The Trump-Xi summit did not mark a US-China rapprochement, but it demonstrates that sustained diplomacy and strategic guardrails are essential to prevent intensifying competition from becoming direct conflict. The recent summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Washington has demonstrated a significant paradox in contemporary international politics: the two superpowers […]
One of my fundamental beliefs about the world is that Ramez Naam ought to blog more. Ramez is one of the world’s greatest futurists — he predicted the solar and battery revolutions long before these were widely understood. If you were reading Ramez in 2011, you were able to understand the future of both energy technology and climate change, […]
After struggling for hours with an electronic check-in at an Arizona motel, Guy de la Bédoyère is convinced that if any evil genius thinks he can take over the world with computers he is going to be bitterly disappointed.
When Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Washington on September 24, AI and Taiwan shared the agenda. Xi said AI should remain “under human control” and called for continued US-China dialogue on its risks and benefits. On Taiwan, he urged Washington to “oppose Taiwan independence” and handle the issue “with caution.” Trump, for his […]
Beijing has agreed to work with Washington to improve governance of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and to enhance cooperation as Chinese President Xi Jinping and United States President Donald Trump met face-to-face at the White House on Thursday. Xi made the pledge in his speech at a morning welcoming ceremony, before the two leaders held […]
King Charles III on Thursday urged several senior tech leaders to make sure that artificial intelligence remains under control and in the service of people and the planet.
King Charles III on Thursday urged several senior tech leaders to make sure that artificial intelligence remains under control and in the service of people and the planet.
OpenAI said on Wednesday it saw six reports of unexpected, concerning or unauthorized AI model behavior, and it would begin regularly publishing reports of these incidents.
OpenAI said on Wednesday it saw six reports of unexpected, concerning or unauthorized AI model behavior, and it would begin regularly publishing reports of these incidents.
The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen (pictured), says AI has the “potential to benefit humanity”.
Her comments came on Wednesday in her landmark “state of the union” address to MEPs.
A speech touched on numerous areas and they included AI which has rocketed up the political agenda in recent times.
In her address to Euro members at their monthly plenary in Strasbourg, she referred to AI as a “tipping point of our times.”
The commission president declared, “AI is fast becoming a foundational layer for our economy and security. Europe's stance is clear. We want to make the most of AI to improve our society, our quality of life and our productivity.
“I am an optimist that AI has the potential to benefit humanity – if we get it right. But, as with any powerful new technology, AI comes with a balance of possibilities and risks. Without addressing these risks, we will never be able to unlock AI's possibilities.”
The former German defence minister noted, “As the frontier models become more capable, these risks have come more sharply into focus.
“Models being developed will allow hacking on a level we never thought possible. And they will soon be in the hands of adversaries who see the world very differently from us.”
She told deputies, “At the same time, the dangers of self-improving models are becoming ever more apparent.
“Incidents of AI agents escaping their environment or inserting malicious code are a mere glimpse. After the HuggingFace incident, developers are ringing the alarm. And CEOs of the most advanced companies tell us that it is time to slow down on the self-recursive models. To pace the frontier.”
Von der Leyen added, “If the people developing the technology are clear, then we should be too. The AI Act is of course a crucial piece to putting guardrails in place.
"And it puts Europe in the position to shape global efforts on how to tackle this.”
In her comments on AI she said, “So, we will step up together with our like-minded partners like Canada, the United Kingdom and others. We want to team up on model evaluation, verification, early warning, AI security and much more.
“And I will invite the main frontier labs for a discussion on how we can support ongoing industry efforts to pace the frontier,” she said.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen used her State of the Union address on Wednesday (16 September) to make the case for a more independent Europe, confronting war, economic competition, AI disruption and climate change — while proposing Canada become the EU’s first associate member.
Opening her #SOTEU speech with Charles Dickens’ “best of times, worst of times”, von der Leyen described a Union stronger but also more exposed to external threats.
“The state of our Union is the strongest it has ever been,” she said, while acknowledging it could feel “as precarious as it has ever been”. “Europe has chosen to forge its own path. And a stronger, independent Europe is now emerging.”
Competitiveness and energy
Von der Leyen called kickstarting Europe’s economy her “number one priority”, promising faster permitting, less red tape and further integration of the Single Market.
