The Growing Role of Big Tech within US Strategy: Lessons from the Use of Artificial Intelligence in the US-Israel War against Iran

The recent Anthropic-OpenAI incident, in which Anthropic was essentially blacklisted by US President Donald Trump, has already been widely discussed within the media, strategic community and technology sector. Additionally, President Trump has signalled the possibility of the Pentagon reversing course and signing a new deal with Anthropic. Nonetheless, the incident is worth revisiting, given its implications for the future of warfare.

On February 27^th, 2026, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared Anthropic a “supply-chain risk to national security”, which was the first-ever instance of a US company being labelled as such. The label, which has historically been reserved for adversarial foreign companies, prohibits the use of Anthropic’s AI systems within the Pentagon. President Trump also ordered every federal agency within the US to “IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology”. This was certainly an alarming development for many; Anthropic had earlier signed a $200 million deal with the Pentagon for frontier AI capabilities, and its policies had largely seemed to be in alignment with overall US strategic objectives. Indeed, Anthropic’s AI systems had been in use by both the US government and military since 2024, including in relation to “classified work.”

From Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s perspective, however, there were crucial points of contention with the Pentagon which prevented a deal from being finalised, primarily surrounding the use of the company’s AI systems for “domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous lethal weapons.” In a blog post, Amodei stated that the company would not “knowingly provide a product that puts America’s war fighters and civilians at risk”, and that “without proper oversight, fully autonomous weapons cannot be relied upon.” These demands, subsequently, are what led the Trump administration to blacklist Anthropic. Within a few hours OpenAI, one of Anthropic’s leading competitors, announced that it had signed a deal with the Department of War for “deploying advanced AI systems in classified environments.” OpenAI’s announcement of the agreement made specific reference to Anthropic’s demands, stating that their systems would not be used for domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapon systems. 

However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later stated that the company ultimately could not oversee and control how the US military used the company’s AI systems on the battlefield. It’s important to note that, although Amodei has been widely praised as having taken a moral stand in this incident, he has been a leading figure in the growing role of Big Tech on the battlefield. Following the designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, he stated that “we have said to the Department of War that we are OK with all use cases.” Basically 98 or 99% of the use cases they want to do, except for two.” 

This brings us to the heart of the issue. Although it certainly is true that Anthropic took a relatively moral stand, it still plays a crucial role in US military operations and overall US strategy. Also, despite Anthropic being blacklisted, its AI systems were still very much utilised during the US-Israel war against Iran, primarily for target selection and analysis regarding airstrikes. Additionally, OpenAI eagerly replaced Anthropic within a few hours. This, ultimately, is the very nature of the tech-industrial complex that President Biden had warned against: rapid technological advancements being utilised in military operations without effective guardrails in place to curtail their potentially harmful effects., The tech-industrial complex, then is here to stay and is certainly stronger than just a singular major company. If the Anthropic-OpenAI incident made one thing clear, it was that Big Tech will undeniably have a crucial role to play on the battlefield in the era of AI.