Anthropic

On Feb. 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a military campaign against Iran, striking more than 900 targets in the first 12 hours and killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The conflict is still raging, with strikes continuing across the country and the region destabilising by the day. Yet behind the missiles and fighter jets lies another revolution in how this war is being fought.   AI, the same technology that millions use daily to draft emails or summarise documents, has become a central instrument of lethal military power. Anthropic’s Claude AI model is embedded inside the Pentagon’s targeting and intelligence apparatus, processing satellite imagery, intercepted communications, and operational data to help commanders decide who to strike, where, and when.   What once required days of human analysis is now compressed into hours or minutes, enabling a pace of warfare that no prior generation of military planners could have executed. AI has been present on battlefields before, from drone guidance systems to satellite image analysis, but the Iran conflict represents its most expansive and consequential deployment to date, and the full implications of that scale are still unfolding.