Nournews: The Wall Street Journal, citing the U.S. company Anthropic, has reported that an Iran-linked group used the AI model Claude to collect and analyze information about U.S. warships.

According to Anthropic, the group gathered data on the location of ships and aircraft, commercial satellite imagery, military imagery, and information about naval communications systems, then used Claude to turn the data into actionable targeting intelligence.

The strategic significance of the report, however, goes well beyond the fact that an Iran-linked group used a U.S.-developed AI model. It highlights a more important reality: technology is no longer necessarily an exclusive advantage of its original owner. What ultimately matters in war is a country’s ability to acquire, absorb, localize, develop and translate technology into operational power.

And that may be one of the most important realities to emerge from the recent war between Iran, the United States and Israel.

The United States and Israel entered the war relying on one of the world’s most advanced military technology ecosystems—from satellites, intelligence and artificial intelligence to electronic warfare, advanced aircraft, precision weapons, drones and air-defense systems. Information and technological superiority were among the central pillars of their strategy.

But the war produced a major surprise: their assessment of Iran’s technological capabilities, capacity for indigenous development and ability to regenerate military power proved to be out of step with realities on the battlefield.

The assumption that striking command centers, production sites, air-defense systems and military infrastructure could disable Iran’s military capabilities within a short period of time did not match what happened on the ground. Iran was able to preserve its defensive and offensive capabilities after extensive attacks and continued missile and drone operations with significant intensity and accuracy. At various points, it was also able to strike U.S. and Israeli military targets at considerable distances.

The significance of this development is not simply the number of missiles or drones launched. The more important issue is the technological, industrial and military architecture that makes it possible to produce, deploy and regenerate that power.

Imported Technology or Indigenous Capability?

One of the common mistakes in assessing Iran’s military capabilities is to view a weapon as an isolated product. In modern warfare, the final product is only the tip of the iceberg. Behind a missile or drone lies an entire chain of knowledge involving design, engineering, materials, software, electronics, manufacturing, maintenance, upgrades and specialized personnel.

If that chain depends on foreign suppliers, cutting off imports or destroying factories can bring it to a halt. But when technological know-how and manufacturing capabilities have been institutionalized domestically and distributed across a network of facilities, industries, universities, engineers and production lines, destroying several installations does not necessarily mean destroying the technology itself.

This point became particularly important during the recent war.

The United States and Israel repeatedly claimed that they had destroyed a large portion of Iran’s defense and missile infrastructure. But subsequent reports, including in U.S. media, indicated that missile production continued or resumed at various facilities, particularly underground sites. The Wall Street Journal has also reported that despite damage to its infrastructure, Iran resumed production of ballistic missiles, with some of that activity taking place at underground facilities.

There is therefore a major difference between destroying infrastructure and destroying technology.

A factory, warehouse or production facility can be destroyed. But if the knowledge and production chain have been domestically developed and embedded in a distributed architecture, the capacity to rebuild and reproduce remains.

Shahed: When an Iranian Weapon Becomes a Model for Major Militaries

The Shahed-136 drone is one of the clearest examples of this trend.

Its combination of relatively low cost, considerable range, mass-production capability and suitability for saturation attacks has made the drone one of the most significant developments in modern drone warfare. Russia has also produced and developed domestically modified versions of the drone under the name Geran.

But the more interesting example is the American response.

In 2025, the U.S. Air Force sought the production of a “one-to-one copy” of the Shahed-136 as an experimental platform for developing and testing counter-drone systems. At the same time, the U.S. company SpektreWorks developed LUCAS, a low-cost drone inspired by the Shahed design, which was used in U.S. operations in 2026.

There may be debate over the exact degree of copying involved in the different platforms. But the broader trend is difficult to ignore: a weapons concept developed by Iran has become a model of interest to some of the world’s most powerful militaries.

This demonstrates that technological transfer does not always flow from major powers to other countries. Sometimes a technology is tested on the battlefield, and major powers subsequently turn to it either to counter it or to exploit the underlying concept themselves.

Iran Prepared for War with the U.S.; the U.S. Was Not Equally Prepared for War with Iran

The more important difference lies in the military architecture of the two sides.

