March 3, 2026

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AI Integration in Operation Epic Fury and Cascading Effects

AP Photo/Patrick Sison

Operation Epic Fury relied on AI model “Claude” for operational planning, even as Anthropic, the model’s parent company, had been blacklisted by the Trump administration hours earlier for seeking guarantees that their models would not be integrated into domestic surveillance missions and autonomous weapon systems. According to sources consulted by The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic's Claude model was used for intelligence assessments, including for target identification and simulating battle scenarios in the lead-up to the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. The model was most likely used through Anthropic’s partnership with Palantir Technologies, which provides the Defense Department, among other services, with a data fusion platform for operational planning. The news of Claude’s use in this operation comes amid heightened concern about the ethics and legality of integrating AI models into various defense missions, which came to the fore last week when Anthropic sought guarantees from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) regarding the use of its models.

A day before the strike on Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered all federal agencies to immediately cease use of Anthropic products, designating the company as "left-wing nut jobs" and a "radical-left, woke company.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had been in a tit-for-tat with the company, as the latter had sought guarantees that its AI products would not be used for domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons systems. Hegseth classified Anthropic as a supply chain risk to national security, a classification that has so far been applied only to non-U.S. companies. However, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) used Claude just hours after that decision to conduct its strike on Tehran and will likely continue to do so during the six-month phase-out period.

While details on how exactly Claude was used for operational planning, battlefield simulations, and intelligence assessments are not made public, based on its previous deployment in Venezuela and known contacts between Palantir and the Pentagon, it is likely that it was used within the Maven Smart System and the Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP). The Maven Smart System is Palantir's primary DoD platform, which aggregates data from various sources, including satellite imagery, sensor data, and more, into a single interface for commanders and military planners. The Artificial Intelligence Platform is built into Maven and allows users to interact with operational data using natural language, powered by large language models (LLMs).  The platform is known to allow for third-party data integrations. In June 2024, Palantir was also selected for an additional agreement that onboards third-party vendors into Maven Smart System and AIP. It is thus highly likely that Claude was used by analysts to detect patterns and to provide intelligence and operational guidance as needed for Operation Epic Fury.

In January, Anthropic’s Claude had already been tested in Venezuela. U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) employed it in Operation Absolute Resolve that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. In that instance, it is confirmed through The Wall Street Journal that Claude was accessed by the Pentagon through Palantir’s platform.

From an ethical and legal point of view, the use of Claude is not necessarily in violation of its two non-negotiable deployment constraints: no mass domestic surveillance of U.S. persons, and no fully autonomous weapons. Nonetheless, the operation indicates the extent to which the Pentagon relies on AI for its missions. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, has publicly stated that Claude lacks human judgment and that autonomous deployment could lead to a host of unintended consequences. As of Friday, competitor OpenAI has now concluded a contract with the Pentagon. It will be important to watch whether the similar limitations it has set on its model usage will actually be enforced.

All primary concerns around AI integration in weapons systems, especially fully automated ones, relate to accountability. For example, automation bias, or the tendency of operators to defer to machine recommendations, is well-documented, and Israeli operational precedent shows human review can be minimal. Some reporting on Israel’s use of the controversial Lavender system, which assigns a suspicion score to individuals based on the data it processes, technically requires an operator’s review before a strike is executed. However, reporting from Gaza shows that minimal checks have been done before strike execution despite its substantial false positive rate. The second issue relates to ultimate accountability. If an AI system recommends a target and human operators rubber-stamp that decision, criminal liability for targeting errors becomes legally ambiguous. This is related to the crux of the issue: the enforcement of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). While the UN General Assembly affirms that IHL governs lethal autonomous weapons systems, no hard enforcement mechanisms exist.

In a full-circle development, data centers became a target in Iran’s retaliatory strikes in the Gulf states. In Bahrain, an Amazon Web Services Data Center reported power and connectivity disruptions on March 2, amid Iranian strikes on U.S. assets in the capital. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), another Amazon Web Services Data Center was directly struck. Amazon announced that it had temporarily shut down its data center in the UAE after being hit. Various Gulf states, especially the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, are seeking to leverage AI investments as a dual instrument of economic diversification and geopolitical influence. However, data centers in the region are now at significant risk, with cascading security and economic effects. Much like targeting oil infrastructure, Iran may seek to impose increasingly prohibitive costs on Gulf states by targeting its AI infrastructure.