| March 4, 2026 | By Katrin Bennhold |
Good morning, world. If there’s a war unfolding somewhere in 2026 — and there are currently several — there’s a good chance that artificial intelligence is playing a part in it.
A.I. is being used in fighting in Iran and Ukraine. The U.S. used it when it captured the leader of Venezuela. Israel used it during its war in Gaza.
And the use of A.I. on the battlefield is only just getting started. That’s why another battle that unfolded last week between the Trump administration and Anthropic, an American A.I. company, is so important. I asked my colleague Julian E. Barnes what the fight means for the future of warfare, for Americans and for the world.
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| Marissa Leshnov for The New York Times |
A fight about the future of war
Anthropic is one of the world’s leading A.I. companies. Its Claude model has been widely used by the Pentagon to collect intelligence, identify targets, map out operations and more. But the fight last week wasn’t about how A.I. is currently being used. It was about how it could be used.
Anthropic’s contract set out two restrictions: The government could not use its technology for mass surveillance of U.S. citizens. And it could not use Claude with autonomous weapons that kill without human involvement.
The Pentagon balked. It said it didn’t want to use A.I. for domestic surveillance or autonomous killer robots. But it refused to let a private company put restrictions on how the military uses its product.
The standoff has been a messy mix of contract dispute and culture war, a focal point for fears about A.I. and worries about U.S. competitiveness in the global race for A.I. pre-eminence.
On Friday, after negotiations failed, President Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic. The Pentagon also labeled it a “supply-chain risk to national security,” potentially barring any military contractor from doing business with the firm.
Julian, who writes about intelligence and national security, was covering the fight between Anthropic and the Pentagon before he started covering the war in Iran. (He’s been busy.)
Julian, how much is A.I. already integrated into warfare and national security?
It’s totally integrated. The use of A.I. in warfare is no longer theoretical. A.I. is on the battlefield. We do not believe that large language models are being used to command drones or fire weapons yet. But A.I. is deeply embedded in the process of collecting intelligence and using it to shape strategic decisions.
And what exactly is Anthropic worried about?
One of their concerns was that the government could use A.I. to analyze commercially available data on U.S. citizens. Our web browsing data, our telephone metadata — commercial firms can scoop that up and use A.I. to figure out where you’ve been, what you’ve visited, what you purchased.
Anthropic is also worried about this idea of killer drones.
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| A drone workshop in Ukraine. Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times |
And why is the government objecting to these red lines?
The U.S. says it will always have a human in the loop when artificial intelligence is making decisions around whether or not to kill someone. But there are problems that go along with that, because whoever can observe, think and decide faster is going to win in a battle, and humans can slow that process down.
The central question here is the role of humans in future warfare. And that will probably look very different than today. We still need them, but we haven’t decided what their role is going to be. And that makes it hard to write A.I. rules in advance.
What does the law have to say about A.I. and warfare?
The Pentagon says that the existing laws that govern the conduct of war should be enough. Because the principles of ethical warfare are the same if I’m dropping a bomb or using software to improve my targeting.
But Anthropic says A.I. is not like other weapons. Other weapons are confined by their hardware. This plane flies to this spot, and drops a bomb. This plane flies to this spot, and shoots another plane.
Large language models are different. You can have them analyze data for insights. You can have them suggest places to bomb. You could have them design a cyberattack. Their use constantly evolves.
Anthropic’s line is that this is special technology and we need to have special guardrails on it.
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| Dario Amodei, co-founder and C.E.O. of Anthropic. Karsten Moran for The New York Times |
So if we boil it down, what is this fight really about?
It’s about politics and about principle — on both sides.
Anthropic wants to show that it’s a responsible, safety-minded company. That’s their brand. And the Pentagon is saying: This is the woke A.I. company! We’re cracking down on woke! That’s the MAGA brand.
As for principles, the Pentagon is saying there is one standard for all companies who do business with us: We are constrained by the lawful use of this technology, not by any conditions dictated by private companies.
