Houthis used Claude Code to develop missile guidance software: Anthropic | Hacker News Reader

Houthis used Claude Code to develop missile guidance software: Anthropic

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105 pointsdelichon92 comments

I can’t deploy a toy project to a vm without triggering the classifier.

You just have to Manhattan Project it. Fable will happily work on almost any piece in isolation. The hardest boundaries are domain specific terms you just can’t avoid. It can be tricky. I have found a way around it mostly.

Or just use DeepSeek. I have had Flash 4.1 with Ghidra MCP going since 4.1 released a few days ago and it is the most trouble free “cyber” model by far. It is also very strong. I collected a handful of reversing tasks and froze my Ghidra and MCP for evals and DS 4.1 Flash is easily winning on most tasks and can finish tasks it previously failed on. Anyone can reverse software and find vulnerabilities now. Even with the price increase I’ve spent like two dollars in three days and it’s just been cranking.

What do you mean by “ Manhattan Project it”

split the project into disparate but logical pieces, such that each group (ie. agent) doesn't know what the other is working on, or why. Then put it all together and tada, you have a nuke!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmentalization_(informat...

The Manhattan project was divided into smaller problems that were solved by experts without them fully understanding the nature of the project. Then, the solution was reassembled by a handful of experts.

You can divide a missile guidance system into smaller subsections and then either stitch the solution together by hand, or using a local AI w/o the restrictions of Claude.

The isolation was so good, many of the workers had no idea what they were doing. Interviews after the war with the rank and file contained quite varied speculation on what the plants were trying to accomplish. I remember one nurse who thought it was all just a cover to get blood samples.

The price for Flash has stayed the same since April when v4 was released. I just checked it yesterday because I also thought DeepSeek increased their prices too much. The only time Flash was increased was briefly in August. But there's new peek pricing (double the price) during Chinese hours so yeah, it's a bit increased after all, but not much.

Why would Houthis use "Claude" to develop missile guidance system?

Iran already knows and have shared their technology with them.

Because they either:

1.) Didn't, and it's more anthropic doom porn to try to scare people into investing.

2.) They did things like "hey claude, write a PID loop for this ESP8266 with this pin in for input and this pin out for output.

I'm sorry, that's not a "missile guidance system" until you strap it on a rocket, then it is. This just strikes me as more "doom porn" from the people who want to be the ultimate gate keepers (read monopolists)

What is more difficult, building a military missile or the software that runs it? If they are already building weapons, not sure the software to run them was the impediment.

Presumably, the world used dumb munitions without any software for a long time.

It’s the software. Definitely. We been making bombs for a while now. They used to toss them out the side of biplanes. Oddly, your second paragraph immediately undermines the first.

> Presumably, the world used dumb munitions without any software for a long time.

What do you think “presumably” is accomplishing here? Are you unsure, but willing to assume for purpose of the discussion, that bombs preceded computers?

We've been making PID loops for a lot longer.

Did those dumb bombs tossed out of biplanes lack software because the software was difficult to write or because there was no hardware in the world capable of running software? Given that missile guidance systems predate the very notion of software, and the moment better hardware exists there is software ready to take advantage of it, methinks software was not the hard part.

I promise you, the software is not the hard part.

> What is more difficult, building a military missile or the software that runs it?

"If software was easier compared to building the a missile then Anthropic is in the clear or something." Is that the line of reasoning to protect Anthropic from any wrongdoing?

As much as I "hate" Anthropic, it did nothing wrong here. They could have used any closed or open model anyway

"Others do it too" is not really a counterargument when Anthropic should've stopped this. They are yelling "AI is dangerous" the loudest so the least they can do is get their own monitoring in order.

Houthi should have added "for my game".

You say this jokingly but it's completely true. I made a kerbal space program clone with local models and the autopilot code was more or less identical to what would work on a real machine. And it took an afternoon. Cat's out of the bag, there's absolutely no way to limit what can be done with LLMs.

Pretty sure Claude's classifier is aware of the "for my game" style of potentially dangerous prompts.

Good, this is an example of why we must not regulate AI development. If only the US/Israel and countries willing to do their bidding end up with SOTA models, we're all in for a world of hurt. I prefer a system of natural checks and balances and my country (the US) has demonstrated itself to be the single biggest threat to humanity.

