Russia is weaponizing US-built AI to make killer drones, cyberattack bots, and fake news

Russian President Vladimir Putin on a screen during a meeting of the United Russia Party, June 9, 2026, in Moscow, Russia. Contributor / Getty Images

AI companies are sounding alarms, but the Trump administration isn’t acting on them.

Artificial Intelligence

Kremlin-backed actors used Anthropic’s Claude AI to program autonomous lethal drones, improve hacking and influence operations, and avoid detection, the company said Thursday.

The report from the U.S.-based AI company is only the latest warning from firms, think tanks, and others that Russia, China, Iran and others are using made-in-America tools to attack targets around the world.

Anthropic reports that a Russian “freelance” group known as GTG-27005 used Claude to build an AI model small enough to work on single-board computers but powerful enough to enable a drone to “select targets (including a ‘person’ target class) and issue detonation commands without a human in the loop.” The group also used Claude to create software to allow autonomous drones to communicate with one another to improve targeting, Anthropic’s report says. While the Russian group had not yet deployed the model to the field, they were “using real hardware-in-loop testing within their sessions,” according to the report. The company banned the group, incorporated the findings of the investigation into its safeguards, and shared details with industry groups.

Anthropic also said it had spotted Chinese and Yemeni groups trying to use Claude to design conventional weapons, efforts that Anthropic said it disrupted.

The report also detailed how foreign groups were using Claude in elaborate data theft and disinformation campaigns. It said its tools had been used to dig up information about targets, find vulnerabilities in their online accounts, create malware to bypass security and steal data, cover their tracks, and spread disinformation.

“We’ve seen groups of actors use Claude to build networks of fake social media profiles and entire news sites,” the report said.

Putin allies wishcast nuclear war, America in crisis, and real-estate deals

The campaigns bear the hallmarks of Russian influence campaigns, such as the use of fake news sites and journalist profiles to spread lies about NATO activity in the Baltics. But the U.S.-built AI tools helped streamline the process, boosting the amount of disinformation and creating fake reporters that were much more believable to local audiences. Russian-linked groups “automated much of their operations from development, infrastructure acquisition, phishing, persistence through command and control, to data exfiltration,” the report said. The group even used AI to forge documents from the Central African Republic Gendarmerie and Ministry of Defense.

Another group, GTG-84005, used AI to steal census and public information that allowed its agents to tailor their messaging campaigns to specific audiences in Malaysia, where the Turkish group “laundered Russian and Chinese state media as independent reporting.”

Thursday’s Anthropic report comes two weeks after rival frontier lab OpenAI revealed that Russian actors used ChatGPT to create a fake “expert community”—the “International Burke Institute”—to push talking points to international audiences.

While Anthropic and OpenAI were able to disrupt the schemes they discovered, such operations are likely to continue as Russia uses AI to “scale production of content that aligns with Kremlin narratives,” according to an August report from the Institute for the Study of War, or ISW.

Russia is also using young people’s curiosity about AI to grow the number of humans spreading Russian disinformation, offering young people around the world “AI media internships and training” through university donations and related programs.

Where is the US pushback?

A recent article from New America notes that AI is giving authoritarian regimes a powerful new tool to distort global understanding of geopolitical events.

“Authoritarian regimes are early adopters in using AI to bend the arc of reality in their favor,” write Daniel Kimmage, the former acting coordinator and principal deputy coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, and Darjan Vujica.

It’s the kind of thing the U.S government used to establish and run organizations to push back on, they note. But such efforts have been undermined or brought to a halt under the second Trump administration. Less than a month after taking office, Attorney General Pam Bondi dissolved the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, the unit dedicated to investigating foreign disinformation and influence campaigns. Two months later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio shuttered the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference hub, known as R/Fimi.

And: “The 2025 White House AI Action Plan calls explicitly for removing any references to misinformation,” note Kimmage and Vujica.

At least when it’s made by foreigners.

“The Trump administration has enthusiastically embraced AI-generated imagery in politically divisive posts,” they write.

