TNB Tech Minute: Anthropic Says Iran Used AI to Target U.S. Military

0:00This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every business wants to move faster. Few can afford to be wrong. That's why nine of the Fortune 10 run on Claude for the work they want to get right. Safety and accuracy are not just line items for Anthropic. That's their whole mission. See what's next at Claude.ai.

0:21Here's your morning TNB Tech Minute for Friday, September 11th. I'm Imani Moise for The Wall Street Journal. Anthropic says a group linked to Iran used American-developed artificial intelligence models to target U.S. Navy ships in the Middle East. According to a 154-page report from Anthropic on emerging national security dangers, the group compiled information from ship and aircraft transponders, military photographs, and commercial satellite photos to track American warships and look for vulnerabilities in their ship-borne communications. Anthropic says it detected and disrupted the activity.

0:54The incident is one of several examples in the report showing how U.S. adversaries are experimenting with American AI models. Anthropic says those adversaries have also used AI to help develop missiles, spread disinformation, and spy on dissidents. We exclusively report the Pentagon is in talks to lend roughly$5 billion to AI cloud computing startup FluidStack, adding the U.S. military to the growing list of financiers of AI infrastructure. People familiar with the matter say the money would come from the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital, which provides loans to companies working in areas that are deemed critical to national security.

1:28A$5 billion loan would be the office's largest to date by far. We report that FluidStack would use the loan to shore up its U.S. supply chain and manufacturing capacity for certain components related to data centers, rather than funding a new AI facility outright. And in another exclusive, we report that former OpenAI executive Fiji Simo has joined the board of directors at N-Scale, a startup that's raised billions of dollars to build data centers for AI. A person familiar with the matter said Sima will continue to serve as a part-time advisor to OpenAI and that she'll recuse herself from any N-Scale board matters that may involve OpenAI.

2:06N-Scale is preparing for a potential IPO as soon as this month. News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content licensing partnership with OpenAI. And that's your TNB Tech Minute. We'll be back this afternoon with more. This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every business wants to move faster. Few can afford to be wrong. That's why nine of the Fortune 10 run on Claude for the work they want to get right. Safety and accuracy are not just line items for Anthropic. That's their whole mission. See what's next at Claude.ai.