Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Anthropic’s ongoing battle with the Pentagon over the military’s use of its AI systems flared up this week around a hypothetical nuclear strike scenario, according to new reporting from the Washington Post. The Claude AI builder has frustrated the Pentagon by objecting to its systems being used for autonomous weaponry and the mass surveillance of US citizens. To cut to the heart of the debate, a defense official told WaPo, the Pentagon’s technology chief posed an extreme hypothetical: would Anthropic let the military use Claude to help shoot down a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile? Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s response apparently irritated Pentagon leaders. “You could call us and we’d work it out,” was how the defense source characterized it, in WaPo’s words. An Anthropic spokesperson denied that Amodei gave that response and called the account “patently false.” The company had agreed to allow Claude to be used for missile defense, they said. Be that as it may, it’s clear …