Ukraine war briefing: Russian developers used AI to build ‘kamikaze’ attack drone software, Anthropic says

Anthropic also found that hackers used AI in attacks against targets in Ukrainian government, military and diplomatic sectors. What we know on day 1,662

A small team of likely freelance developers in Russia used AI chatbot Claude to develop software for an autonomous swarm of first-person-view “kamikaze” attack drones , including terminal guidance, target selection and coordination between multiple aircraft, according to Anthropic, the company that developed Claude. In a 154-page report describing how bad actors used its Claude AI system for state-sponsored surveillance and propaganda operations, Anthropic said the drone swarm was programmed to pick its own targets and crash into them to detonate, without a human making the final call. In their programming, the freelance team repeatedly picked a location in Ukraine’s Donetsk region as their target and used VPNs to circumvent Anthropic’s geographic blocks. Small drones have become a ‌central weapon in the war in Ukraine.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has blamed the west for the conflict in Ukraine because of what he said was its constant pressure on Moscow and its attempts to “drag” Ukraine into the Nato alliance. Speaking to reporters before the BRICS summit in India, Putin said “everything happening in Europe right now is basically ‌the result of system errors by … the western globalists in politics, security, and economics”. After a Russia-friendly president was forced to flee Ukraine in 2014, he said the West “immediately set the goal of dragging Ukraine into Nato. And this ‌ultimately turned out to be the main reason for today’s tragic events in Ukraine”. He said people in Europe understood what was going on, which explained why they were voting for far-right parties such as the AfD in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

A Russian official will attend a G20 energy meeting in Houston next week, a White House official said on Friday. Last month, the US welcomed ⁠Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov to a meeting of G20 countries in North Carolina, upsetting European officials because it was the first time Russia’s finance ⁠minister had attended the forum in person since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The meeting comes as European Union efforts to become independent from Russian oil and gas are faltering, as it heads into winter with low gas stocks, its auditors said this month.

The US House of Representatives is expected to take up a tough Russian sanctions package next week , although prospects of passage are uncertain despite the bill receiving overwhelming support in the Senate. The bill is designed to add pressure on Putin to negotiate an end to Russia’s war with Ukraine. However, several top Democratic lawmakers are worried the measure dramatically expands president Donald Trump’s tariff authority, and he would use that new power to go after US allies.

Three people were killed in Russian ⁠strikes in southeastern Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia ⁠regions and in Kharkiv in the ​northeast , according to the governors of those regions.