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America's Decade-Long AI War Efforts Get Trial by Fire in Iran
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March 13, 2026
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6:54Now PlayingKatrina Manson, Bloomberg tech and national security reporter and author of the book 'Project Maven,' said that the the US military has confirmed that it is using AI to decide 'points of interest,' the information needed before the decision on a target during strikes on Iran. Manson said that then AI infrastructure used is part of 'project maven,' a program that started back in 2017 to use AI to identify weapons.
On a recent Friday night, the US made two drastic moves that could end up altering the future of artificial-intelligence-powered warfare. Just after 5 p.m. Eastern time on Feb. 27, Donald Trump’s administration declared that Anthropic PBC, the $380 billion startup whose Claude-branded AI products have recently become ubiquitous, was a supply chain risk. In addition to making consumer-facing chatbots and coding tools, Anthropic had major contracts to provide AI services to the military. That relationship had gone sour when the company refused to allow its tech to help enable mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, while the government said it should be able to use the tech for all lawful purposes. With its move, the administration blacklisted one of the country’s most promising tech startups, as if it were something run by the Chinese military. President Trump also derided Anthropic on social media as a “Radical Left AI company.”
About eight hours later, the US bombed Iran. The campaign wasn’t exactly the robo-war that Anthropic objected to, but it did include signs that such a future could be rapidly approaching. Using an AI-enabled mission control called Maven Smart System, the US attacked 1,000 targets in the war’s first 24 hours, about twice the scale of the shock-and-awe campaign in Iraq in 2003. Within 10 days it had hit 5,000 targets, according to US Central Command (Centcom).
The US had previously used Maven Smart System to share targeting information with Ukraine in 2022 and then in strikes against Iraq, Syria and the Houthis in 2024. But the Iran attacks were the technology’s biggest test to date. The campaign also marked the first time the US has attacked combat targets with cheap, semiautonomous drones. The commander of US forces for the region described the devices as “indispensable.”
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