The Commission will propose a new Banking Package and create a European Corporation on Critical Raw Materials to secure supplies needed for chips, batteries, clean technology and defence.
With high energy costs weighing on European industry, von der Leyen called for faster electrification and investment in grids, renewables and nuclear power to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels.
Climate after a 'summer of truth'
After a summer of fires, drought and extreme heat, von der Leyen promised a climate resilience framework focused on 100 of Europe’s most vulnerable territories, alongside a Climate Insurance Alliance, European Heatwave Plan and Water Initiative.
She also floated a future European Firefighting Fleet, declaring that Europe “can, must and will stay the course” on its climate targets.
AI: Opportunity and threat
AI was presented as both an economic opportunity and an emerging security threat. Von der Leyen warned that advanced models could enable hacking “on a level we never thought possible” and pledged closer cooperation with Canada, the UK and others on AI security.
At the same time, Europe will expand computing capacity and push AI into health, transport, agriculture, manufacturing, defence and space. “Above all, we want AI with human agency,” she said.
Jobs, housing and social rights
The Commission plans a Quality Jobs Act before the end of the year and a European Care Deal, alongside measures tackling housing pressures.
Von der Leyen said technological change must benefit workers, while strongly defending women’s rights and Europe’s social model.
One of the biggest surprises came with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the chamber.
Von der Leyen proposed an “Alliance for the Future” spanning technology, defence, energy, critical minerals, AI and the Arctic — before going further.
“I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU,” she told Carney. “We share one ocean, one set of values, one way of seeing the world.”
Security, defence and Ukraine
With drone incursions, cyberattacks and sabotage raising security concerns inside the EU, von der Leyen proposed a new European security strategy and an Emergency Security Protocol for incidents falling below the threshold of armed aggression.
She also wants to establish a European Security Council and strengthen joint European defence capabilities.
Ukraine faces what von der Leyen called the “toughest winter of the war”. She promised humanitarian and energy support, stronger air defences and deeper defence-industrial cooperation with Kyiv.
Borders, democracy and children online
The Commission will propose an Emergency Response Framework for exceptional migration crises and strengthen Frontex, while launching a Mediterranean Youth Skills and Jobs initiative.
Von der Leyen also announced an EU KIDS ACT, including no social media for under-13s and restrictions for children under 15, followed by a broader Digital Fairness Act.
Political groups draw battle lines
EPP leader Manfred Weber backed the focus on AI, defence and competitiveness but pushed against restrictive climate policies. “Climate change is a reality,” he said, arguing Europe needed “innovation and not bans.”
S&D leader Iratxe García Pérez demanded that von der Leyen turn “words into action”, backing climate investment, housing and worker protections while warning that simplification must not become deregulation.
Renew Europe leader Valérie Hayer made a pointed appeal for the Parliament’s pro-European majority, as the EPP has increasingly worked with parties further to the right on some legislation. “There’s only one possible majority. It’s our pro-European majority,” she said. “We need to do more. We need more Europe, and we need it more quickly.”
Greens/EFA co-chair Terry Reintke accused EU leaders of failing to respond urgently enough to extreme heat and wildfires. “We are in the middle of a climate emergency,” she said, demanding stronger Green Deal implementation while insisting: “We are not powerless. Europe is strong, and Europe can be even stronger.”
ECR co-chair Patryk Jaki struck a sharply different note, attacking the Commission over bureaucracy, energy costs and industrial competitiveness. Europe, he argued, was “as weak as it’s ever been.”
Von der Leyen closed on the central theme running through the speech: European sovereignty in an increasingly hostile world.
“The fate of Europe,” she said, “must remain in the hands of Europeans.”
Ursula von der Leyen is expected to make the case for a more independent and resilient Europe in her State of the European Union address on Wednesday (16 September). But analysts and political groups in the European Parliament are demanding something more concrete: evidence that the Commission can turn its expanding ambitions into results Europeans can see.
The State of the European Union address, commonly known in Brussels as the “SOTEU”, is the Commission president’s annual speech to Parliament setting out priorities for the year ahead. Modeled in part on the US president’s State of the Union address to Congress, the EU version began in 2010 under then Commission president José Manuel Barroso. Von der Leyen will deliver this year’s address at 9:00 tomorrow morning (16 September).
