The United States military on Wednesday confirmed the use of multiple artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the ongoing US-Israel war over Iran.
However, the war in Iran is not the first time the US military has relied on tech companies. For decades, tech companies and universities have collaborated with the US military on weapons development. For example, the commercial Internet arose out of a US military-funded project called ARPANET to provide secure communications during the Cold War.
In this briefing, we look at how the Pentagon has historically partnered with tech firms and how big tech companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Palantir have become increasingly embedded in the US military.
How is the US using AI in the Iran war?
US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Brad Cooper said in a video message: “Our warfighters are using a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make decisions faster than the enemy can react.”
For military and defense use, AI tools like LLMs can summarize large amounts of text, analyze data, translate, transcribe and draft memos. In theory, they could also be used to support autonomous or semi-autonomous weapon systems, which can identify and strike targets without the need for human instruction.
However, most AI companies have rules prohibiting this use.
LLM, or Large Language Modeling, is an AI technology that produces textual, visual, or audio output similar to human-generated content after analyzing large datasets such as books, archives, websites, images, and videos.
“Humans 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 take hours and sometimes days into seconds,” said CENTCOM’s Cooper.
The US military used AI company Anthropix’s cloud in its operations to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3.
US media reported that Anthropic has partnered with Palantir Technologies, whose equipment is also used by the Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies.
Anthropic was blacklisted by the Pentagon after the company refused demands to drop AI safeguards that would prevent the US from using its technology to conduct domestic surveillance and program autonomous weapons that strike targets without human intervention.
United Kingdom-based healthcare workers’ organization Medact has opposed Palantir, which has been tasked with building a federated data platform (FDP) for the National Health Service (NHS) England. Palantir has been criticized for supplying its AI products and services to the Israeli military and intelligence services during the ongoing Gaza massacre. Scholars and campaigners say Israel’s war on Gaza is genocide.
Earlier this month, ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI changed its agreement with the US government to expressly bar it from spying on Americans after facing similar backlash.
Is the US military the only one doing this?
With growing AI advancements, there are concerns about militaries using AI technology in warfare.
Several reports have confirmed that Israel relied heavily on AI during its genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and turned much of the territory into rubble since October 2023.
In July 2025, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, released a report mapping corporations assisting Israel in the displacement of Palestinians and its genocidal war on Gaza in violation of international law. Palantir is one of the companies mentioned in the report.
How has the US military used technology over the decades?
During World War II, which lasted from 1939 to 1945, the US technology company International Business Machines (IBM) produced high-speed electromagnetic calculators for the military.
The US military used these calculators to compute ballistic trajectories, an early example of automating battlefield mathematics with machines.
Many technologies that are now commonly used were originally created for military use. It includes the Global Positioning System (GPS), which relies on a network of satellites and receivers that allow for global positioning and navigation. GPS is commonly used for mapping and navigation.
In the 1970s the US military developed the technology as a means of conducting precision bombing. In the 1980s, the first satellites were launched and GPS was first tested during the 1990-91 Gulf War.
Although the Internet does not have a clear, singular origin, the US military may have played a role in its development as well.
Amid the space race with the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Department of Defense created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958. In 1962, ARPA scientists proposed a network of computers to communicate with each other. The Cold War lasted from 1947 to 1991.
During the Vietnam War, 1955 to 1975, and the broader Cold War, early Silicon Valley giants Fairchild Semiconductor and Hewlett-Packard (HP) relied on contracts with NASA and the Pentagon to develop radar, missile guidance, and communications equipment.
The CIA supported a venture fund that led to the development of Palantir around 2003. Palantir’s Gotham software became a key tool for US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Gotham tool condenses huge datasets, such as surveillance footage, and turns them into searchable databases.
In 2017, the US Department of Defense launched Project Maven, leveraging Google AI to automate parts of drone and satellite imagery analysis.
In 2021, the US military collaborated with Microsoft to build the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program, a headset to give soldiers better situational awareness and increase their safety.
As part of the Pentagon’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability Agreement, Amazon Web Services runs a secure cloud infrastructure for US forces, hosting everything from logistics systems to AI workloads on unclassified, secret and top-secret networks.
In 2022, billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX developed StarShield, a spy satellite network for the US military.
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