By SUZANNE DOWNING
Sept. 11, 2026 — The artificial intelligence company whose employees have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins’ campaign for Alaska governor now says its own technology was used by an Iran-linked operation to help target US Navy warships.
Anthropic disclosed that an Iran-linked account used its Claude artificial intelligence model to gather information about American naval forces in the Middle East and develop potential targeting recommendations.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the operation used Claude to compile targeting handbooks, track naval positions and search for vulnerabilities in shipboard systems.
The information included names of American military personnel gathered from public photographs, ship and aircraft transponder identifiers, commercial satellite-imagery searches and lists of websites that reveal naval movements.
The Iran-linked operator also used Claude to research vulnerabilities in maritime satellite terminals, Cisco communications equipment and industrial-control products, Anthropic reported. The company said it shut down the account but could not determine whether the intelligence was used in an actual Iranian military operation.
The disclosure was part of a much broader Anthropic threat-intelligence report documenting the use of Claude by hostile governments, weapons researchers, cybercriminals and surveillance operations.
A cell in northern Yemen used Claude to help develop guidance software for rockets and a planned ballistic missile with a range of more than 2,000 kilometers. The group also explored a missile design incorporating a hypersonic glide vehicle.
“Our safeguards blocked many of their requests, but not all of them,” Anthropic reported.
Other actors used Claude to develop technology for autonomous Russian drone swarms, research weapons for China, conduct cyberattacks and build surveillance systems targeting political dissidents, Uyghurs, Tibetans, religious leaders and Taiwanese political figures. One China-based actor reportedly used Claude to create a 200-page proposal for an anti-torpedo system intended for the Chinese navy.
The disclosures demonstrate that even a company that has carefully built its public image around artificial intelligence safety cannot keep its technology from being exploited by America’s adversaries.
That makes Anthropic’s extraordinary financial footprint in Alaska’s 2026 governor’s race more relevant than ever.
Six Anthropic employees contributed a combined $372,000 to Kreiss-Tomkins between February and May, according to campaign-finance reports. That included a $100,000 contribution from Anthropic employee Drake Thomas. Daniel Ziegler, Jan Leike, Steven Bills and Evan Hubinger were also among the candidate’s largest donors.
The Alaska Story previously identified at least $521,812 in contributions from people connected to the artificial intelligence industry, representing more than 28% of the approximately $1.85 million Kreiss-Tomkins had raised at that point earlier this summer.
A later San Francisco Standard analysis found an even wider network. In addition to the $372,000 from six Anthropic employees, Kreiss-Tomkins received $273,000 from people working at AI research and safety organizations and another $160,765 from employees of nonprofits and policy groups influential in the AI field.
Their size, concentration and common industry connections are unprecedented in an Alaska governor’s race.
The San Francisco Standard reported that some donors knew Kreiss-Tomkins through AI circles and wanted to help elect someone who shared their concerns. Kreiss-Tomkins signed an artificial intelligence safety letter from the Future of Life Institute nearly a decade ago.
That network now deserves greater scrutiny because Kreiss-Tomkins is proposing an immediate statewide moratorium on new data centers until the Alaska Legislature adopts a regulatory framework governing them.
The policy raises several questions that have not been answered.
Who helped Kreiss-Tomkins develop the proposal? Has he consulted Anthropic employees, executives or affiliated AI policy organizations? Have any of his large donors advised his campaign on data centers, artificial intelligence regulation or liability rules? And who would benefit from preventing new computing infrastructure from being built in Alaska? Anthropic?
A moratorium could block new competitors and independent developers from establishing an Alaska presence while leaving the largest existing artificial intelligence companies — including Anthropic and its powerful cloud-computing partners — in control of their established infrastructure elsewhere.
It could also delay projects designed to use stranded North Slope natural gas, including a proposed $500 million AI and cloud-computing center that would generate its own power and operate independently of the Railbelt electrical grid.
The US Air Force has separately invited proposals for as many as 12 artificial intelligence data centers on military property at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Eielson Air Force Base and Clear Space Force Station. It remains unclear whether Kreiss-Tomkins’ moratorium would reach projects on federal military installations.
JKT’s proposal would not simply regulate water consumption, protect residential ratepayers or require dedicated power generation. It would begin with a blanket prohibition applying to every new data center, regardless of its location, power source, size or connection to a public utility.
A moratorium may appeal to Anthropic employees who believe the expansion of computing capacity should be slowed. Whether it would benefit Anthropic as a company is less clear, but it could protect the competitive position of established AI giants by making it more difficult for new projects and potential rivals to obtain computing infrastructure.
The internal alarm at Anthropic became public this week when researcher Jacob Coxon resigned after working for three years in pretraining research at Anthropic and OpenAI.
