The “Emirates 24” website reported that the Israeli “Walla” website published an analysis written by Shlomo Maoz, in which he discussed the frenetic race in the field of artificial intelligence, which is being led by the “Anthropic” company through its “Claude” model. The analysis indicated that this development raises existential questions for Israel about the possibility of benefiting from this advanced technology to confront military threats, most notably the Iranian ballistic missile system. The analysis showed that Israel is already using artificial intelligence in the field, but this race requires huge investments that far exceed what the government currently allocates.
According to Walla, the impact of Claude’s artificial intelligence model has become clear, after the American newspaper “The Wall Street Journal” revealed his role in a US army operation that led to the arrest of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Anthropic is one of the pioneering companies in what is known as the “Fifth Industrial Revolution,” which focuses on the close integration between humans and machines. Cloud’s advanced capabilities, which surpassed OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, led to a decline in the shares of many software companies around the world, as Anthropic began to threaten its existence through its ability to automate complex processes that were limited to human teams or specialized programs.
The analysis explained that this technological race depends on billions of dollars in investments, as companies such as “OpenAI,” “Google,” and “xAI,” founded by Elon Musk, compete to control this field. However, this major expansion faces practical challenges, the most important of which is the severe shortage of electrical energy needed to operate the giant server farms that are constantly being built, which raises popular dissatisfaction due to high electricity bills and requires the construction of nuclear power plants.
In the midst of this competition, the interests of the technology giants are intertwined, as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft invest in Anthropic, while the latter is committed to purchasing cloud services from them, creating a complex network of alliances that is difficult for regulators to keep up with.
The analysis asked whether Israel could use advanced artificial intelligence like “Claude” in an attack against the Iranian ballistic missile system and other military facilities? He pointed out that Israel is considered a world leader in integrating artificial intelligence into the battlefield, as the Israeli army already uses systems capable of producing hundreds of targets daily by analyzing huge amounts of intelligence information.
However, Israel faces a dilemma. Using an American business model like Cloud to plan a sensitive attack against Iran carries information security risks, and the possibility that the company will block access at a critical moment. Therefore, Israel usually prefers to rely on closed internal models developed in its technological units such as the “8200” unit.
The analysis concluded by noting that Israel ranks seventh in the world in the field of artificial intelligence, and first in proportion to its size, but it relies on giant companies to operate large models. The writer believes that the budget allocated by the government to the national project for artificial intelligence, which amounts to 120 million shekels, is completely insufficient, and stresses that the matter is not related to business, but rather “Israel’s ability to survive in the face of enemies seeking to destroy it.”
