Venezuela while claiming the country’s oil and attacking nearby civilian boats. He has pushed Cuba into a humanitarian crisis through a blockade, and asserted a right to control Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. And he has amassed the largest U.S. military force in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, threatening a new war against Iran after attacks last June,” Wong reminds readers.
Why it matters: “extremist forces will exploit this development to attract new recruits,” one expert warned. And “Russia and China could benefit, after decades of trying to rally other countries to their side by criticizing what they have called American imperialism,” Wong writes. Read more (gift link) here.
ICE has reportedly recruited so many new hires that it’s having trouble vetting them all, Reuters reported Thursday, citing an internal email from the agency. For a force of around 10,000 officers, ICE data suggests it added another 6,000 or so through January. The email referenced a “high volume of new hires” and reportedly “said stalled background checks could create uncertainty for field offices when allegations arise related to actions before joining ICE.” A DHS spokesperson denied a struggle in processing. Read more, here.
When it comes to immigration, the White House is escalating its drive to welcome white South Africans. “The U.S. aims to process 4,500 refugee applications from white South Africans per month, far above President Donald Trump’s stated refugee program cap,” Reuters reported Thursday.
Background: “Trump ordered a halt to refugee admissions into the U.S. after taking office in 2025 as part of his crackdown on legal and illegal immigration. But weeks later, he launched an effort to bring in white South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity as refugees, saying they had been violently persecuted in the majority-Black country. South Africa’s government has rejected that claim, while some refugee advocates have criticized the Trump policy.”
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