The US military used Claude, the artificial intelligence model developed by a San Francisco-based company, Anthropic, in the operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
According to the sources quoted in the report, Claude’s deployment was made possible through Anthropic’s partnership with data firm Palantir Technologies, whose platforms are widely used by the Defence Department and federal law enforcement.
The United States special forces team Delta captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in an audacious raid during the night of January 3 and brought him to New York, where he is now in jail, facing drug-trafficking charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty in front of a Manhattan court days after his capture.
Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, was also brought to the United States after being captured during the raid. She has also pleaded not guilty to charges brought against her.
The use of Anthropic and other secret weapons by the US military
According to a Reuters report, the Pentagon is pushing top AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, to make their artificial intelligence tools available on classified networks without many of the standard restrictions they apply to users.
Many AI companies are building custom tools for the US military, most of which are available only on unclassified networks typically used for military administration. Anthropic is the only one that is available in classified settings through third parties, but the government is still bound by the company’s usage policies.
The usage policies of Anthropic, which raised $30 billion in its latest funding round and is now valued at $380 billion, forbid using Claude to support violence, design weapons or carry out surveillance.
US President Donald Trump has also boasted on Friday about another secret weapon, which he called a “discombobulator”, that he said blocked Russian and Chinese defence systems during the American military raid in Venezuela.
