The Morning Download: AI Accelerates Pace of War

Good morning. AI is accelerating the pace of some military operations in Iran. The U.S. and Israeli attacks unfolded at unprecedented speed and precision given months of planning, a massive assemblage of force and AI never before deployed on this scale, the Wall Street Journal says.

The Journal’s Daniel Michaels and Dov Lieber report that AI tools are helping gather intelligence, pick targets, plan bombing missions and assess battle damage at unprecedented speed. Highlights from the full story:

• AI helps commanders manage supplies of everything from ammunition to spare parts and lets them choose the best weapon for each objective.
• Israeli intelligence services had for years been monitoring hacked Tehran traffic cameras and eavesdropping on senior officials’ communications—increasingly relying on AI to sift through a flood of intercepts.
• Many military officials involved in AI projects warn that the technology’s capabilities risk prompting an overreliance on information it provides—a trend linked with the phrase, “The computer said to do this.”
• Offloading decisions to AI “is a serious concern,” said Emelia Probasco, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. who held various posts in the Navy. She said that, as with other weapons systems, safeguards must be implemented to limit risks. “That infrastructure is underinvested in now,” she said.

Today, we feature the second part of our Leadership Outlook with Principal Financial Group CEO Deanna Strable and CIO Kathy Kay. In yesterday’s newsletter, we wrote about their approach leading the deployment of AI at the financial services group. Today, we explore their broader leadership practices, especially as they relate to AI.

Strable and Kay are working to address the inherent risks of aggressive AI adoption. Strable expressed concern that over-automating customer interactions could strip the company of an important connection. The company must identify and preserve "moments that matter,” or highly emotional or complex interactions where customers truly want to speak to a human. And she warns that automating away all entry-level, fundamental tasks could inadvertently destroy the training ground needed to develop the next generation of financial workers.

“How do we make sure we're training and developing the next generation of workers?” Strable asked. “We don't want to automate so much that they're not learning the fundamental parts of our business."

Kay advises technologists against chasing "shiny objects." In her view,technologists need to deeply understand underlying business problems before attempting to apply a technological fix.

Strable says she’s had her share of surprises since taking the helm of Principal in January 2025. She experienced a sudden isolation. For the first time in her career, she no longer had a lateral team of peers sitting around her with whom she can casually vent or debate. And she was surprised by how quickly the CEO becomes the public face of the company for broader social issues.

Strable, who has held 15 different roles across the company, advises emerging leaders to aggressively step outside their comfort zones. And she urges professionals to lean into their natural strengths for "hard skills," but actively lean into weaknesses when it comes to so-called soft skills.

“There's this common leadership belief that you just lean into your strengths and one of my learnings through my career is for hard skills, you should lean into your strengths but for soft skills, you should lean into your weaknesses, not to make them a strength but to make them not a derailer,” she said. “I was petrified of public speaking early in my career, I'm never going to become the greatest public speaker but I knew I had to lean into it enough to be considered for the roles that I had.”

Anthropic sues Pentagon, gains fans. Anthropic sued the Trump administration Monday over its designation as a security threat and move to cancel its federal contracts, naming the Defense Department, Pete Hegseth, and other officials as defendants.

Shortly after Anthropic filed its lawsuit, 37 AI researchers at competitors OpenAI and Google filed a brief urging the court to side with Anthropic, warning the punishment could damage U.S. competitiveness in AI.

The battle signals not only a new front in the fight between Anthropic and the Trump administration, but in the AI talent wars as well, WSJ reports.

At least two senior OpenAI employees — researcher Max Schwarzer and robotics hardware lead Caitlin Kalinowski — resigned citing the company's Pentagon deal. Schwarzer joined Anthropic directly.

Culture is a competitive moat. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers who believed safety was being sacrificed for speed. That mission-first identity has proved durable: When Meta launched an aggressive recruiting blitz last summer, Anthropic lost only two employees, according to CEO Dario Amodei.

China's AI companies are embracing the lobster. The term “raising a lobster” has been trending on Chinese social media, a nod to the lobster logo for OpenClaw, WSJ reports. The open-source AI assistant created by Austrian Peter Steinberger can make and carry out decisions on the user’s behalf in the real world, and has become a hit in China’s tech community with Tencent, ByteDance and Alibaba all launching compatible products.

Former Meta chief scientist goes big. Advanced Machine Intelligence, the startup co-founded by Meta Platforms’ former chief artificial-intelligence scientist Yann LeCun, said it raised $1.03 billion in a seed funding round as it seeks to develop a new breed of AI systems that can better understand the real world than existing models, WSJ reports. He recently left Meta, telling colleagues that large language models are a dead end in the pursuit of computers that can truly outthink humans.

Nvidia saves the robots. Nvidia and ABB Robotics are partnering to integrate ABB's robot training software with Nvidia's Omniverse platform, enabling industrial robots to train in virtual environments before real-world deployment, FT reports. Nvidia also has robot partnerships with Boston Dynamics, Uber and LG Electronics.

HPE rides AI wave. HPE raised its 2026 earnings outlook and boosted its networking revenue growth forecast to 68–73%, driven by strong AI and data-center demand, WSJ reports. The company said that it is securing supply of DRAM and NAND memory through expanded multiyear partner agreements as tight supply pushes costs higher.

OpenAI buys Promptfoo. The Morning Download has a favorite new startup name. It’s called Promptfoo and OpenAI recently acquired the cybersecurity startup, whose tools help test and secure AI systems. Promptfoo's team will join OpenAI, with its technology integrated into OpenAI's Frontier platform for AI agents, CNBC reports.

President Trump said he was eyeing a quick end to the war in Iran, as some of his advisers privately urged him to look for an exit plan amid spiking oil prices and concerns that a lengthy conflict could spark political backlash. (WSJ)

After 10 days of punishing airstrikes by the U.S. and Israel, Iran’s leadership is battered but showing signs it is still in control and able to fight. (WSJ)

Airports are warning travelers to prepare to spend hours in security checkpoint lines, with the partial government shutdown stretching federal security workers. (WSJ)

China’s shipments of goods abroad surged at the beginning of the year and its trade surplus rose, showing the country’s export juggernaut is chugging along ahead of President Trump’s visit to Beijing later this month. (WSJ)

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