{"id":7008,"date":"2026-03-11T01:17:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T01:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/indopacom-was-all-in-on-anthropic-now-its-working-to-adjust\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T01:17:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T01:17:32","slug":"indopacom-was-all-in-on-anthropic-now-its-working-to-adjust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/indopacom-was-all-in-on-anthropic-now-its-working-to-adjust\/","title":{"rendered":"INDOPACOM was all in on Anthropic. Now it\u2019s working to adjust"},"content":{"rendered":"
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HONOLULU<\/strong>\u2014\u201cWhat happens when you concentrate on one [AI] model and all of a sudden that model isn\u2019t available to you?\u201d That\u2019s the reality that U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is living right now, its resources and requirements director said here Monday.<\/p>\n

The audience, after a beat, laughed cautiously at the realization that Bob Stephenson was likely referring to Anthropic\u2019s Claude model.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt happens,\u201d Stephenson said Monday at the Pacific Operational Science & Technology conference. \u201cYou know, I actually started thinking about this last September. We were working on a plan to be more model-neutral in our workforce. Now we\u2019re just going faster.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than a year ago, INDOPACOM integrated AI throughout its headquarters. Less than two weeks ago, President Trump directed federal agencies to stop using tools by Anthropic. And on Monday, the company sued the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and others, claiming illegal retaliation.<\/p>\n

Stephenson, moderating a panel focused on advanced partnerships for multi-domain command and control, described his own \u201cAI journey.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy challenge right now is: I\u2019m trying\u2014if you understand the seven functions of joint warfare\u2026those things all happen simultaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re going to send a ship into position to launch a missile\u2026you have to worry about, does it have enough fuel to get there? Is it going to have to be refueled when it gets back? What about reloading? What\u2019s the status of the launcher? What\u2019s the status of the weapon? And so on and so forth. And so these things all interact. So we\u2019re trying to use AI to create agentic workflows to allow us to do this at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other side of the world, in Central Command, he said, \u201cThey\u2019re executing about 1,000 fires a day. That\u2019s a lot. That\u2019s what we think, that\u2019s what modern warfare looks like. They\u2019re working really hard to try to stay up with this, and they\u2019re using some AI tools that actually worked well for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panelist Paul Gaertner, project leader for integrated command, control, communications and computing for the Australian Department of Defense, told the audience that he is worried about both under-trusting and over-trusting AI.<\/p>\n

Stephenson said he shares that concern. But when asked about allowing autonomous forms to manage themselves and mitigate their own risk, he said the answer is \u201csort of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy boss tells us that in offensive weapons, there must be human agency,\u201d Stephenson said, referring to commander Adm. Sam Paparo. But for defensive weapons, \u201cthe criteria varies. If somebody is shooting at you, there\u2019s much more latitude\u201d in having systems to automatically defend against the threat.<\/p>\n

Stephenson, who retired from the Navy in 2003 after 30 years of service, noted that the U.S. has had autonomous weapons systems since he was a captain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a need for autonomy. There is a desire for autonomy at the edge, but with some of them, every weapon we have has a failsafe. We obviously don\u2019t want to unleash a swarm that\u2019s just going to fly around and go after the wrong thing. So there will be limits,\u201d he said. But \u201cwe have these things called torpedoes that we have shot for, you know, a year or two, they worked out this thing called anti-circular run that kept the torpedo from zigzagging around\u201d and coming back to \u201cattack the thing that shot it. So think of a similar constraint for autonomous systems.\u201d\n\n<\/svg><\/p>\n<\/div>\n