The speech comes as Europe is confronted with an ongoing war in Ukraine, a fragmenting global trading system and the challenge of strengthening defence while reviving competitiveness and financing the green transition. At home, von der Leyen must reconcile political groups that broadly agree on the need for a stronger Europe but differ over what that means.
For Manfred Weber, chairman of von der Leyen’s centre-right European People’s Party group, the focus should be on voters’ economic and security concerns.
“Europe’s priorities must reflect people’s concerns: jobs, the cost of living and economic security,” Weber said. He called for a stronger economy and well-paid jobs, tighter control of Europe’s borders, leadership on AI, continued support for Ukraine and “a strong European defence pillar”.
On the centre-left, Iratxe García Pérez, president of the Socialists and Democrats group, argues that the Commission has relied too heavily on deregulation.
“Europe needs more than announcements,” García Pérez said. “It needs concrete policies backed by the necessary resources.” The S&D wants greater emphasis on affordable food, housing and energy, quality jobs and climate action, alongside European sovereignty in defence and digital technologies.
Renew Europe is also making delivery the benchmark, calling on von der Leyen to present “a credible plan turning European ambition into visible results” and framing the choice as one between united European action and fragmentation.
Analysts at the European Policy Centre see the same challenge extending to Europe’s position in the world.
“Von der Leyen will tell us that the EU is forging new partnerships around the globe,” said Almut Möller, the EPC’s director for European and Global Affairs. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s attendance will reinforce the geopolitical dimension of the speech.
But strategic autonomy goes beyond defence and trade. Georg Riekeles, the EPC’s head of political economy, identifies financial dependence as an overlooked vulnerability. With the international financial system becoming less stable, Europe cannot assume Washington and the US Federal Reserve will play the stabilising role they did in previous crises. Von der Leyen “must therefore address financial sovereignty as a core element of European security”, he argues.
Technology poses another test. Elizabeth Kuiper, the EPC’s head of health and societal resilience, says von der Leyen should “reject the trade-off between competitiveness, technological progress, and the EU’s social model”, particularly as AI affects employment, income security and social cohesion.
Climate policy presents a similar collision between ambition and resources. Stefan Šipka, the EPC’s head of sustainable prosperity, argues that Europe needs “a robust delivery mindset, no more strategies” as it tries to combine defence, decarbonisation and economic security.
The common thread is delivery. Von der Leyen has no shortage of strategic objectives. The harder task on Wednesday will be explaining how they fit together, how Europe will finance them and what takes priority when they conflict.
For EPC policy analyst Eric Maurice, von der Leyen “must provide strategic focus and political clarity”.
“As the midterm in her second term approaches,” Maurice said, “it is time for von der Leyen to present a vision and deliver.”
Britain's King Charles will host the leaders of major artificial intelligence companies this week to discuss whether a shared set of principles is needed.
Britain's King Charles will host the leaders of major artificial intelligence companies this week to discuss whether a shared set of principles is needed.
Concerns about the water and energy demands of data centers have become prolific in recent weeks. But debates about their impact often overlook the rapid advances in cooling technology and cleaner energy that are already having an impact.
However, data centers’ resource consumption should be front and center of the AI conversion, as it is set to grow rapidly. By 2030, data centers’ water and energy consumption will double as AI demand leads to rapid construction of the infrastructure.
But data centers will not cause the world to run out of water or energy. Water- and energy-saving technologies already in use are reducing their impact, while Shanghai’s groundbreaking underwater data center demonstrates how innovative design can limit water, energy and land use.
Data centers have underpinned the internet since its founding. Apps, email, file storage and cloud services all run through them.
Modern AI workloads, however, have transformed their power demands beyond recognition. Today a single AI data center can match the electricity consumption of 100,000 homes, making them a significant drain on local energy grids, especially if a region is susceptible to shortages.
Data centers’ energy consumption is only rising as more are built across the world. In the US, data centers could increase from 4.4% to 12% of national electricity usage by 2028 — that is equivalent to adding eight New York Cities to the American grid.
Data centers also consume large amounts of water in two main ways. Water is used directly to cool servers and storage systems, which generate considerable heat, and indirectly to produce electricity at fossil fuel power plants where it is heated into steam to drive turbines.