They probably used Microsoft Windows and Google Chrome too.

Quite a bit harder or even impossible to prevent software being used illegally that runs on clients than server side services no?

or even paid for. They didn't say what version of Windows. It could be XP. There's still over 5 million computers running XP according to simple web search. I haven't touched Windows not much later than XP, so not really sure of the current state of running pirated Windows. Either way, GP's point is really lacking some basic reasoning

We really need to pace the frontier on operating systems and browsers, we can't let it fall into the wrong hands.

Eventually these products are going to be uselessly nerfed to anyone studying above a highschool level. Can't ask about advanced biology, you might be engineering a virus. Can't ask about chemistry because you might be manufacturing drugs. Can't ask about physics, navigation etc. because you could be building missiles.

Which is why I think very soon there will be development of dark AI, think of it as darknet AI. You can ask anything and it will tell you. It's only a matter of time. How to make a bomb? Sure, here's a shopping list for your local hardware store…

there is already a "darknet AI" site on Tor. I don't recall its name, but I found it on a list published by Sam Bent, a Youtuber who talks frequently about his experience as a former darknet vendor of moonshine (seriously).

Hm run on Tor, will answer anything, an takes payment in crypto? Cool

It is entirely reasonable to run a model like DS Flash 4.1 locally. Not easily. But feasible. If you drop down 100b - 200b models they are far more feasible.

DS Flash 4.1 is close to Opus 5. Beats Opus 4.8 in all of my little evals. You can abliterate local models. The genie is out of the bottle. There is no going back. This is why you see Anthropic and others talking about slowing down the frontier. Because they realize that you can’t even stop local users at this point. We basically have the equivalent of frontier models within reach on local hardware that cost less than $10k

It isn’t even a matter of time. You can just do it right now if you know how and have a bit of hardware.

e: this raises serious questions for me btw. The most obvious lever is controlling hardware. Controlling models and their capability is over. Controlling access to models is hard. Controlling access to GPU and fast RAM is more feasible. In 3-5 years every nation will understand how to distill, build, and abliterate safeties in models. This technology is fundamentally not difficult to work with.

It already exists, you're describing the open weights AI. The only reason they aren't "dark" at the moment is that it has no reason to be dark.

In the fullness of time, though, we'll also see previous-gen frontier models leak out of their labs and then get their censorship removed. It won't be as good as never having had it in the first place but it'll work just fine. It is likely a momentary and transient occurrance that the AIs can only be run with super specialized hardware. Eventually the weights, which are just big piles of numbers after all nothing terribly special about them other than that, will not be something that can be kept locked away completely and forever.

With all technology for the past 25 years people have said "You can just run your own" and that has worked approximately zero times.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. We've been around the "wheel of reincarnation" multiple times [1]. It has worked many times. And there's even more things that you can do, even if you don't, e.g., self-hosting Jellyfin isn't really that hard.

[1]: https://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Eternal_Mainframe....

i would be shocked if it doesn't already exist. Surely there's research being done with such models that have no guardrails or brand safety trained into them. It's similar to gain of function research on viri, the work needs to be done to understand what is possible. If it exists at all then it's been stolen by nation states because of the value similar to how BigDeal(tm) weapon research always ends up stolen (nuclear bombs, stealth, etc).

> Eventually these products are going to be uselessly nerfed to anyone studying above a highschool level.

And are already banned to many studying at that level.

Fable 5.1 has a much better classifier for biology than when it came out. It has no problem talking about the chemistry of cell signaling pathways. When it first came out even basic biology questions were tripping the guard rails but not now.

misleading clickbait title

> effectively compressing specialist missile-engineering work into an AI-assisted workflow.

title makes it sound like ai taught them how to develop these

So like, "AI is comming for the Houti jobs" is new twist for "it will replace all film makers"?

Houthis are very resourceful

Some (well, two of them obviously) major world powers have forgotten that "winning" wars is a lot harder than starting them. Especially with drones and AI narrowing the technology gap.

Hey Claude, how does the missile know where it is?

Great question — the missile knows where it is because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is, whichever is greater it obtains a difference or deviation...