And Anthropic is saying that existing laws are not fit to regulate A.I.
How does this fit into the bigger A.I. race between the U.S. and China? I assume Chinese companies don’t ask the government to put in place guardrails.
Definitely not. Chinese law commands Chinese companies to give up their technology to the state. That’s also why the threat of China hangs over what just happened in Washington. Because the U.S. believes that if there is a war with China over Taiwan, the opening battle will be a battle of drones over the Taiwanese Strait. The drones that can move and decide faster are going to win.
No guardrails also means the Chinese government has asked A.I. companies to develop mass disinformation tools. It has used A.I. for mass surveillance. It has used large language models to identify dissidents. So how China has used A.I. is the actual nightmare scenario that Anthropic is warning about.
Related: OpenAI, Anthropic’s primary rival, signed a deal with the Pentagon immediately after Trump’s order. On Monday, OpenAI said it was amending the contract to say its A.I. systems “shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals.”
| MORE TOP NEWS |
The latest on Iran
Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has emerged as the front-runner to be the country’s next supreme leader after a meeting of senior clerics yesterday.
Nearly 900 people have been killed in the Middle East since Saturday. As fighting ripples across the region, Western governments have been rushing to evacuate stranded citizens. The U.S. has urged Americans to leave immediately. Follow our live coverage here.
| The tumult in global markets continued for a third day as investors in Asia, worried about rising energy costs, dumped stocks.Thousands gathered in southern Iran for a funeral for the victims of an airstrike on a girls’ elementary school. Around 175 people were killed by the attack.Trump said that some of the officials his administration saw as potential new leaders of Iran had been killed in the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign. He rejected suggestions that Israel had forced his hand to attack Iran.Fighting intensified in Lebanon as Israeli troops seized territory in the south of the country. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia, launched what it called a “swarm of attack drones” against Israel. Watch the video below. |
| OTHER NEWS |
| Nepalis will vote for a new government tomorrow, the first election since September’s Gen Z revolution. Here’s what to know.The U.S. and Ecuador launched joint military operations in the South America country. The Americans are helping Ecuadorean commandos with raids against drug-related sites.President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba called for an “urgent” transformation of the country’s economy as the island struggles under a U.S. oil blockade.Lending troubles at Blue Owl Capital and other private-credit firms are unsettling Wall Street.The military ruler of Myanmar, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, is expected to step down as army chief so he can become president after sham elections.People in British Columbia will change their clocks on Sunday for the last time as they permanently adopt daylight saving time. |
Top of The World
The most clicked link in your newsletter yesterday was for this video about how ordinary Iranians are responding to the U.S.-Israeli strikes.
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Last summer, the female dancers from the Northern Ballet in Yorkshire tried something new: partnering with each other. Carefully but eagerly, they tried to steady their on pointe partners — in ballet, usually the task of men.
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Miami’s gilded age
In Miami Beach, the super rich are driving a buying frenzy, as billionaires compete for enormous compounds on the gated, man-made islands facing Biscayne Bay. On Monday, the Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, paid $170 million for a mansion that was still under construction.
In Miami’s ultraluxury market — defined by houses selling for more than $50 million — buyers are offering whatever it takes to buy not just one property but adjacent ones, too, to build out multiple houses, tennis courts, pools, fountains and manicured gardens.
With unlimited budgets, prices become almost meaningless. “When you’re worth, not even in the billions anymore, but in the hundreds of billions, it’s just a rounding error for you,” one local real estate agent said. Read more.
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| RECIPE |
Changua is a savory breakfast soup from the central Andes region of Colombia that’s traditionally made with milk, water and eggs simmered with scallions and cilantro. This version can be made with oat milk, which adds a mild sweetness. If you can’t find pan de bono, a popular Colombian cheese bread, to soften gradually in the broth, any rustic bread will do.