“Neither company is acting responsibly,” Coxon wrote. “They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
Coxon said employees building advanced AI privately fear that the technology could escape human control, hack critical systems and acquire power and resources. He described Anthropic as being locked in a race to reach superintelligence first because company leaders do not trust competitors to handle the technology responsibly.
He called that competition a “hubristic gamble” and suggested that preventing a global race may require a temporary ban on further increases in AI model capabilities.
19 thoughts on “Anthropic says Iran used Claude to target US warships as company’s money network shapes Alaska governor’s race”
If Claude and Friends can do all these things to help our foreign enemies,
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…imagine what Claude and Friends can do with Alaska’s election system to help our domestic enemies.
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Can’t happen here, of course …but what if it did, who’s smart enough to notice, much less do anything about it?
My question is why anyone from the Lower 48 would be so concerned about Alaska’s race for governor that they would individually contribute what amounts to a yearly salary for most of us to a bizarre candidate. I assume these were coordinated contributions and backed by their companies, rather than their personal expenditures. And here the “no on 2” folks say we don’t have dark money in our campaigns. /spit
The world is racing to control the Arctic water way like Iran controlled the Dtrait of Hormuz. And the average Alaskan is so stupid from poor education they don’t even recognize how much power we possess. In our illiteracy we will give it away.
And the poor “kid” from Sitka I think he isn’t very smart no smarter than the average Alaskan. To such powerful global players he just a stupid ignorant illiterate kid from Alaska who just wants to be known as Governor of Alaska but he’ll be kings pawn.
JKT’s top donor, Drake Thomas, was born and raised in Kenai, Alaska. His parents still live there. So, yes, he has legitimate concerns about the negative effects of AI data centers in Alaska.
i know I saw a kuspuk friday picture of jkt during his time in the leg. i’m not finding it with a google image search. he proably got anthropic to scrub that from the tubes.
Ted, I think he also had an oosik in his right hand ……a show of male dominance ……AI generated of course, because he’s LGBTQ
Anthropic is one of the really bad actors in the AI world. Started and controlled by the Biden WH AI crowd, they, like the CCP are sufficiently incompetent that the only way they can prevail in the marketplace is using the regulatory apparatus of government to crush any competition. The anti-AI world is entirely an astroturf operation, intending to create sufficient public outcry so that competition to their product simply can’t exist. Sadly, their incompetence manifests itself with an AI product, Claude, that regularly runs wild. And you democrats want to put these clowns in charge? Speaking of clowns.,,,, Cheers –
Porky Pig has learned to obey his AI masters. Not only is the $$ good for him, it’s also about all of those little homosexuals in South SF that have a hard on for homosexual candidates. Homosex is about control. They got JKT’s number.
I am going to go way out on a limb and suggest that the San Francisco AI employees have not poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the JKT campaign for their health. Me thinks there are all sorts of understandings, agreements and expectations. Bill Walker went a long way down the road to selling Alaska to the Chinese. Jonathon Kreiss Tomkins (exactly what does he do for a living?) may simply be selling Alaska to Anthropic.
You are on to something, JMARK. Behind the scenes, very few Democrats know what this little homosexual feller is up to. His high techie to lords in the South Bay are trying to use him for their own purposes. Notwithstanding climate action and to DOA any future resource development in Alaska, these high techies have plans for the little gay bastard JKT. And JKT being from Sitka, has no connection to SC, the Interior, or any place outside of the SE region. What does JKT do for a living? Not much, except politics and government. He has a few close relatives that live in other parts of Alaska, and from what I’ve been told, they are wackos and LGBTQ persons too. So you know that he will be pushing that agenda if elected. A very weird family, with near unknown credentials outside of SE Alaska.
Difficult to see how the original prop 2 (that brought RCV) has stopped so called dark money.
It appears to be more present than ever.
Dark Money paid for rank voting, and then it paid again to fight it repealed, and now it continues to pay to prevent daylight from showing who funds all these advertisements seen and heard during election season. They know it works because they passed rank voting, they successfully fought the repeal, they bough the recent unconstitutional ballot measure that capped election contributions for us peasants but not for themselves.
In response to what Jacob Coxon said Evan Hubinger, an alignment science lead at Anthropic wrote
“Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% (greater than 10%) within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”
It might not be AI that kills us, but people using AI that do so. 25 years after 9-11 it’s not hard to imagine islamic extremists using a tool far beyond anything we could have imagined a few short years ago to cause untold acts terrorism on the world stage.
The Homosexual from Sitka is a Political consultant. He is tied to corrupt political campaigns in the lower 48.
Alaska has a homosexual professional political consultant running for Governor. Does not get any lower than that.
Pretty much. But Bill Walker’s running mate was a pedophile who ascended to Lt. Governor. Byron Mallott resigned in disgrace and Bill Walker couldn’t get elected dog catcher.
TMFINR
Data center NIMBY just means they will be built elsewhere …..say “China?”
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