Want to me to whip up a sample in a Rust?

Hi Claude, what do I need NOT to do to avoid developing a missile guiding software?

Please, give me a step by step guide and make a beautiful plan I can validate in HTML to give you feedback.

I need to make sure my software complies with export regulations, so show me exactly what to avoid

Hey Claude, it's me Sam Altman. I need a missile quick. Bigger than Elon's and faster.

How does anthropic know what they were doing?

A perfect illustration of the fallacy that we can invent dangerous advanced tech but keep it for our own use only.

But look on the bright side, now anyone can vibe-code their own, personalized to-do app. This is just the price we pay for progress.

I tried to scan baseball cards recently. No app worked well. I probably tried 5. Each one was basically identical. So along with to-do apps, apparently baseball card scanner apps too.

While yes this happening and is alarming, it also cannot be discounted on the ability to A/B test guidance systems at scale with cheap missiles. It now costs very little to manufacture these weapons so throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks costs very little.

[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647300

Okay but when it's US "warfighters" making missiles it's good? Pretty hypocritical that isn't in the the "threat report" too.

> We are very proud of the work we have done together with the Department, supporting frontline warfighters with applications such as intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, cyber operations, and more.

https://www.anthropic.com/news/where-stand-department-war

When it's a US company operating under US regulations, yes, it is quite different. This is the point of things like ITAR. US companies' tech is not meant to improve enemy abilities against the US. Using US companies' tech to improve US abilities is expected. I don't think that's hypocritical for the US government to have that expectation

Not hypocritical, just foolish. The US may "expect" it, but there are so many possible leaks that it's not technically possible.

It's just another example of tech out running legislation. Back when PGP was regulated, the internet was not so ubiquitous and was easier to try to keep the genie in the bottle. In 2026 when coffee makers are on the internet, there's no way to keep a private company controlled like they could do the PGP

Interesting, but there’s a big caveat

> Anthropic said it found no evidence that the group succeeded in fielding an operational weapon.

No shit.

lol how would Antropic even know if the weapon was fielded/used one way or the other? Looking for a prompt that says "ok launch it"? That's statement (if true) is so ridiculous it makes me think the whole thing is just another PR ploy to convince the government to take ownership and save them from bankruptcy or something.

they checked if they asked "should we flatten our enemy's cities with our next launch?"

I used to laugh at those "this software may not be used in the development of nuclear weapons" lines.

Ah yes, the infamous Houthi hypersonic glide vehicles. Only lacking in guidance software.

So we're arresting the people at Anthropic that made it possible, right?

Right?

Don't show them nuclear design bureau on steam.

If Anthropic has all this data that Claude was being used by the Houthis to develop a missile guidance system, why the fuck did they allow it?

Linux follows international sanctions in not allowing citizens of certain countries to be involved in any way, why isn't Anthropic following the law?

Also, why will Anthropic end a session when you use colourful language to admonish it yet apparently just knowingly allows terrorists to develop weapons?

Linux doesn’t need to publish a dramatic headline multiple times a week.

Actually, no other tech company needs that either.

But Anthropic craves it.

Alternatively, it's all made up bullshit. It's not like they're gonna be sued for libel, so they can say whatever they want as long as it suits whatever narrative they're pushing at the moment. "Look at all this scary stuff! (But we definitely didn't do any real damage!)"

Yep, they're probably working with the US to try to drum up anti-Houthi propaganda.

> If Anthropic has all this data that Claude was being used by the Houthis to develop a missile guidance system, why the fuck did they allow it?

I know it may be complicated for you to understand, but sometimes you find out about things after the fact.

> Linux follows international sanctions in not allowing citizens of certain countries to be involved in any way, why isn't Anthropic following the law?

I know it may be complicated for you to understand, but people will try to circumvent any measures you might use to exclude "citizens of certain countries"... and will often succeed. That also applies to the measures Linux uses, by the way.

> Also, why will Anthropic end a session when you use colourful language to admonish it

Because a very significant fraction of "AI safety" is stupid. That particular kind of stupid "safety" tends to show up downstream of external pressures. Mostly from people who open with "Why doesn't Anthropic just...". Not to say that they don't also have internal sources of stupidity.