In the UK, data centers have been estimated to use up to eight times as much water as average on hot summer days, underlining how their impact can rise when local resources are already under strain.
As the effects of climate change intensify, the location of data centers, and methods to reduce their water and energy consumption, are becoming ever more important.
Fortunately, resource-saving measures are already being implemented. Data centers on land use closed-loop cooling systems that recycle water rather than continually evaporating it. This can reduce freshwater use by up to 70% compared to traditional open evaporative methods.
China has also pioneered a revolutionary new type of data center in Shanghai: wind-powered, and underwater. The facility, which began full commercial operations in May 2026, uses seawater as a coolant instead of using refrigerated fresh water as land-based data centers do, reducing the electricity required to cool the computers.
It uses at least 30% less electricity than traditional data centers, and offshore wind turbines reduce reliance on fossil fuels and cut the data center’s carbon emissions. Innovative solutions such as these will go a long way to reducing data centers’ resource consumption.
AI is also part of the solution to data centers’ draw on resources. AI can optimise electricity grids and shift computing workloads towards periods when cleaner energy is more efficient, making energy use more effective overall. AI can also anticipate fluctuations in demand and adjust energy consumption accordingly, reducing waste.
It might sound obvious, but some areas are just better equipped to accommodate a data center than others. For example, facilities in hot or water-stressed regions will impose a heavier burden on resources than those supplied by cleaner energy with plentiful water and located in cooler climates.
AI’s growing demand for data centers will increase electricity and water consumption, that is true. But it does not mean the technology will exhaust regional or global supplies of either resource.
The AI boom and the infrastructure buildout accompanying it are well underway. To manage its impact, the industry needs to plan ahead. Cleaner energy, efficient cooling, and sites that have significant water and energy supplies will all limit the infrastructure’s drain on resources.
Earlier this year, an Iran-linked actor used Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence model to scrape and analyze data with the aim of helping target U.S. naval forces in the Middle East. A group in Yemen – very likely Iranian-backed Houthi militants – also used Claude to assist with work on guidance systems for ballistic and hypersonic missiles.
These are just some of the revelations about how adversaries and other malign actors have been using one of the premier pieces of AI software being developed in the United States that were contained in a new report Anthropic released late yesterday. The 154-page document also details instances where Claude was used directly and indirectly to support intelligence gathering and surveillance, cyberattacks, influence operations, and even worrisome biological research over the past eight months. In addition to Iran and Yemen, the human actors behind these activities were based in Russia, China, and a host of other countries.
Anthropic has shared details about what it calls the “misuse” of its models in the past, but describes the new report as its “most detailed” to date. The company has clearly been cataloging these case studies, and has assigned each one a control number. Though the entire contents of the report are cause for concern, the explicit attempt to use Claude to target American forces, as well as to develop new higher-end missiles and other military technology, are particular standouts and signs of what’s to come, as we will highlight below.
GTG-30005: Military reconnaissance
GTG-30005 is the case study dealing with the targeting of U.S. naval forces, and the summary is as follows:
“In another investigation, we identified and disrupted an Iran-nexus threat actor that used Claude to collect and analyze publicly accessible data to develop targeting recommendations against US naval forces in the region. The threat actor used Claude to compile targeting handbooks, through a Python pipeline the threat actor built with Claude’s assistance, to identify and track naval positions based on open-source information. The compiled material included a roster of US personnel scraped from captions on public military photographs; publicly accessible ship and aircraft transponder identifiers; commercial satellite-imagery query scripts; and an inventory of public websites that exposed US naval movements. The threat actor also directed Claude to compile vulnerability research on shipboard systems, cataloging known CVEs in maritime VSAT terminals, Cisco communications equipment, and industrial control products.”
“We banned the actor’s account, developed detections to reduce the risk of future misuse, and shared threat intelligence with government authorities to disrupt the threat.”
The Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush and several other US Navy warships sail together in the Arabian Sea in June 2026. CENTCOM
How exactly Anthropic defines the term “nexus” here is not immediately clear, and other entries in its new report also use “state-nexus” in addition to country-based variations. However, in this specific case, an addendum is added to the entry that explicitly says that the same account was separately tied to “domestic mass surveillance” software development work “for Iranian state systems,” clearly pointing to an actor directly linked to the regime in Tehran.
