Pentagon uses AI to target Iran strikes as most Americans remain unaware
Mother Jones reports the U.S. military deploys AI systems including Grok and Claude to select and justify bombing targets in the Iran war.
Part of a larger narrative
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What to know
- The Pentagon uses xAI's Grok and Anthropic's Claude to select bombing targets and automatically draft legal justifications for strikes in the Iran war.
- The Department of Defense disclosed in June that AI systems deployed over 2,000 munitions against 2,000 targets in 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury.
- A new poll shows only 8 percent of Americans have heard extensively about military AI use in Iran; 40 percent have heard nothing, despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's public messaging about an "AI-first Department of War."
“The US-Israel war on Iran is not only the least popular war the United States has ever waged, but also represents an unprecedented application of AI in warfare.”
Mother Jones, Publication · Mother Jones ↗
Cameron Stanley Chief Digital and AI Officer, Department of Defense
Pete Hegseth Secretary of DefenseJonathan Guyer Survey co-author, Institute for Global AffairsSophie Hurwitz Journalist, Mother Jones
How it unfolded 3 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlespostscomments
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Mother Jones contextualizes AI warmaking absent from "AI safety" discourse
Sophie Hurwitz's article frames the use of AI systems in Iran strikes as evidence that AI safety debates overlook weaponized AI and its actual human casualties, linking the public fear of AI existential risk to the unreported reality of AI-assisted military operations.
“enabled U.S. forces to deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury…”
— Cameron Stanley, Chief Digital and AI Officer, Department of Defense · source -
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The US-Israel war on Iran represents an unprecedented application of AI in warfare. The Pentagon’s Maven Smart System uses Anthropic’s Claude AI to “semi-autonomously rank targets by strategic importance, drafting automated legal justifications for each strike along the way."
2 more of the top 3 · 8 posts in this stretch
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Hey, so about that # AI going to kill us all thing...while # agentic AI is mob of authorized crackers and should be stopped...it's what the war machines are doing with it that is the real concern. Have you seen # Palestine ? That's what AI targeting looks like in the field. Nothing left standing. In January of this year, Pete Hegseth released a…
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“People would be pretty shocked that what they’re using for their homework or to summarize emails is also being used by intelligence officers.”
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Poll shows 92 percent of Americans largely unaware of military AI use in Iran war
A Politico survey and Institute for Global Affairs/YouGov data released Wednesday show only 8 percent of Americans have heard "a lot" about the military's use of AI in the war with Iran; nearly two-thirds have heard only a little, and 40 percent have heard nothing at all. The same week, over 60 percent of Americans told Politico they believe AI might kill us all.
“We wanted to get a gut check on, do Americans know this is happening?”
— Jonathan Guyer -
Yemen’s Houthi Militants Are Learning to Arm Themselves https://www. nytimes.com/2026/09/15/world/m iddleeast/yemen-houthis-weapons.html?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub Posted into Mideast Conflict @ mideast-conflict-thenewsdesk
2 more of the top 3 · 6 posts in this stretch
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For what its worth, they absolutely were not hypersonic missiles. A hypersonic missile isn't one that can move hypersonicly, 1950s tech could do that. It is one that can maneuver at those speeds. China has them. Russia has a missile only they consider hypersonic. No one else. Iran and Houthis definitely don't.
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Trump and Hegseth fundamentally do not understand the purpose of military force. And in Hegseth's case the fact that unrivaled logistics is what made the US military the best in the world. The man comes off as the sort of macho tribal chieftain the Romans would have paved over in a day. All tip, no shaft.
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- 4 days quiet
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Mother Jones reports Pentagon uses Claude AI to rank targets and draft bombing justifications
Mother Jones reports the Pentagon's Maven Smart System, built by Palantir, uses Anthropic's Claude AI to "semi-autonomously rank targets by strategic importance, drafting automated legal justifications for each strike along the way." The article notes the same Claude system that assists with military targeting is used by civilians for AI boyfriends and drafting texts.
