The AI Wars: You Are NOT Prepared

No one is ready for what’s coming next.

This article originally appeared on Corbett Report and was republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-nonCommercial 4.0 International License

Guest post by James Corbett

Just over a year ago, I wrote “The Drone Wars: You Are Not Prepared,” in which I informed you that:

No, the drone wars of the future are not some sci-fi fantasy. They are very real, and they are happening right now.

So, how did that prediction pan out?

Let’s check this week’s headlines for the latest on drone warfare, shall we?

As viewers of the most recent episode of New World Next Week will know, Iran is launching kamikaze drone strikes on AI data centres, and Uncle Sam is responding in kind (using drones copied from Iranian designs, no less).

And now The Wall Street Journal is reporting on how “Iran Is Hitting the Radars That Underpin U.S. Missile Defenses“ by using “one-way attack drones.” The article notes that “[o]ne of the most significant strikes hit a sophisticated early-warning radar system at Qatar’s Al-Udeid, which hosts the largest American military base in the region.”

Yes, the Iranians are now using $20,000 drones to take out billion-dollar radar defense systems, and you’d better believe every military in the world is taking notes.

In summary: yes, the drone war has begun, and, as usual, you heard it here first.

So, what about the next development in 21st century warfare? Good question. Here’s the answer...

THE AI-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

It’s been over 60 years since Eisenhower warned us about the rise of the military-industrial complex.

Although we all remember his caution against “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” the speech itself is actually more supportive of the development of this complex than you might remember. “We recognize the imperative need for this development,” Eisenhower was careful to add. Perhaps he was already aware of what would happen to the next president who dared stand up to the military chieftains.

Regardless, the phrase “military-industrial complex” was soon adopted by anti-war campaigners and has served them well for generations. It nicely encapsulates the industrialization of warfare and conveys how vast fortunes are now predicated on the production (and use) of military armaments. Turns out there’s a reason why Loudoun is “per capita the richest county in the country,” after all.

So, yes, exactly as predicted, the good old military-industrial complex is laughing all the way to the bank as the bombs rain down on Tehran.

But times are changing. The Raytheons, Lockheed Martins and Northrop Grummans of old are being replaced by the next generation of death merchants: AI contractors.

It should come as no surprise that all of the fastest-growing military contractors—from Anduril to Helsing to Palantir to, yes, “CHAOS Industries”—are working on AI technologies and autonomous weapons systems. As I observed in “What Does Palantir Actually Do?“ Anduril and Palantir issued a joint press release last year bragging how the two companies were working to “enable our government and industry partners to transform America’s world-leading AI advancements into next-generation military and national security capabilities.”

Of course, we don’t have to wait for this AI-industrial complex to manifest on the battlefield.

Israel is already using AI in Gaza to identify and target suspected Hamas leaders and hideouts.

Ukraine is already deploying AI drones—and, yes, “part-autonomous” robots—in their fight against Russia.

And now, as we have seen in the past week, the Iranian battlefield is reinforcing the AI warfare narrative. The use of autonomous weapons and AI targeting systems is rapidly becoming a key part of the Iran war story itself.

THE ANTHROPIC PSYOP

We all witnessed the recent psychodrama between AI company Anthropic and the Department of War play out in the headlines of the establishment press.

First, Secretary of War Hegseth demanded Anthropic allow the Pentagon to circumvent guardrails on its “Claude” AI model. Specifically, we were told that “[t]he Pentagon, which has a $200 million contract with Anthropic, wants the company to lift its restrictions for the military to be able to use the model for ‘all lawful use,’ according to two sources familiar with the discussions.”

Next, we were told that Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, was heroically standing up to this pressure, penning a lengthy blog post in which he refused to allow Claude to be used for either mass domestic surveillance or for powering fully autonomous weapons.

...Of course, Amodei wasn’t questioning the AI-industrial complex itself. “I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries,” began his “brave” statement standing up to the Pentagon.

Just to be extra sure that the point is not lost, Amodei is currently on an apology tour of sorts, going to great lengths to clarify in a recent blog post that he wasn’t daring to question the utility of AI in warfare or the absolute supremacy of the Pentagon in deciding how to use this technology on the battlefield: “As we stated last Friday, we do not believe, and have never believed, that it is the role of Anthropic or any private company to be involved in operational decision-making—that is the role of the military.”

