The writer is a professor and director of Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania and a former deputy assistant secretary at the US Department of Defense
Last Friday, the Pentagon announced that it was classifying AI lab Anthropic as a supply chain risk after contract negotiations broke down. The label meant that not only would Anthropic lose its government contracts but that it was now grouped with Chinese companies like Huawei as a threat to US national security.
Less than 24 hours later, however, Anthropic’s technology was reported to have been used in Operation Epic Fury against Iran. The dissonance of the tech company being labelled a supply chain risk even as it aided the US military was the latest chapter of an unnecessary, yet arguably inevitable, saga as AI is increasingly incorporated into the military.