For years, Iran had understood that any war with the United States and Israel would involve facing the other side’s superiority in air power, intelligence, satellite surveillance and reconnaissance. Iran therefore designed part of its strategy around neutralizing precisely those advantages: underground facilities, dispersion, concealment, mobility, stockpiling, decentralized networks, the ability to regenerate capabilities, and missile and drone forces capable of striking deep into enemy territory.

This architecture allowed Iran to retain part of its overall military capacity even when some of its infrastructure was lost.

By contrast, the United States had deployed a significant portion of its forces and military infrastructure in the region at fixed, identifiable bases, relying heavily on air superiority, intelligence capabilities and air-defense systems.

The war showed that these advantages were not an absolute shield.

Recent CNN reporting has pointed to internal discussions within the U.S. military and intelligence establishment about changing the pattern of the American military presence in the region. Moving some facilities underground is reportedly among the options being considered, a step that has gained greater significance after vulnerabilities at some U.S. bases were exposed by Iranian attacks.

From this perspective, a striking paradox has emerged:

Before the war, Iran had redesigned its military architecture to counter America’s technological superiority. After experiencing the war, the United States is reconsidering the architecture of its own military deployments to counter Iran’s capabilities.

This does not necessarily mean “complete copying.” But it does show that the battlefield can force even a technologically superior power to learn from the experience of its adversary.

The Core Miscalculation: Measuring Iran by What Could Be Seen

Perhaps the most important mistake made by the United States and Israel was measuring Iran’s capabilities primarily by the number of identifiable sites, systems and facilities rather than by its actual capacity to produce and regenerate military power.

They were able to inflict significant damage. But destroying infrastructure alone is not enough to eliminate a technology.

When design and manufacturing knowledge have been developed domestically, specialized personnel are available, domestic supply chains have been established, and capabilities are distributed across multiple facilities—with some located underground—striking those facilities does not necessarily mean bringing production to an end.

This may have been one of the factors that received less attention in the calculations made before the war.

The United States and Israel remain ahead of Iran in many advanced military technologies, and the issue is fundamentally not one of technological parity between the two sides.

But superiority in several advanced technologies is not the same as having the ability to destroy the adversary’s technological capabilities.

Iran’s advantage in this context lies less in possessing the world’s most advanced technologies than in its ability to absorb technology, reverse-engineer it, localize it, adapt it to its needs, reduce costs, mass-produce it and build an architecture resilient enough to withstand attack.

From Claude to Shahed: The End of Technological Monopoly

The report about the use of Claude should therefore be viewed in this broader context.

The incident, by itself, does not demonstrate Iranian superiority in artificial intelligence. An Iran-linked group was able to use a U.S. model to combine and analyze available data, and Anthropic subsequently blocked the accounts involved after identifying the activity.

But the episode highlights an important reality: in the age of artificial intelligence, data and technology can be rapidly transferred, absorbed and redesigned, making traditional technological monopolies increasingly difficult to maintain.

For decades, Iran has pursued precisely this logic across various military fields: acquiring technology, learning from it, localizing it, developing it and turning it into part of an independent defense capability.

A War That Changed an Assumption

The recent war was therefore not simply a test of missiles, aircraft and air-defense systems. It was a test of two different models of technological power.

The first model relied on overwhelming superiority in advanced technologies, intelligence, surveillance and military networks, and assumed that this superiority could destroy the adversary’s infrastructure and military capabilities within a relatively short period of time.

The second model relied on localization, dispersion, underground facilities, mass production, cost reduction and the ability to regenerate capabilities after sustaining strikes.

The battlefield showed that the second model cannot be eliminated simply by destroying several key facilities.

Iran did not prove that it is technologically superior to the United States across all areas of advanced military technology; such a claim is not necessary in the first place.

What the war demonstrated is that Iran has succeeded in turning a significant level of technology into an indigenous and reproducible capability—one sufficient to preserve defensive power and generate offensive capacity against one of the world’s most advanced militaries.

Perhaps that is why, on one side of the battlefield, an Iranian drone design has become a model for development and production by major militaries, while on the other, the United States is considering hardening and moving some of its own facilities underground.

These are not merely isolated developments. They are signs of a broader shift:

The technological monopoly is eroding.

The recent war showed that the central question is no longer simply who possesses the most advanced technology. The more important question is who can absorb technology more effectively, localize it, protect it against attack and reproduce it when necessary.

And that may be the most important factor the United States and Israel failed to account for in their pre-war assessment of Iran.