At Ankara, Nato has to admit a hard truth: its most vital AI infrastructure is built for business, not war

The infrastructure decisions Western allies make this summer will shape the next decade of alliance defence.

When Nato leaders meet in Ankara next Tuesday and Wednesday (7-8 July), the agenda will be dominated by Iran and Ukraine.

But AI is another timely issue for trust across the Alliance. In June, the US government ordered Anthropic, a leading American AI company, to restrict foreign access to its most capable models overnight, citing national security concerns.

It sends a clear message to Nato that Washington will treat its most powerful AI models as national security assets. Frontier general-purpose models have become indispensable to state-of-the-art cyberdefence, and Nato has started to embed AI at the core of command through a decision-support tool for commanders.

Without access to frontier models, Nato countries face a widening asymmetry in cyberdefence and broader defence intelligence capabilities across the alliance.