Oh, and, by the way, he would also like you to know that AI is the future of the world—”In the end AI will be able to do everything, and we need to grapple with that”—but you shouldn’t blame it for job losses. Translation: the AI gravy train must roll on!

The dramatic back-and-forth between the AI company and the Department of War—culminating with the Pentagon declaring Anthropic a “supply-chain risk” and ordering its phaseout from military systems over the next six months—is, of course, completely meaningless.

Not only has Sam Altman’s OpenAI reaffirmed that its own AI technology can be weaponized and deployed by the warmongers however they like but Anthropic’s Claude is in fact central to America’s war efforts in Iran.

As recent reports note, despite being on the phase-out list, Claude is currently being paired with the US military’s Maven Smart System—a real-time targeting system developed by Palantir—to independently generate strike lists for the Epstein Fury campaign.

As planning for a potential strike in Iran was underway, Maven, powered by Claude, suggested hundreds of targets, issued precise location coordinates, and prioritized those targets according to importance, said two of the people. The pairing of Maven and Claude has created a tool that is speeding the pace of the campaign, reducing Iran’s ability to counterstrike and turning weeks-long battle planning into real-time operations, said one of the people. The AI tools also evaluate a strike after it is initiated, the person said.

Regardless of the reality on the ground, however, the Anthropic-DoW spat has served to cement the AI/warfare narrative into place. AI is now officially a national security imperative, and any company that does not pledge 100% fealty to the warmongers will be thrown under the bus.

The AI-industrial complex is here.

But what does this mean?

AI AND THE GRAND CHESSBOARD

It isn’t hard to see how the “AI-industrial complex” narrative is going to play out in the great struggle between nations.

AI is now a national security imperative, not just for the US but for China, Russia, North Korea, the UK and all the other assorted villains and puppets on the 2D chessboard.

The growing importance of AI on the 21st century battlefield is reflected not just in the increasing use of AI in targeting and weapons systems in the ongoing conflict in Iran, but in what Iran is choosing to target with its autonomous kamikaze drones.

As James Evan Pilato reported in the most recent edition of New World Next Week, Iran is now deliberately targeting commercial data centres in the Middle East. Indeed, last week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) confirmed that one cluster of data centres in the United Arab Emirates—referred to internally as ME-CENTRAL-1 Region (mec1-az2)—was experiencing “operational issues” due to “localized power issues” stemming from the attack.

Lest there be any doubt, no, that data centre strike was not a one-off event. In fact, Iran has come right out and admitted that the targeting of data centres is an important part of their 21st-century military strategy.

As The Register reports, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is now officially targeting data centres as part of its deliberate war strategy. They’ve even expanded their target list to include not only Amazon data centres in the region, but Microsoft facilities as well.

In a Telegram post that The Register translated from Farsi to English using Google Translate and Bing Translate, the Fars News Agency claimed Iran sent drones to attack Amazon’s data centre in Bahrain, “to identify the role of these centres in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities.”

“The attacks are part of the IRGC’s recent operations against Amazon data centres in Dubai and other strategic centres in the region,” the post adds, before concluding “Amazon and Microsoft in these operations has dealt a serious blow to the enemy’s technological and information infrastructure.”

If your natural reaction to hearing this news is, “Oh no! Won’t someone do something about the data centres!” then you’re in luck! ZeroHedge’s Tyler Durden is apparently very excited that his/her/its/their January article, “Explosion In AI Data Center Buildouts Will Demand Next-Gen Counter-Drone Security,” has been vindicated, and equally excited that this will be a boon for the AI-industrial complex and its auxiliary AI defense industry.

The key takeaway is that Wall Street analysts and data center developers have just received a major wake-up call: trillions of dollars in planned data center buildouts will require next-generation security, including high-tech counter-drone detection, tracking, and kinetic interception systems. This follows the Ukraine war and other recent modern battlefields, which have sparked the hyper-development of cheap, dual-use, consumer-grade drones that can be mass-produced at a fraction of the cost of traditional air-delivered munitions. We said weeks ago, this proliferation of drones and AI kill chains has given readers a glimpse of the 2030s battlefield.

Our view is that Wall Street will now begin searching for “war unicorns“ specializing in counter-threat systems, whether in detection, electronic warfare, or kinetic defenses, as the world appears increasingly unstable and the need to harden critical data center infrastructure against FPV and other drone threats becomes a national security threat. [Emphases in original.]

Yay?

