Mass surveillance

Trump Cuts Off Anthropic, AI Firm That Stood Against Killer Robots and Mass Surveillance

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks alongside President Donald Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on December 22, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

“Demanding security guardrails for how AI is used by the Department of Defense isn’t radical—it’s protecting the constitutional rights of the American people,” said New Jersey’s Democratic governor.

US President Donald Trump “is throwing this tantrum and calling Anthropic ‘radical left’ because they refuse to have their AI be used for illegal mass surveillance and murder. That’s literally it.”

That’s how progressive commentator Kyle Kulinski described Trump’s Friday social media post “directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use” of the artificial intelligence firm’s technology—including its chatbot Claude.

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As Kulinski’s podcast co-host and wife Krystal Ball summarized, “According to the president, objecting to autonomous killer robots and mass surveillance is ‘radical left.’”

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic until 5:01 pm Eastern time Friday to agree to let the Pentagon use the company’s AI tech however it wants. He threatened to declare Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” effectively blacklisting it for military use and ending its current contract, or invoke the Defense Production Act, which would force the company to tailor the product to the Department of Defense’s (DOD) needs.

After the DOD reportedly sent Anthropic its “best and final” offer Wednesday night, the company’s CEO, Dario Amodei, published a blog post explaining that “we cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” and reiterated opposition to enabling autonomous weapons or surveillance of US citizens.

While Anthropic employees, other tech experts, and critics of the current administration praised Amodei for “standing on principle” and choosing “war with the Department of War”—the president’s preferred name for the Pentagon—Trump predictably lashed out at the company on his Truth Social platform.

“THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military,” Trump wrote Friday afternoon.

“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” he continued. “Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.”

Directing agencies to stop using Anthropic’s tech, Trump added:

We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels. Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.

WE will decide the fate of our Country—NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Amodei had notably written in his blog post that “our strong preference is to continue to serve the department and our warfighters—with our two requested safeguards in place. Should the department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions.”

While Trump’s order preceded Hegseth’s initial deadline, the defense secretary publicly weighed in at 5:14 pm, writing on Elon Musk’s social media network X that “this week, Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States government or the Pentagon.”

Hegseth described the company’s terms of service as “defective altruism,” and reiterated the Pentagon’s position that “the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the republic.”

The Pentagon chief also officially directed the DOD to designate the company a supply chain risk to national security, meaning that “effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.”

“Anthropic will continue to provide the Department of War its services for a period of no more than six months to allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service,” Hegseth added. “America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final.”

The New York Times noted that “the Pentagon is ready to move forward with Grok, produced by Elon Musk’s xAI, on its classified system. But Grok is considered by current and former government officials to be an inferior product. And switching AI software would take time and almost certainly cause disruption.”

While Anthropic hasn’t publicly responded to Trump or Hegseth, critics, including congressional Democrats, have continued to praise the company and blast the administration for how they’ve each handled the conflict this week.

“Anthropic objected in part to the Department of Defense using its AI technology to engage in domestic mass surveillance. Do you agree that’s a radical left, woke position?” asked Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.). “That’s actually the constitutional position, one that should be embraced by Americans regardless of party.”

Replying to Trump’s post specifically, Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill similarly said: “Yet another alarming attack by the president on a private company defending its principles. Standing up against mass surveillance and demanding security guardrails for how AI is used by the Department of Defense isn’t radical—it’s protecting the constitutional rights of the American people.”

Describing himself as “one of Congress’ most vocal proponents for the modernization” of DOD and US intelligence community (IC) missions with transformative technology, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Vice Chair Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said in a statement that “the president’s directive to halt the use of a leading American AI company across the federal government, combined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations.”

“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth’s efforts to intimidate and disparage a leading American company—potentially as the pretext to steer contracts to a preferred vendor whose model a number of federal agencies have already identified as a reliability, safety, and security threat—pose an enormous risk to US defense readiness and the willingness of the US private sector and academia to work with the IC and DOD, consistent with their own values and legal ethics,” he continued.

“Indeed,” he added, “Secretary Hegseth’s loud insistence on the sufficiency of an ‘all lawful purposes’ standard provides cold comfort against the backdrop of Pentagon leadership that has routinely sidelined career military attorneys and challenged longstanding norms and rules regarding lethal force.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Continue ReadingTrump Cuts Off Anthropic, AI Firm That Stood Against Killer Robots and Mass Surveillance

Probes Reveal Depth of Big Tech Complicity in Israel’s AI-Driven Gaza Slaughter

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

An aerial view shows Palestinians walking through the ruins of destroyed buildings in the Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, on February 5, 2025.
 (Photo: Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut/Anadolu via Getty Images

“Many nations are looking to Israel and its use of AI in Gaza with admiration and jealousy,” said one expert. “Expect to see a form of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon-backed AI in other war zones soon.”