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2026年6月9日，俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京在莫斯科出席统一俄罗斯党会议时，屏幕上出现他的影像。（图片来源：Getty Images）

人工智能公司发出警告，但特朗普政府却无动于衷。

人工智能

该公司周四表示，克里姆林宫支持的行动者利用 Anthropic 的 Claude AI 对自主致命无人机进行编程，改进黑客攻击和影响力行动，并逃避侦测。

这家总部位于美国的AI公司发布的报告只是众多公司、智库和其他机构发出的最新警告，这些警告称，俄罗斯、中国、伊朗和其他国家正在使用美国制造的工具攻击世界各地的目标。

Anthropic公司报告称，一个名为GTG-27005的俄罗斯“自由职业”团队利用Claude软件构建了一个人工智能模型，该模型体积小巧，足以在单板计算机上运行，​​但功能强大，能够使无人机“在无人干预的情况下选择目标（包括‘人’目标类别）并发出引爆指令”。报告还指出，该团队利用Claude软件开发了软件，使自主无人机能够相互通信，从而提高目标定位精度。报告称，虽然该俄罗斯团队尚未将该模型部署到实际应用中，但他们“在测试过程中使用了真实的硬件在环测试”。Anthropic公司已禁止该团队参与其项目，并将调查结果纳入其安全措施，同时与行业组织分享了相关细节。

人为组织还表示，他们发现有中国和也门组织试图利用克劳德设计常规武器，并挫败了这些企图。

该报告还详细描述了外国组织如何利用Claude进行精心策划的数据窃取和虚假信息传播活动。报告称，Claude的工具被用于挖掘目标信息、发现其在线账户的漏洞、创建恶意软件以绕过安全措施窃取数据、掩盖踪迹以及散布虚假信息。

报告称：“我们发现一些演员团体利用克劳德建立虚假的社交媒体账号网络和整个新闻网站。”

普京盟友预言核战争、美国危机和房地产交易

这些行动带有俄罗斯影响力行动的典型特征，例如利用虚假新闻网站和记者账号散布关于北约在波罗的海地区活动的谎言。但美国开发的AI工具简化了这一流程，增加了虚假信息的传播量，并创建了更易被当地受众相信的虚假记者。报告称，与俄罗斯有关联的组织“实现了从发展、基础设施获取、网络钓鱼、通过指挥控制进行持续攻击到数据窃取等诸多行动的自动化”。该组织甚至利用AI伪造了中非共和国宪兵队和国防部的文件。

另一个组织 GTG-84005 利用人工智能窃取人口普查和公共信息，使其代理人能够针对马来西亚的特定受众定制宣传活动，而这个土耳其组织则“将俄罗斯和中国官方媒体洗白成独立报道”。

Anthropic 周四发布的报告是在竞争对手 OpenAI 两周前披露俄罗斯行为者利用 ChatGPT 创建了一个虚假的“专家社区”——“国际伯克研究所”——向国际受众推送论点之后发布的。

尽管 Anthropic 和 OpenAI 能够破坏他们发现的阴谋，但根据战争研究所 (ISW) 8 月份的一份报告，随着俄罗斯利用人工智能“扩大生产符合克里姆林宫叙事的内容”，此类行动可能会继续下去。

俄罗斯还利用年轻人对人工智能的好奇心来增加传播俄罗斯虚假信息的人数，通过大学捐赠和相关项目，向世界各地的年轻人提供“人工智能媒体实习和培训”。

美国的反击在哪里？

新美国基金会最近的一篇文章指出，人工智能正在为专制政权提供一种强大的新工具，以扭曲全球对地缘政治事件的理解。

“专制政权很早就开始利用人工智能来改变现实的走向，使之有利于自己，”美国国务院全球参与中心前代理协调员兼首席副协调员丹尼尔·金梅奇和达尔扬·武伊察写道。

他们指出，美国政府过去常常设立并运营相关机构来应对这类情况。但在特朗普第二任期内，此类努力遭到削弱或被迫中止。司法部长帕姆·邦迪上任不到一个月，就解散了联邦调查局的外国影响力工作组，该部门专门负责调查外国虚假信息和影响力活动。两个月后，国务卿马可·卢比奥关闭了反外国信息操纵和干预中心（简称R/Fimi）。

Kimmage 和 Vujica 指出：“2025 年白宫人工智能行动计划明确要求删除任何有关虚假信息的引用。”

至少当它是外国人制造的时候是这样。

他们写道：“特朗普政府热情地在具有政治分裂性的帖子中使用人工智能生成的图像。”

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