The use of AI in intelligence and military operations: The US decision, after the conflict with Anthropic
The White House said on Friday that the US will accelerate the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in national security applications, while stressing that this technology should not be used to carry out illegal surveillance activities, reports Reuters.
The Trump administration announced earlier this week that it will require leading AI developers to voluntarily submit their best-performing designs to government cybersecurity tests before releasing them to the public, amid growing fears in Washington about powerful new artificial intelligence systems.
“Under my administration, the United States can and will responsibly accelerate the use of AI in intelligence and military operations, consistent with American values,” President Donald Trump said in a national security memorandum.
Trump said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has 90 days to update an existing directive on weapons autonomy “to ensure the deliberate adoption of AI systems that respect the chain of command.”
Trump added that AI technologies should not be developed or used by national security agencies “to censor free speech … or to conduct unauthorized or illegal surveillance.”
The memorandum “accelerates the adoption of AI from multiple vendors to prevent single points of failure, updates the War Department's guidance on autonomous weapons systems to keep pace with technological developments, and ensures that no entity can disable or affect an AI system our soldiers depend on without prior approval,” wrote Michael Kratsios, director of the House Office of Science and Technology Policy. White, in a social media post.
The memorandum comes in the wake of the conflict between artificial intelligence company Anthropic and the Pentagon.
The Pentagon imposed a formal “supply chain risk” designation on Anthropic Labs in March after the company refused to waive bans on using its AI model, Claude, for purposes such as fueling autonomous weapons or mass surveillance in the US. The Pentagon, led by Pete Hegseth, said the department should be able to use the technology as needed as long as it complies with US law.
The designation was an extraordinary rebuke from the Washington administration to a US technology company that the Pentagon has relied on to support military operations, including in Iran, as Reuters previously reported.
Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the memorandum or the meeting with AI executives that Trump announced on Friday that he plans to hold as early as next week, the international news agency notes.