Several recent journalistic investigations—including one published Tuesday by The Associated Press—have deepened the understanding of how Israeli forces are using artificial intelligence and cloud computing systems sold by U.S. tech titans for the mass surveillance and killing of Palestinians in Gaza.

The AP‘s Michael Biesecker, Sam Mednick, and Garance Burke found that Israel’s use of Microsoft and OpenAI technology “skyrocketed” following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

“This is the first confirmation we have gotten that commercial AI models are directly being used in warfare,” Heidy Khlaaf, chief artificial intelligence scientist at the AI Now Institute and a former senior safety engineer at OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, told the AP. “The implications are enormous for the role of tech in enabling this type of unethical and unlawful warfare going forward.”

As Biesecker, Mednick, and Burke noted:

Israel’s goal after the attack that killed about 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages was to eradicate Hamas, and its military has called AI a “game changer” in yielding targets more swiftly. Since the war started, more than 50,000 people have died in Gaza and Lebanon and nearly 70% of the buildings in Gaza have been devastated, according to health ministries in Gaza and Lebanon.

According to the AP report, Israel buys advanced AI models from OpenAI and Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. While OpenAI said it has no partnership with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in early 2024 the company quietly removed language from its usage policy that prohibited military use of its technology.

The AP reporters also found that Google and Amazon provide cloud computing and AI services to the IDF via Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021. Furthermore, the IDF uses Cisco and Dell server farms or data centers. Red Hat, an independent IBM subsidiary, sells cloud computing services to the IDF. Microsoft partner Palantir Technologies also has a “strategic partnership” with Israel’s military.

Google told the AP that the company is committed to creating AI “that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security.”

However, Google recently removed from its Responsible AI principles a commitment to not use AI for the development of technology that could cause “overall harm,” including weapons and surveillance.

The AP investigation follows a Washington Post probe published last month detailing how Google has been “directly assisting” the IDF and Israel’s Ministry of Defense “despite the company’s efforts to publicly distance itself from the country’s national security apparatus after employee protests against a cloud computing contract with Israel’s government.”

Google fired dozens of workers following their participation in “No Tech for Apartheid” protests against the use of the company’s products and services by forces accused of genocide in Gaza.

“A Google employee warned in one document that if the company didn’t quickly provide more access, the military would turn instead to Google’s cloud rival Amazon, which also works with Israel’s government under the Nimbus contract,” wrote Gerrit De Vynck, author of the Post report.

“As recently as November 2024, by which time a year of Israeli airstrikes had turned much of Gaza to rubble, documents show Israel’s military was still tapping Google for its latest AI technology,” De Vynck added. “Late that month, an employee requested access to the company’s Gemini AI technology for the IDF, which wanted to develop its own AI assistant to process documents and audio, according to the documents.”

Previous investigations have detailed how the IDF also uses Habsora, an Israeli AI system that can automatically select airstrike targets at an exponentially faster rate than ever before.

“In the past, there were times in Gaza when we would create 50 targets per year. And here the machine produced 100 targets in one day,” former IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi told Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine, a joint Israeli-Palestinian publication, in 2023. Another intelligence source said that Habsora has transformed the IDF into a “mass assassination factory” in which the “emphasis is on quantity and not quality” of kills.

https://twitter.com/ajplus/status/1856019059537785285?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1856019059537785285%7Ctwgr%5Eed6a56f67053d1de7d6942e13f4f4e92c2b067f1%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fbig-tech-gaza-genocide

Compounding the crisis, in the heated hours following the October 7 attack, mid-ranking IDF officers were empowered to order attacks on not only senior Hamas commanders but any fighter in the resistance group, no matter how junior. What’s more, the officers were allowed to risk up to 20 civilian lives in each strike, and up to 500 noncombatant lives per day. Days later, that limit was lifted. Officers could order any number of strikes as they believed were legal, with no limits on civilian harm.

Senior IDF commanders sometimes approved strikes they knew could kill more than 100 civilians if the target was deemed important enough. In one AI-aided airstrike targeting one senior Hamas commander, the IDF dropped multiple U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs, which can level an entire city block, on the Jabalia refugee camp in October 2023. According to the U.K.-based airstrike monitor Airwars, the bombing killed at least 126 people, 68 of them children, and wounded 280 others. Hamas’ Qassam Brigades said four Israeli and three international hostages were also killed in the attack.

Then there’s the mass surveillance element. Independent journalist Antony Loewenstein recently wrote for Middle East Eye that “corporate behemoths are storing massive amounts of information about every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and elsewhere.”

https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1889669620476383603?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1889669620476383603%7Ctwgr%5Eed6a56f67053d1de7d6942e13f4f4e92c2b067f1%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fbig-tech-gaza-genocide

“How this data will be used, in a time of war and mass surveillance, is obvious,” Loewenstein continued. “Israel is building a huge database, Chinese-state style, on every Palestinian under occupation: what they do, where they go, who they see, what they like, what they want, what they fear, and what they post online.”

