The terrorists who have previously tried to launch attacks on US ships in the Red Sea tried to use Anthropic artificial intelligence models to build ballistic missiles, a new report has found.
In its AI misuse report published Thursday, Anthropic revealed that a ‘cell of threat actors’ in Yemen had tried to leverage the Claude chatbot to run ‘three weapons development programs.’
The report did not specifically name the terrorist organization involved, but the threat likely came from the Iran-backed Houthis, which control much of northern Yemen.
The Houthis tried to develop a multi-stage ballistic missile, a multi-variant missile, and a guided rocket that used a ‘commodity phone-class flight computer,’ according to the report reviewed by the Daily Mail.
The terrorists used Claude Code in an attempt to develop ‘guidance, navigation, and control software that steers and stabilizes a flying vehicle,’ the report said.
They also used the chatbot to ‘integrate an open-source autopilot on to a phone-class flight computer, writing the control and position estimation software, tuning the control settings, running a firmware build pipeline, and performing a flight simulation.’
‘We do not have evidence the actors succeeded in fielding an operational device; but they did test-fire a guided rocket,’ the report said. ‘This field test appears to have failed: within hours, the actors returned to Claude to work out why it failed.’
The Houthis, which are a designated terrorist group by the US government, this week launched a rapid military blitz along Yemen’s Red Sea coast and took control of a strategic port. The group also seized a key island on Friday.
An aerial view of Houthi fighters’ takeover of the Galaxy Leader Cargo in the Red Sea coast off Hudaydah, on November 20, 2023
In its AI misuse report published Thursday, Anthropic revealed that a ‘cell of threat actors’ in northern Yemen had tried to leverage the Claude chatbot to run ‘three weapons development programs.’ Pictured: CEO and Co-Founder of Anthropic Dario Amodei
Anthropic says the Yemen-based actors used Claude as almost a lead delegate on a small engineering team, the report explained.
‘The actors managed several Claude instances at once, assigning each one a role, much as a lead would delegate work on a small engineering team: the actors tasked one instance with writing the code, another with research, and a third with reviewing the code the first instance produced,’ Anthropic wrote.
The AI models’ safeguards blocked ‘many of their requests, but not all of them,’ Anthropic said, noting that the terrorists ‘used a variety of tactics to evade’ the protective measures.
They did this by ‘hiding their goals and the products the software was meant for, and they split their work across multiple sessions so no single session revealed their full intent,’ the report said.
Anthropic blocked the accounts associated with the suspected weapons development team and reported the threat to its public and private sector partners.
Despite this, the report warned that Anthropic has ‘evidence that the actors had already built an offline simulation toolkit that does not rely on Claude or other engineering computing environments.’
In addition to the activity in Yemen, Anthropic found evidence that users in China and Russia attempted to use Claude to develop software to design firearms, missiles, armed drones and bombs.
Suspected Chinese and Iranian government-actors were found to have been targeting dissident and diaspora communities for surveillance, according to the report.
A fighter with Yemen’s Houthi rebels carries a rocket-propelled grenade launcher as they march during a mobilization campaign in Sanaa, Yemen on Thursday
Smoke and balls of fire rising from trucks at a camp of the Saudi-backed government forces following an alleged Houthi missile strike on Monday
Russian state media was also found to be using Claude to generate election propaganda, including fabricated claims about the parliamentary election in Moldova.
Anthropic also thwarted efforts from scientists trying to conduct research that could be used to build biological weapons, the report also said.
Anthropic was unable to determine if the research ‘served a legitimate or nefarious purpose,’ the report said.
Similarly to its handling of the ballistic missile cases, the company blocked accounts associated with the research.
The report did not disclose the names of the researchers or institutions that it had blocked, or the countries in which these scientists are from.
Meanwhile, Houthi rebels captured a strategic island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the entrance of the Red Sea on Friday in a swift advance that further threatens international shipping.
Saudi Arabia responded with airstrikes against the airport in the key port city of Mokha that the Houthis seized on Thursday. There was no immediate report of damage or deaths.
The capture of Mayun, a tiny, barren volcanic island in the strait, was confirmed by a senior military official with Yemen’s internationally recognized government and by a Houthi official.
The Bab al-Mandeb Strait connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and is used as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively shut down
Wreckage of what the Houthis say is a Saudi Karayel unmanned combat aerial vehicle that was shot down over an area in Hajjah governorate on Thursday
The strait is a key alternative to the Iran-choked Strait of Hormuz.
But there is ‘no need for international concern,’ Hizam al-Assad, a member of the rebels’ political bureau, told The Associated Press, saying they are responding to Saudi aggression, and ‘our forces have a bank of big important targets’ in case Riyadh keeps up the strikes.
Earlier Friday, Iran’s government called for an end to Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Yemen, throwing its support behind its ally, the Houthis.
In its first statement since the rebels entered the port, Iran’s Foreign Ministry also called for a return to negotiations between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis.
The capture of Mokha could boost Iran’s strategy of driving up world oil and gas prices to pressure the United States, experts say.
It also raises concerns of a new front opening after more than six months of war in the region – one in which Saudi Arabia is forced to respond.