“semi-autonomously rank targets by strategic importance, drafting automated legal justifications for each strike along the way…”
— Katie Livingstone, Military Times -
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Oopsie daisies- 'its military and allied Houthis are eager to use American-built # AI technology to: target the US Navy and develop weapons…and develop surveillance, domestic tracking tools, and propaganda to use in Iran. In addition to building targeting recommendations against American naval forces as well as speeding up the development of…
2 more of the top 3 · 10 posts in this stretch
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If you know anything about how widely AI is used every day, it's actually pretty hard to discover and stop all cases of abuse (eg, distillation attacks, eliciting bio or cyber harms, unauthorized military planning and targeting) without blocking legitimate users, because attackers have come up with some really clever tricks for things like…
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rogue states and non-state actors turning to ai for weapons development. anthropic discloses it caught some… but not all… of these efforts. implications of no governance getting clearer by the day
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background
Pentagon's Cameron Stanley discloses Grok deployment in Iran operations — Cameron Stanley, the chief digital and artificial intelligence officer for the Department of Defense, wrote in June that xAI's Grok "enabled U.S. forces to deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury."
Also covered reported alongside — the timeline has no entry for these yet
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first by The Australian, 12d ago · also WSJ, Tom's Hardware
2 more headlines
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first by Mastodon, 6d ago · also Ars Technica
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2 outlets The era of AI warfare has arrived
first by ft.com, 6d ago · also FT
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first by NYT, 8d ago · also NYT Middle East
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first by Quartz, 12d ago · also Stars & Stripes
1 more headline
- Iran-linked actor used AI to build targeting guides on US Navy Stars & Stripes · 12d ago
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first by The Times of India, 12d ago · also The Hindu
1 more headline
- Anthropic says Yemen fighters used AI to seek guided weapons The Hindu · 12d ago
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first by The Indian Express, 11d ago · also Indian Express
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2 outlets Adversaries Using Claude AI To Target Americans And Develop Missiles Is A Sign Of What’s To Come
first by The War Zone, 12d ago · also TWZ
and 9 smaller pieces
What people are saying 11 voices from 3 sites · best of 24 · verbatim
- Sep 17
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NATO-backed startup adapts AI for autonomous drone recon and attack missions - Ars Technica https:// arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/nat o-backed-startup-adapts-ai-for-autonomous-drone-recon-and-attack-missions/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
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On the victims of AI-assisted American warmaking and their absence from the “AI safety” discourse.
- Sep 16
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But AGI has been achieved right? The models just decided to ignore the guardrails, total not anthropics fault not they can do about it
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Im surprised they’re not trying to take credit for intentionally giving bad advice to waste resources and cause confusion
- Sep 12
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Ahmad Shah Massoud, the minister of defense for Afghanistan, aka the Lion of Panjshir, warned us about an upcoming attack, 9/11. He was killed by a suicide bomber posing as a camera man for a news crew on 9/9/2001. The man was an icon and his picture was plastered all over Afghanistan when I was there. His son led the last of the forces against…
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What? This is a threat report, they successfully detected and stopped the bad use. This is like saying Microsoft Word execs need to be thrown in prison because their word processor has made it so much easier for Al Quada to communicate or that McDonald's execs need to be mailed because some terrorists overheard police talking in one and then met…
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Working in kitchens you meet a lot of different Hispanic people, one time I was hanging out, off the clock and absentmindedly made a joke about the contras. Immediately remembered the dude making pizzas, “Carlos”, was from Nicaragua. I immediately started apologizing, and I think he knew I knew I fucked up.
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Anthropic tech is responsible for more murder/death in the world Got it zero regulation zero accountability
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Guys, read the actual report by Anthropic's Threat Intelligence team Unreliable narrator
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So the new advertising plan is, "not only is it dangerous, but we sold it to our enemies!" Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines should get in on this hype and tell everyone they've been selling yellow cake to Iran.
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That's a weird way to announce you have no fucking idea what you're talking about... ...but carry on.