From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowaf.

This is the Daily.

As the U.S. bombardment of Iran has escalated, it's become increasingly clear just how much the U.S. military has been relying on sophisticated artificial intelligence.

And that's made the Defense Department's bitter fight with the AI giant Anthropic over who

controls that technology, one of the most high-stake strategic battles of our time.

Today, my colleague Shira Frankel, on the standoff between the Trump administration

and Anthropic, and what it really reveals about the future of warfare. It's Monday, March 9th.

Shira, it's wonderful to have you back on the daily. Thank you for having me.

So as this war in the Middle East has progressed, we've been hearing more and more about the U.S. using AI in its attacks on Iran.

It's one of the first times, really, where this technology is very clearly having a practical application for the U.S. military. We are seeing it in action.

And at the same time, in the background, there has been this ongoing, bubbling battle over the use of that technology.

So we're going to get into the specifics of all of that. But first, can you just lay out what this fight is fundamentally about?

Well, this fight is so much bigger than one company and this particular moment with the Pentagon. It's really about the future of warfare and the role that AI is going to play in war. Right now, in the Middle East,

as the U.S. looks for targets to strike, it is using Anthropics technology to analyze

intelligence, analyze satellite imagery, and figure out where it wants to hit.

AI can analyze data for the military faster than a human being possibly could. It's proving its

worthiness every single day.

And so, in a sense, these private technology companies based in Silicon Valley and the Pentagon

need each other more than ever. But there's a question about how they're going to work together going

forward. As we all hurdle towards this vision of robot wars, of, you know, AI-backed weapons,

fighting AI-backed weapons, they're trying to figure out who gets to say what's safe and what's not.

So on one side, you have these private Silicon Valley companies. You have Anthropic,

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