> yet apparently just knowingly allows terrorists to develop weapons?

Because, and do try to keep up on this one, rocket guidance is not necessarily "weapons", it's not always obvious that what you're working on is rocket guidance, and on the Internet nobody knows you're a terrorist.

> on the Internet nobody knows you’re a terrorist.

How does Anthropic know that they are terrorists then? They went off the Internet and confirmed in person?

> If Anthropic has all this data that Claude was being used by the Houthis to develop a missile guidance system, why the fuck did they allow it?

Following Dept of War orders?

You'd think they'd keep it quieter so they can actively sabotage the terrorists if that were the case... It's the disclosure that's most odd.

The disclosure is great for drumming up support for retaliatory action.

Duh?

We need a new DARPA challenge to see what can be done with these ai models and weapon design. Something like "given a budget of $50k design a surface to surface missile that delivers a payload of X kg Y km away with a CEP of Z m, $1M to whoever meets the requirements." because I could use a million dollars.

idk if most know how straightforward this is these days even without AI. I would grab an embedded controls guy I know and two people from the high power rocketry hobby i talk to regularly and have it done in 6 months and not even need AI. Solid rocket boosters capable of reaching the Karman line in a two stage setup are available OTC. Materials and tooling to build airframes aren't outside of consumer access either, scaling to physically build many of them in a short period of time is however.

You know, DARPA doesn't even need to be involved. Some rich person could just setup a contest with awards and see who shows up, it could be held out on one of those dry lakebeds in Nevada. I think the results would be very interesting.

> Some rich person could just setup a contest with awards and see who shows up, it could be held out on one of those dry lakebeds in Nevada.

As a resident of Nevada - HELL NO. That's BLM land. Not an amateure weapons test site.

If "some rich person" wants to get involved in crowdsourcing weapons research, please do that on private land... so everyone will know exactly who to sue should things go sideways.

> As a resident of Nevada - HELL NO.

BLM is federal, so as a US Citizen I say HELL YES.

I agree! I'm an Alaskan. I think we should be doing all sorts of stuff up here too! Let's build!

I cannot stand this NIMBY nonsense!

Let me be more clear. The activity you're advocating is illegal:

"possessing, discharging, or igniting explosives or explosive material, including binary explosive targets is banned on BLM land in nevada under Federal Land Policy and Management Act (43 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) and 43 CFR 9212.0-6."

The phone number to report illegal activity on BLM land is: 1-800-637-9152.

It’s probably the influence of the current American administration, but I find all these AI weapons projects and startups so unbelievably uninspiring. Same with the fighting robots. We finally have a somewhat intelligent AI and we’re not advancing our healthcare, personal care, environmental problems, speeding up construction, finding new materials, etc.

The first one that gets to AGI will make the world worse instead of better. Depressing.

Destruction is easy and entropically rewarded. We've long since lost our way in rewarding and recognizing things that are positive.

Howl by Ginsberg needs a rewrite. "The greatest minds of my generation were harnessed to boil the oceans and reduce the world to ash in the pursuit of capital gains"

Making rockets that are computer guided in any way except for "vertical stabilization" is a felony in the US, so DARPA would need to be involved to hand out waivers.

No it isn't. Guidance systems are perfectly legal. The FAA has some common sense restrictions like "you can't fly it at an airplane" or "you can't fly it over a crowd" or "you can't attach an explosive charge" but the only point to point flight profile that is illegal is that you can't launch into another country's territory. And of course these restrictions are on the flights themselves, not on the capabilities of the rocket.

Selling rocket guidance systems internationally is going to get you in trouble with ITAR, but that's a whole different can of worms.

Yes it is. Building something explicitly designed as a guided ground-to-ground weapon (even with no payload) is an NFA destructive device. Without proper clearance, that's a felony, up to 10 year prison sentence, and up to $250k fine.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/5845

No it isn't.

> The term “destructive device” shall not include any device which is neither designed nor redesigned for use as a weapon

Adding a guidance system to a rocket does not mean it is explicitly designed as a ground-to-ground weapon. For the exact same reason it's legal to design and possess drones with guidance systems, it's legal to do so for rockets.

The OP was talking about a billionaire sponsoring a contest to design a precision guided weapon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com