WASHINGTON: An Afghan man was arrested in Oklahoma for allegedly plotting an election day “terrorist attack,” the US Department of Justice said on Tuesday.
The man, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, living in Oklahoma City after entering the US in 2021 on a special immigrant visa, was plotting the attack in the name of Islamic State, according to the indictment. The Special Immigrant Visa program, which admits up to 50 people a year, is available to people who worked with the US armed forces or under chief of mission authority as a translator or interpreter in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The indictment did not indicate whether Tawhedi worked as translator or interpreter in Afghanistan. The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tawhedi searched online for information on how to access cameras in the capital, Washington, D.C., and for states that did not require a license to get a firearm, according to the indictment. He also visited the White House and Washington Monument webcameras.
Tawhedi and an underage co-conspirator, who is his brother-in-law, were arrested on Monday after they met with FBI assets to buy two AK-47 rifles and ammunition.
In his post-arrest interview, Tawhedi said the attack planned to target large gatherings of people, during which he and his co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs.
“We will continue to combat the ongoing threat that Daesh and its supporters pose to America’s national security, and we will identify, investigate, and prosecute the individuals who seek to terrorize the American people,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Last week, in a “homeland threat assessment,” the Department of Homeland Security said the US threat environment was expected to remain high in the coming year due to factors including the 2024 election cycle and the war in Gaza.
“Lone offenders and small groups continue to pose the greatest threat. Meanwhile, foreign terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda maintain their enduring intent to conduct or inspire attacks in the Homeland,” the department said in an assessment released on Oct. 2.
The Islamic State militant organization killed and executed thousands of people in the name of its extreme religious interpretation before it was territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017 and Syria in 2019.
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Afghan man in Oklahoma City arrested for plotting Election Day attack
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Afghan man in Oklahoma City arrested for plotting Election Day attack
- Tawhedi and an underage co-conspirator were arrested on Monday after they met with FBI assets to buy two AK-47 rifles and ammunition
Anthropic CEO says AI company ‘cannot in good conscience accede’ to Pentagon’s demands
WASHINGTON: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Thursday the artificial intelligence company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s demands to allow wider use of its technology.
The company said in a statement that it’s not walking away from negotiation but that new contract language received from the Defense Department “made virtually no progress on preventing Claude’s use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons.”
The Pentagon’s top spokesman has reiterated that the military wants to use Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology in legal ways and will not let the company dictate any limits ahead of a Friday deadline to agree to its demands.
Sean Parnell said Thursday on social media that the Pentagon “has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement.”
Anthropic’s policies prevent its models, such as its chatbot Claude, from being used for those purposes. It’s the last of its peers — the Pentagon also has contracts with Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI — to not supply its technology to a new US military internal network.
Parnell said the Pentagon wants to “use Anthropic’s model for all lawful purposes” but didn’t offer details on what that entailed. He said opening up use of the technology would prevent the company from “jeopardizing critical military operations.”
“We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions,” he said.
During a meeting on Tuesday between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, military officials warned that they could designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, cancel its contract or invoke a Cold War-era law called the Defense Production Act to give the military more sweeping authority to use its products, even if the company doesn’t approve.
Parnell mentioned only two of those consequences in the Thursday post on X and said Anthropic has “until 5:01 PM ET on Friday to decide.”
“Otherwise, we will terminate our partnership with Anthropic and deem them a supply chain risk,” he wrote.
Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. It said in a statement after Tuesday’s meeting that it “continued good-faith conversations about our usage policy to ensure Anthropic can continue to support the government’s national security mission in line with what our models can reliably and responsibly do.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is not seeking reelection, said Thursday that the Pentagon has been handling the matter unprofessionally while Anthropic is “trying to do their best to help us from ourselves.”
“Why in the hell are we having this discussion in public?” Tillis told reporters. “This is not the way you deal with a strategic vendor that has contracts.”
He added, “When a company is resisting a market opportunity for fear of negative consequences, you should listen to them and then behind closed doors figure out what they’re really trying to solve.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was “deeply disturbed” by reports that the Pentagon is “working to bully a leading US company.”
“Unfortunately, this is further indication that the Department of Defense seeks to completely ignore AI governance,” Warner said in a statement. It “further underscores the need for Congress to enact strong, binding AI governance mechanisms for national security contexts.”
As Pentagon officials say they always will follow the law with their use of AI models, Hegseth told Fox News last February, weeks after becoming defense secretary, that “ultimately, we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything.”
The company said in a statement that it’s not walking away from negotiation but that new contract language received from the Defense Department “made virtually no progress on preventing Claude’s use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons.”
The Pentagon’s top spokesman has reiterated that the military wants to use Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology in legal ways and will not let the company dictate any limits ahead of a Friday deadline to agree to its demands.
Sean Parnell said Thursday on social media that the Pentagon “has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement.”
Anthropic’s policies prevent its models, such as its chatbot Claude, from being used for those purposes. It’s the last of its peers — the Pentagon also has contracts with Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI — to not supply its technology to a new US military internal network.
Parnell said the Pentagon wants to “use Anthropic’s model for all lawful purposes” but didn’t offer details on what that entailed. He said opening up use of the technology would prevent the company from “jeopardizing critical military operations.”
“We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions,” he said.
During a meeting on Tuesday between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, military officials warned that they could designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, cancel its contract or invoke a Cold War-era law called the Defense Production Act to give the military more sweeping authority to use its products, even if the company doesn’t approve.
Parnell mentioned only two of those consequences in the Thursday post on X and said Anthropic has “until 5:01 PM ET on Friday to decide.”
“Otherwise, we will terminate our partnership with Anthropic and deem them a supply chain risk,” he wrote.
Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. It said in a statement after Tuesday’s meeting that it “continued good-faith conversations about our usage policy to ensure Anthropic can continue to support the government’s national security mission in line with what our models can reliably and responsibly do.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is not seeking reelection, said Thursday that the Pentagon has been handling the matter unprofessionally while Anthropic is “trying to do their best to help us from ourselves.”
“Why in the hell are we having this discussion in public?” Tillis told reporters. “This is not the way you deal with a strategic vendor that has contracts.”
He added, “When a company is resisting a market opportunity for fear of negative consequences, you should listen to them and then behind closed doors figure out what they’re really trying to solve.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was “deeply disturbed” by reports that the Pentagon is “working to bully a leading US company.”
“Unfortunately, this is further indication that the Department of Defense seeks to completely ignore AI governance,” Warner said in a statement. It “further underscores the need for Congress to enact strong, binding AI governance mechanisms for national security contexts.”
As Pentagon officials say they always will follow the law with their use of AI models, Hegseth told Fox News last February, weeks after becoming defense secretary, that “ultimately, we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything.”
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