Of course, you’re not a low info Zero Hedge reader. You’re a smart, switched-on Corbett Report Subscriber reader, and you recognize a Problem-Reaction-Solution gambit when you see one.

You know that there is a vast popular movement rising up against the data centre behemoths that are spreading like a cancer across the earth. You know that people are fed up with rising electricity prices and depleting water resources and environmental degradation. You know that they’re already fed up with Palantir and these other AI companies using their technology to spy on us all and direct their blood money operations overseas. You recognize that the new Iranian threat to data centres is providing military planners with the perfect opportunity to declare these data centres to be vital to national security and thus sacrosanct.

And, most important of all, you no doubt already suspect what the data centre strikes unfolding across the newsfeeds really reveal is that none of this Iranian or Ukrainian or Israeli AI war propaganda is about the 2D chessboard at all. Rather, you know it’s actually about the fifth-generation war on everyone.

THE (AI-ASSISTED) WAR ON US ALL

Yes, China is rolling out its “AI+ Action Plan.”

Yes, NATO is revising its Artificial Intelligence strategy to “encourage the development and use of AI in a responsible manner for Allied defense and security purposes.”

Yes, Ukraine is using AI to automate drone strikes against Russia, thus quadrupling their hit rate.

And yes, American deep state stooges like Erik Prince and Alex Karp are engaging in full-on public meltdowns of excitement over the future of AI-enabled warfare.

But this AI-industrial complex revolution is, at base, nothing to do with the stage-managed pro wrestling theatrics taking place on the global 2D chess board.

As you know by now, the real fight is the fifth-generation war on everyone. And in the 5GW, you are the target, not the Ayatollahs in Iran or the ChiComs or the Russkies or whatever bogeyman is being held up as the epitome of all evil in the world this week.

Thus, the real question is not how this AI technology will be weaponized against “our” “enemies” on the global chessboard (whoever they may be) but how this technology will be weaponized against us. After all, does anyone see the drone swarms and humanoid robots and autonomous battlefield slaughterbots and not imagine that this technology will be used by governments around the world primarily against their own populations?

Of course, there are the AI skeptics in the crowd. The ones who believe that machine learning and large language models and generative AI and autonomous weapons systems and all the other novel technologies that have begun to completely transform our world in the past several years are just parlour tricks. That “artificial intelligence” is an oxymoron, that there’s nothing novel about it, and that “AI” systems are just doing what someone has programmed them to do.

These skeptics are wrong, technically, socially, economically, psychologically and philosophically, and will be proven so in short order.

Even if these AI-deniers were right, however, there are a couple of points about this coming age of “AI warfare” that everyone can unite on.

Firstly, it is important to note that, regardless of whether autonomous weapons really are autonomous in some existential, angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin sense or not, the idea that they are autonomous will undoubtedly be used in the future to expiate guilt for battlefield massacres. “No, the US did not kill those surrendering soldiers! A malfunctioning robot did!” Or: “No, Israel did not slaughter that Palestinian family in cold blood! That was a Boston Dynamics robot with some crossed wires!”

And secondly, no one is denying that these generative AI tools are now being used to deploy real-time, realistic and personally tailored misinformation at scale. Everyone on Twitter or any other major social media platform these days can attest to that fact...or so I assume. I’m not on those platforms myself.

But the AI-generated images are not just tricking your grandpa on Facebook. They’re tricking outlets like The Tehran Times, which just posted a satellite before/after photo of a bombed-out site—supposedly an American radar installation in Qatar destroyed by Iranian missiles.

The only problem is that this image is literal fake news, an AI-generated deep fake that does not correspond to reality. The same goes for a dramatic (but AI-altered) photo of an Iranian strike on a US base in Iraq:

And the equally dramatic (but equally AI faked) image of the moment Ayatollah Khamanei’s body was found in the rubble of a bombed-out building.

If the first casualty of war is truth, as the old adage has it, then it seems AI has launched the opening salvo of this latest conflict.

Indeed, I’m afraid we are crossing the threshold into the age of AI warfare just as we have crossed the threshold into the age of drone warfare in recent years. What’s more, whether you believe in the reality of artificial intelligence or not will matter little if and when you’re staring down the barrel of a weapon wielded by a supposedly autonomous robot.

Welcome to the 21st century, everyone! Are you enjoying this sneak preview of WWIII yet?

Copyright 2026 CorbettReport.com

---