The use of AI technology by nation-state armed forces to develop target sets and engage them is already known to be growing globally. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been a pioneer in this regard, but the U.S. military, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and others are also known to be developing and fielding these capabilities.
GTG-87001: Disrupting a Yemen-based guided weapons engineering cell using Claude to develop guidance software
Anthropic’s new report details an instance where an individual in Yemen used Claude as part of missile guidance work, which is given the control number GTG-87001.
“We identified a cell of threat actors based in northern Yemen running three weapons development programs: a guided rocket that used a commodity phone-class flight computer with final-phase homing guidance; a multi-stage ballistic missile with a stated range goal above 2,000 km; and a multi-variant missile (referred to as the “R2000” set) that included a hypersonic glide vehicle variant.”
“The actors used Claude Code in place of human software engineers to develop the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) software that steers and stabilizes a flying vehicle. For example, they used Claude to integrate an open-source autopilot onto a phone-class flight computer, writing the control and position estimation software, tuning the control settings, running a firmware build pipeline, and performing a flight simulation. The actors managed several Claude instances at once, assigning each one a role, much as a lead would delegate work on a small engineering team: the actors tasked one instance with writing the code, another with research, and a third with reviewing the code the first instance produced.”
A graphic included in Anthropic’s new report summarizing the ways in which Claude was used by the actors in Yemen to support missile guidance system development. Anthropic
“Our safeguards blocked many of their requests, but not all of them. The actors used a variety of tactics to evade our safeguards, including hiding their goals and the products the software was meant for, and they split their work across multiple sessions so no single session revealed their full intent.”
“These actors carried out a sustained effort to develop guided weapons, including using Claude to design guidance software. We do not have evidence the actors succeeded in fielding an operational device; but they did test-fire a guided rocket. This field test appears to have failed: within hours, the actors returned to Claude to work out why it failed.”
“We identified this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development. We banned accounts associated with the actors and shared threat information with public- and private-sector partners to mitigate risks posed by the actors. Nevertheless, we have evidence that the actors had already built an offline simulation toolkit that does not rely on Claude or other engineering computing environments such as MATLAB.”
As mentioned earlier, the report does not name the Houthis, but that group has historically been based primarily in the northern end of Yemen. It is also the only entity in the country known to have active missile development programs, which are conducted with critical support from Iran.
Whether this particular work directly resulted in any new capabilities is unknown. Anthropic notes that there looked to be at least one failed test launch before the accounts were banned, which would have occurred sometime after the beginning of this year, based on the stated cutoff dates for the report. By the end of 2025, the Houthis had already amassed a wide array of very real ballistic missiles, including types with at least claimed ranges of 2,000 kilometers (approximately 1,242 miles). The group also has a variety of cruise missiles and one-way attack drones that it has employed operationally.
An example of just one of the many types of ballistic missiles in the Houthis’ arsenal. Houthi-controlled media
Still, being able to leverage Claude could only have helped any domestic missile development efforts in Yemen, which might help reduce dependency on Iran, at least to a degree. Furthermore, developing functional hypersonic glide vehicles capable of prolonged stable flight has historically been notoriously difficult, even for entities with extensive relevant knowledge bases on an organizational level.
GTG-17001: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to draft a fire control specification and acquisition documents for undersea warfare
Use of Claude in foreign military endeavours goes beyond the Middle East, as evidenced by case study GTG-17001. This involved a Chinese actor conducting work related to a naval counter-torpedo defense system.
“We identified a China-based threat actor who used Claude to advance three parallel tracks of work on an anti-torpedo weapons system:”
“First, the actor used Claude to draft a Chinese-language specification for an anti-torpedo fire control system (the core logic that aims and times an anti-torpedo weapon’s response). The document was written to win approval from a Chinese defense manufacturer, which would move the work on to technical certification and operational testing.”
“Second, the actor used Claude to produce a Chinese-language technical proposal of more than 200 pages, accompanied by an executive briefing deck.”
“Third, the actor used Claude to benchmark their own system against specific US anti-torpedo and anti-submarine programs based on publicly accessible information. They then generated a Chinese-language briefing on US Navy systems derived from open-source reporting.”
“The actor presented themselves as an original equipment manufacturer in the US defense sector. We assess the actor was associated with a Chinese defense industry manufacturer aiming to produce a weapons specification and acquisition proposal for the People’s Liberation Army Navy.”
