Samuel Burrell Samuel Burrell

This Week in Dual-Use

Anthropic released a powerful new version of its Claude AI model, called Mythos. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, said it is too powerful to be made generally available. Instead he will allow only a few trusted companies to use it.

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Samuel Burrell Samuel Burrell

This Week in Dual-Use

In the latest episode of Musk vs Bezos, Amazon is reportedly in talks to buy Globalstar, an American low orbit satellite constellation, in a continuation of its bid to compete with Starlink. It is mulling a valuation of $9B. That seems quite cheap.

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Samuel Burrell Samuel Burrell

This Week in Dual-Use

The UK confirmed that Iran fired two missiles at a British-American base in Diego Garcia. The missiles appeared to be two-stage intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

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Samuel Burrell Samuel Burrell

This Week in Dual-Use

Iran has destroyed an American radar in Jordan used missile defence. It’s not clear whether Iran used missiles or Shahed drones, or a combination of both to achieve this. What is certain is that it cost Iran a lot less than $300m to do so. It is one of Iran’s most successful attacks to date.

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Samuel Burrell Samuel Burrell

This Week in Dual-Use

Iran is to missiles what Ukraine is to drones. Those were the words of my Lebanese friend who sent me a few WhatsApp videos over the weekend. They featured different types of Iranian missile raining down on Israel. This week’s newsletter will therefore be an Iran War special edition.

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Samuel Burrell Samuel Burrell

This Week in Dual-Use

Pete Hegseth has threatened to list Anthropic as a ‘supply chain risk’, meaning no defence contractor could use it. This comes after Anthropic tried to set conditions for what its AI could be used for. The red line for Anthropic seems to be around the use of AI for final targeting decisions without human intervention.

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Samuel Burrell Samuel Burrell

This Week in Dual-Use

I was at the Munich Security Conference last week. There was a palpable difference in tone compared to the year before. Despite the relatively conciliatory speech by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Europe is now firmly in a ‘post-Greenland’ mentality.

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Samuel Burrell Samuel Burrell

This Week in Dual-Use

Footage has emerged from Venezuela of Shahed-style UAVs striking targets during the operation to capture Maduro. These are likely to be American LUCAS (low-cost uncrewed combat attack system) drones, although the Pentagon has refused to confirm it.

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Samuel Burrell Samuel Burrell

This Week in Dual-Use

Ukraine’s MoD claimed that an uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) disabled a Russian Kilo-class submarine in Novorossiyk. If true, the use of a UUV against a submarine would represent another first in naval warfare.

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Samuel Burrell Samuel Burrell

This Week in Dual-Use

Britain will begin rolling out a new suite of undersea surveillance and counter-submarine capabilities under Atlantic Bastion. The project will combine autonomous vessels, AI-enabled detection networks and existing naval and air platforms.

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Samuel Burrell Samuel Burrell

This Week in Dual-Use

The UK government has awarded a contract to fund a new laser that can shoot down high-speed drones. The £316m will be used to develop MBDA’s DragonFire laser at its UK headquarters in Stevenage.

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