“Palestinians are guinea pigs—but this ideology and work doesn’t stay in Palestine,” he said. “Silicon Valley has taken note, and the new Trump era is heralding an ever-tighter alliance among Big Tech, Israel, and the defense sector. There’s money to be made, as AI currently operates in a regulation-free zone globally.”

“Think about how many other states, both democratic and dictatorial, would love to have such extensive information about every citizen, making it far easier to target critics, dissidents, and opponents,” Loewenstein added. “With the far right on the march globally—from Austria to Sweden, France to Germany, and the U.S. to Britain—Israel’s ethno-nationalist model is seen as attractive and worth mimicking.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingProbes Reveal Depth of Big Tech Complicity in Israel’s AI-Driven Gaza Slaughter

Cameron, Clegg and Ed sneak in a snoopers’ charter by the back door

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A snoopers’ charter by the backdoor: One day until Drip is forced through

by Ian Dunt

Privacy campaigners are frantically trying to brief MPs about the implications of the data retention and investigatory powers bill (Drip), before it is forced through all of its Commons stages tomorrow.

The more experts look at the bill, the more convinced they’ve become that it provides authorities with the spine of the snoopers’ charter, but without any of the public debate or parliamentary scrutiny which were supposed to accompany it.

The charter – known as the draft communications bill before it was killed off – would have forced internet service providers and mobile operators to keep details of their customers’ behaviour for 12 months.

Analysis of Drip, which was supposed to only extend the government’s current powers for another two years, suggests it forces through many of those requirements on internet firms without any of the political outrage which derailed the earlier effort.

Clause four of the bill appears to extend Ripa – the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (basically Britain’s Patriot Act) – so that the UK government can impose severe penalties on companies overseas that refuse to comply with interception warrants. It also lays out situations in which they may be required to maintain permanent interception capacity.

Clause five then provides a new definition of “telecommunications service”, which includes companies offering internet-based services. That seems to drag services like Gmail and Hotmail into the law, and very probably social media sites like Facebook too.

The government insists the extraterritoriality clause merely makes explicit what was previously implicit. It’s tosh. As the explanatory notes for the legislation – released very quietly on Friday night – make clear, overseas telecommunications companies did not believe they were necessarily under Ripa’s jurisdiction.

“Regarding the amendments to Ripa, in view of the suggestion by overseas telecommunications service providers that the extra-territorial effect of Ripa is unclear, it is considered necessary to amend the legislation to put the issue beyond doubt,” it reads.

“This includes clarifying the definition of a ‘telecommunications service’ to ensure the full range of telecommunications services available to customers in the United Kingdom are included in the definition.”

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband insist Drip merely extends their current powers for two years. That’s nonsense. These two clauses, which have nothing to do with the purported aim of the bill, provide the spine of the snoopers’ charter.

They also appear to provide a legal basis for programmes like Tempora, the project revealed by Edward Snowden to allow GCHQ to tap into transatlantic fibre-optic cables and stored data.

Notably, Privacy International, Liberty and others are taking the government to a tribunal this week on whether Tempora is legal, even though the government won’t even admit its existence. Drip could make the tribunal ruling irrelevant.

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Continue ReadingCameron, Clegg and Ed sneak in a snoopers’ charter by the back door

The simple way to install Tor for online anonymity

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Image of Tor onion networkingThe bad news is that the National Security Agency (the US authority that spies on internet users) targets anyone searching for privacy tools.

NSA classifies Linux Journal readers, Tor and Tails Linux users as “extremists”

“Months of investigation by the German public television broadcasters NDR and WDR (ARD), drawing on exclusive access to top secret NSA source code, interviews with former NSA employees, and the review of secret documents of the German government reveal that not only is the server in Nuremberg under observation by the NSA, but so is virtually anyone who has taken an interest in several well-known privacy software systems,” said the ARD report.

…

The program marks and tracks the IP addresses of those who search for ‘tails’ or ‘Amnesiac Incognito Live System’ along with ‘linux’, ‘ USB ‘,’ CD ‘, ‘secure desktop’, ‘ IRC ‘, ‘truecrypt’ or ‘ tor ‘. It also refers to the Tails Linux distribution as “a comsec mechanism advocated by extremists on extremist forums”.

The good news is that it’s never been easier to install tor anonymity software. Just head over to Torproject, grab the tor browser bundle and follow the instructions.

 

edit: I support the Tor project by running a Tor relay.

Continue ReadingThe simple way to install Tor for online anonymity