Users in Houthi-Held Yemen Tried to Develop Advanced Weapons With AI, Anthropic Says
Anthropic says Claude users in Houthi-held northern Yemen attempted hypersonic missile and guidance software development; accounts were blocked, no operational weapon fielded.
Anthropic's third misuse report since March 2025, covering December through August, says users in northern Yemen ran three weapons programs, including a multi-variant hypersonic glide missile and a warhead maneuvered mid-course with mobile phone hardware. The users used Claude Code instead of human engineers to develop guidance, navigation and control software, conducted one failed guided rocket test, and built an offline simulation toolkit before Anthropic banned the accounts. Houthis denied relying on open sources for weapons development, and analysts noted they lack the industrial capacity to actually build hypersonic missiles.
- Users ran three weapons programs, including a multi-variant hypersonic glide missile and a phone-hardware-guided warhead.
- Claude Code replaced human engineers for guidance, navigation and control software; one guided rocket test failed.
- Anthropic banned the accounts after users had already built an offline simulation toolkit independent of Claude.
- Third Anthropic misuse report since March 2025; findings also cover propaganda and biological weapons research.
- Weapons analysts doubt Houthi production capability, but the episode highlights AI's rapid spread to battlefields.
- Vendors
- Anthropic
- Products
- ClaudeClaude Code
- Threat actors
- Houthis
- Organizations
- Armament Research Services
- AI models
- Claude
From the original article
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Anthropic said the users did not succeed in “fielding an operational device” but did carry out a failed test of a guided rocket. The post Users in Houthi-Held Yemen Tried to Develop Advanced Weapons With AI, Anthropic Says appeared first on SecurityWeek.
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