The United States military on Wednesday confirmed the use of numerous Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in the ongoing US-Israeli war against Iran.
However, the war in Iran is not the first time the US military has relied on technology companies.
For decades, technology companies and universities have collaborated with the US military in weapons development.
For example, the commercial Internet originated from a US military-funded project called ARPANET to provide secure communications during the Cold War.
In this regard, an article by Al Jazeera explains how the Pentagon has historically collaborated with technology firms and how large technology companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Palantir have become increasingly integrated into the US military, reports Telegraph.
How is the US using AI in the Iran war?
Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), said in a video message: "Our warfighters are leveraging a range of advanced AI tools. These systems help us analyze vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react."
For military and defense use, AI tools, such as LLMs, can summarize large volumes of text, analyze data, translate, transcribe, and draft memos.
In theory, they could also be used to support autonomous or semi-autonomous weapons systems, which can identify and strike targets without the need for human guidance.
However, most AI companies have terms that prohibit this use.
LLM, or large language model, is an AI technology that generates text, visual or audio data similar to human-created content after analyzing massive data sets such as books, archives, websites, photos and videos.
"Humans will always make the final decisions about what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot, but advanced AI tools can turn processes that previously took hours and sometimes even days into seconds," said CENTCOM's Cooper.
As it turns out, the US military used AI company Anthropic's Claude in its operations to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3, despite Anthropic's usage policy prohibiting the use of Claude for surveillance, weapons development, or "incitement to violence."
US media have also reported that Anthropic has partnered with Palantir Technologies, whose tools are also used by the Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies.
Anthropic was blacklisted by the Pentagon after the company refused a request to remove AI protections, which prevent its technology from being used to conduct domestic surveillance in the US and to program autonomous weapons that can strike targets without human intervention.
Meanwhile, Palantir has been criticized for supplying its AI products and services to the Israeli military and intelligence services during the ongoing attacks on Gaza. Researchers and activists say Israel's war in Gaza is genocide.
Earlier this month, ChatGPT's parent company, OpenAI, changed its agreement with the US government to explicitly prohibit it from spying on Americans after facing similar backlash.
Is the US military the only one doing this?
With increasing advances in artificial intelligence, there are concerns about the use of artificial intelligence technology by militaries in warfare.
Several reports have confirmed that Israel relied heavily on artificial intelligence during its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians since October 2023 and reduced much of the territory to rubble.
In July 2025, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, published a report mapping corporations that aided Israel in the displacement of Palestinians and its war in Gaza in violation of international law.
Palantir was one of the companies mentioned in the report, Al Jazeera's article states, according to the Telegraph.
How has the US military used technology over the decades?
During World War II, which lasted from 1939 to 1945, the American technology company International Business Machines (IBM) produced high-speed electromagnetic calculators for the military.
The US military used these calculators to calculate ballistic trajectories, an early example of automating battlefield mathematics with machines.
Many technologies that are commonly used now were originally created for military use.
This includes the Global Positioning System (GPS), which relies on a network of satellites and receivers that allows global positioning and navigation. GPS is commonly used for mapping and navigation.
The technology was developed by the US military in the 1970s as a means of carrying out precision bombing.
In the 1980s, the first satellites were launched and GPS was first tested during the 1990-91 Gulf War.
While the internet does not have a clear and single origin, the US military may have had a role to play in its development as well.
Amid the space race with the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Department of Defense formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958.
In 1962, an ARPA scientist proposed a network of computers to communicate with each other. The Cold War lasted from 1947 to 1991.
Also during the Vietnam War, from 1955 to 1975, and the Cold War in general, early Silicon Valley giants like Fairchild Semiconductor and Hewlett-Packard (HP) relied on contracts with NASA and the Pentagon to develop radar, “missile guidance,” and communications equipment.
The CIA backed a venture fund that led to the development of Palantir around 2003. Palantir's Gotham software became a key tool for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Gotham tool condenses massive data sets like surveillance footage and turns them into searchable databases.
In 2017, the US Department of Defense launched Project Maven, using Google AI to automate parts of the analysis of drone and satellite imagery.
In 2021, the US Army partnered with Microsoft to produce an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program, a “headset” to provide soldiers with better situational “awareness” and increase their safety.
As part of the Pentagon's Joint Cloud Warfighting Capability contract, Amazon Web Services runs a secure cloud infrastructure for U.S. forces, hosting everything from logistics systems to AI workloads across unclassified, secret, and top-secret networks.
And in 2022, billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX developed Starshield, a spy satellite network for the US military. /Telegrafi/
