An Iran-linked actor used Anthropic’s Claude AI to compile detailed intelligence on US Navy vessels stationed in the Middle East, creating what the company describes as “targeting handbooks” aimed at American naval forces. The revelation comes from a sweeping 154-page threat intelligence report that Anthropic published on September 10, laying out how state-affiliated groups are repurposing commercial AI tools for military and intelligence operations.
The operation involved building automated surveillance pipelines that pulled together personnel rosters extracted from public military photographs, ship and aircraft transponder identifiers, commercial satellite imagery, and vulnerability assessments of critical shipboard systems.
What the Iran-linked actor actually built
According to Anthropic’s report, the actor used Claude to aggregate open-source information from a range of publicly available data. The compiled materials included information about military personnel, vessel and aircraft identification data, and details about websites connected to US naval operations in the region.
The actor cataloged known vulnerabilities in shipboard technologies, specifically VSAT satellite communication terminals and Cisco networking equipment.