This picture shows a test of an anti-torpedo system fitted experimentally to a Nimitz class aircraft carrier in the 2010s. USN
“The actor used Claude to write the acquisition proposal, refining it over many drafts. After each draft, the actor instructed Claude to role-play a hostile expert reviewer to critique the proposal, then used that feedback to sharpen the next version. In parallel, the actor used Claude to build pieces of the anti-torpedo weapons system’s fire control software and a test matrix to validate them.”
“The operational lift the actor achieved was a function of using Claude to automate complex technical outputs. The actor leveraged the model to compress the development timelines for the certification registry, compliance documentation, and automated fire control logic. The actor also accelerated the traditional human review cycle by having Claude critique the acquisition proposal across multiple rounds of review while role-playing a persona.”
“We uncovered this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development. We cannot attribute the activity to a specific entity or actor. But we have banned the account for violating our Supported Regions Policy and our Usage Policy, which prohibits weapons design and development, and incorporated our investigative findings into our safeguards to mitigate the risk of future misuse.”
Anthropic’s report does not name the U.S. programs leveraged here, but does note the information in question was publicly available. Anti-torpedo systems for surface warships and submarines have been an area of significant interest for the U.S. Navy for years now. Those developments have also produced compact torpedo designs for use in other applications.
A Very Lightweight Torpedo (VLT), a compact torpedo design developed by Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman
The PLAN’s interest in these same kinds of capabilities is not at all surprising. Underwater threats and countermeasures to them, broadly speaking, would play a central and vital role in any future conflict between the United States and China across the broad expanses of the Pacific.
GTG-27005: Disrupting a Russia-based operation using Claude to engineer an autonomous military drone swarm
Another case study, GTG-27005, details the use of Claude by Russian actors working on drone swarming technology.
“We identified likely freelance Russia-based threat actors who set out to build a full-stack autonomous first-person-view (FPV) kamikaze drone swarm. The actors used Claude Code to write and test the code and save it directly into the actors’ own project files. In addition to Claude Code, the actors used a software-in-the-loop simulation stack and a rented graphics processing host for model training. They called the operation ‘DronDoc’ or ‘Serafim.'”
“The actors used Claude to build the core software system, including the drones’ shared swarm memory and fault-tolerant coordination logic (FTCL); an onboard small language model to govern attack, observe, and return-to-base behaviors; a terminal guidance software system to steer drones to their target (using the onboard camera) and issue the call to detonate; a control-link geolocation module to find opposing drone operators; a passive acoustic detection layer; and low-level logic for the drones’ programmable chips. The actors designed the platform for autonomous lethal engagement; the onboard model could select targets (including a ‘person’ target class) and issue detonation commands without a human in the loop. The actors’ activity—including flashing the low-level firmware to live development boards, provisioning single-board computers, and wiring up a simulation environment over a mesh network—confirmed that they were using real hardware-in-loop testing within their sessions.”
Many were surprised yesterday by the news that a Russian fiber-optic FPV drone flew into Kramatorsk and attacked a car.
But there is nothing surprising here. The war of 2025 is already very different from the war of 2024. From LBZ to Kram — 20 kilometers. Enemy FPVs can fly even… pic.twitter.com/hTfhJFPcxZ
“The actors trained a computer vision classifier on scraped Ukrainian combat footage, splitting the target classes into “enemy” and “friendly,” and allow-listing Russian systems. They also repeatedly used a fixed coordinate in Donetsk Oblast as the demonstration strike point, with front-line cities and corridors in Ukraine as the mission geography.”
“The actors created their accounts between late 2025 and early 2026 and started the operation in mid-May 2026. The actors circumvented our geographic access controls by routing traffic through commercial virtual private servers.”
“We assess the actors were a small, specialized freelance team doing a mix of civilian and military work, not a Russian state entity. We identified nine accounts associated with this group; eight were used only for ordinary freelance work, not weapons-related software development. Based on our investigation, we assess the actors had ties to a regional university with a federal research center associated with the Russian Academy of Sciences. The actors claimed to have received funding from Russia’s Advanced Research Foundation, National Technology Initiative, and Ministry of Defence, though we cannot verify those claims. We identified this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development, we banned accounts associated with the actors, and have incorporated our investigative findings into safeguards to reduce the risk of future misuse.”
