On February 28, 2026, the U.S This article explores 2026 operation epic. . This operation, codenamed Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion, targeted key Iranian government installations, including nuclear facilities and strategic military infrastructure.

The disclosure is noteworthy as the strikes occurred just hours after the Trump administration formally classified Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, a national security-level designation aimed at immediately curtailing the company’s access to defense contracts. government networks. Altman emphasized that the Pentagon demonstrated "extreme respect for safety" during negotiations, agreeing to terms that prohibit the use of OpenAI models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems, nearly identical to those Anthropic had sought.

— Sam Altman (@sama) February 28, 2026 Altman announced that OpenAI would deploy dedicated safety engineers inside the Pentagon to monitor model behavior and called on the Department of War to extend equivalent terms to all AI vendors operating in defense environments. Defense One reported that replacing Anthropic's Claude within Pentagon infrastructure could take three to six months, given its deep integration into classified systems, a timeline that effectively guarantees continued use through much of mid-2026. Operation Epic Fury may mark the first publicly confirmed instance where AI-assisted military targeting occurred in direct defiance of an active executive prohibition, setting a critical precedent for how AI ethics, defense procurement, and national security policy will intersect in an era of AI-enabled warfare.