Anthropic’s report included a table, reproduced below, detailing different types of drones and other capabilities that were fed into the model as part of this work.
GTG-17002: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to build targeting software for electronic warfare and air defense suppression
The last case study in the Conventional Weapons section of Anthropic’s new report, GTG-17002, covers electronic warfare-related work by a Chinese actor, with a particular focus on potential air defense targets in Taiwan.
“We identified a China-based actor who used Claude’s chat, coding, and agentic work tools to design, build, and iterate on a Chinese-language suite of about 16 modules for electronic warfare, using the electromagnetic spectrum to detect, jam, or deceive an opponent’s radar and communications, and for suppressing an opponent’s air defenses.”
“The actor used Claude to build the software system, from the underlying logic to the user interface, and iterated through 12 versions. This included implementing and optimizing the system’s radar detection and jamming physics, generating a vulnerability analysis module, and drafting Chinese-language targeting instructions. The software suite the actor built analyzed an opponent’s radars, surface-to-air missile sites, command posts, and communications nodes, then computed their detection coverage, assessed the effectiveness of jamming, ranked targets by value and vulnerability, including which to suppress first, and determined how best to assign jammer sorties to targets across multi-day campaigns. The suite also ranked which of an opponent’s assets to suppress first, and modeled specific engagement envelopes, including those of Patriot and THAAD-class [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] systems.”
“Mid-project, we observed the actor change the simulation’s default scenario to 12 targets in Taiwan. The targets included a command bunker in Taiwan, an early warning radar site, Patriot and Tien Kung [surface-to-air missile] batteries, major air bases, and a regional combatant command headquarters.”
“The actor also ran a self-hosted model on an internal network alongside Claude and connected the software suite to this model through a tool-use integration.”
“Based on our investigation, we assess the actor is a China-based defense and military-industrial researcher. Account-level metadata and content flagged by our safeguards indicated the actor was linked to PRC research institutions, including the PLA Academy of Military Sciences. We detected this activity as part of our internal investigations into suspected weapons development, we banned accounts linked to the actor, and have incorporated our investigative findings into our safeguards to reduce the risk of future misuse.”
An accompanying table, seen below, mentions several specific types of U.S.-made air defense radars, as well as the Link-16 datalink network, as having come up in the course of this work. Electronic warfare variants of the Chinese Y-8 and Y-9 aircraft, as well as the J-16D electronic warfare jet, and what appears to be a reference to the Golden Eagle drone helicopter, are also mentioned.
A Chinese Y-8GX-11, one of several electronic warfare variants of the Y-8/Y-9 design. Chinese internet via X
The suppression of enemy air defenses is an essential part of any modern air campaign, whether conducted independently or as a part of a larger operation. This would be no less critical in any military intervention against Taiwan from the mainland, or any other larger-scale conflict the PLA might find itself in.
Guardrails and ethics
Beyond the details in any of the specific case studies, Anthropic’s new report underscores growing broader concerns about guardrails for the use of AI and general ethics surrounding the technology. As noted in the instances above, Anthropic has also implemented various safeguards to try to block access to Claude from certain regions and/or to prevent the model from conducting certain types of work. At the same time, what the company has now shared makes clear that those protections can still be circumvented to a significant degree, at least for now.
TWZ has noted in the past that America’s adversaries are likely to be less worried about ethics, in general, when it comes to AI. Anthropic’s new report also shows there are few bounds to what state-aligned or even non-state actors might seek to use this technology for, including the development of potential weapons of mass destruction.
At the same time, AI models like Claude are not going away, and developments continue to advance at an ever-quickening pace, opening the door to further proliferation. Developments are rapidly intermingling globally, with companies in China notably leveraging models created in the U.S. to further their own work, which is then released publicly. The technology will increasingly become more integrated and critical to most aspects of military operations and weapons development, alongside its commercial and civilian applications. It is just as much a superweapon as anything else, and the country with the more capable models, and the willingness to deploy them, will have a major edge in future conflicts.
With all this in mind, it seems very plausible, if not probable, that the case studies described in Anthropic’s new report are just the tip of an approaching iceberg that will need a concerted effort to tackle.
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