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The Pentagon has put Anthropic on the clock. On Thursday, the Department of Defense formally notified the company that it has been deemed a “supply chain risk”—a label that has turned its artificial intelligence systems, including its flagship model, Claude—into a liability.

The move escalates a dispute that has been brewing for weeks over Anthropic’s safety-first ethos—its commitment to limit how its technology is deployed—and the DOD’s demand for unfettered control.

The Pentagon is phasing out Claude, one of the world’s most advanced AI models, from its classified networks within six months. On paper, swapping one model for another appears quick. “It’s simple to swap out the models and to install new ones,” according to a source close to Palantir—a defense-tech giant that has partnered with Anthropic to host Claude inside secure military networks.

The hardest part begins after the model is gone, rewiring everything that’s been built around it.

Claude is what’s known as a frontier model, an AI capable of executing complex, multistep tasks on its own. That’s not how the DOD currently uses it. Lauren Kahn, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a former Pentagon official, describes its deployment as more like a chatbot than a free-roaming agent. Claude sits “on top” of existing software, she says, and shows up only in certain places—tightly controlled corners of a classified environment. And it isn’t connected to “effectors,” she says, meaning that it can’t “launch an effect”—a weapon command, for example—“in the real world.”

In late 2024, Anthropic became the first AI company to clear the Pentagon’s classified hurdles. Until recently, Claude was the only large language model publicly known to be operating in that environment. Accessed through tools like Claude Gov—which became a preferred option for some defense personnel, according to Bloomberg—the system taps into enormous data pipelines to turn a flood of unstructured information into readable intelligence. In other words, Claude summarizes information for the Department of Defense, but it can’t pull a trigger.

Once people rely on a tool, it can be hard to let it go. Each integration must be offboarded piece by piece. And whatever replaces Claude must clear strict security reviews and approvals before it touches a classified system. Software changes inside the Pentagon can be “excruciating,” Kahn says. Even something as simple as installing Microsoft Office “takes months and months and months.”

At press time, Anthropic did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Scientific American. The Department of Defense declined to discuss the specifics of the transition.

Unlearning Claude

Every AI model fails in its own characteristic ways. Operators who’ve spent months using Claude learn those quirks through trial and error: which prompts land badly, which outputs require a second look.

Kahn studies automation bias, the tendency of human operators to overdelegate to machines. “I worry about a slightly heightened risk of automation bias in the early stages as they’re working out the kinks,” she says. People will check for Claude’s mistakes while the replacement model makes new ones. The personnel most exposed to the transition will be the power users who built the most customized work flows and learned the model’s downsides well enough to exploit its strengths.

While Pentagon personnel brace for the operational transition, the messy details of the political standoff have spilled into public view. Late on Thursday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a blog post vowing to challenge the government’s “supply chain risk” designation in court, arguing the statute is typically reserved for foreign adversaries. Behind the scenes, the standoff appears to have devolved into a game of chicken. Emil Michael, the Pentagon official who’s led the department’s negotiations with Anthropic, posted on X that talks with the company are dead. And Amodei is reportedly scrambling to resuscitate them.

Meanwhile, the DOD is already moving on. Within hours of Anthropic’s official blacklisting, OpenAI announced it had signed a deal to deploy its models on the military’s classified networks, securing the contract its rival had just lost.

Anthropic was willing to risk eviction from the U.S. government rather than compromise its safety-first ethos. Its replacement initially accepted the Pentagon’s demand for unfettered operational flexibility—only to hastily add the very surveillance guardrails that Anthropic advocated for after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman faced massive internal and public backlash. The swap may not be so simple after all.

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With each generation, parenting styles seem to undergo some sort of transformation. Gen X parents—who are often considered the first latchkey kids—focused on involved parenting (or in extreme cases, helicopter or stealth parenting), while 3 out of 4 Gen Y (or millennial) parents focus on gentle parenting.

Meanwhile, new research indicates that Gen Z parents are moving away from the approaches of their parents and grandparents and creating their own hybrid parenting style. They are focusing on cycle-breaking and cause-and-effect parenting—or a hybrid parenting style, depending on the situation. In fact, only about 38% of Gen Z parents with kids aged 0 to 6 years old use gentle parenting, according to a survey conducted by Kiddie Academy.

“The vast majority—or 4 out of 5—parents polled agree that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to parenting,” says Casey Miller, CEO of Kiddie Academy. Most Gen Z parents, he says, aim for a hybrid approach that blends an average of three different parenting styles. 

Digging in to the Survey on Gen Z Parenting

Kiddie Academy surveyed 2,000 parents of children aged 0 to 6 years old and found that 54% of Gen Z parents prioritize preparing their kids for the real world, while their millennial counterparts focus more on supporting their children mentally and emotionally. Meanwhile, Gen Z parents feel gentle parenting only works for some situations.

“In general, younger parents believe parenting styles should be blended and used depending on the circumstances,” says Miller.

According to the survey, these younger parents are using a variety of new styles. For instance:3

• 37% are using cycle breaking (or healing generational trauma)
• 33% are using attachment parenting (or forming strong emotional bonds)
• 31% are prioritizing cause and effect (or real-world consequences)
• 20% are using child-led parenting

“Our survey also asked parents how they might manage real-life situations, such as if their child threw a tantrum in the car,” says Miller. “Forty-two percent of parents would pull the car over until their child calmed down, while 40% would wait until they returned home to provide consequences, and 34% would take their toys away for the remainder of the ride. These reactions blend the cause-and-effect parenting emphasis with a traditional authoritative parenting style for a hybrid approach.”

Overall, Miller says the shift away from gentle parenting is part of a larger trend of blending parenting styles and focusing on each individual child.

“Seven in 10 parents are choosing parenting styles based on what their child needs, as opposed to the 23% who are trying to make their preferred style work regardless of their child’s personality,” says Miller.

Where Gentle Parenting Might Be Lacking

Gentle parenting emphasizes empathy and respectful communication without harsh punishment, explains Cynthia Vejar, PhD, LPC, program director and associate professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Lebanon Valley College.

The shift of Gen Z parents away from gentle parenting suggests less pressure to adhere to a single brand of parenting or to pursue labels. “Instead of chasing these types of labels, parents might instead focus on what kinds of behavior is most or least ideal in their household,” says Dr. Vejar.

Gentle parenting also may be unappealing because it can require a lot of emotional labor from the parent, says Lexi Berard, MA, AMFT, a psychotherapist with Life After Birth. To be effective, parents must have high emotional intelligence and strong emotional regulation skills, she says. In fact, one study found that more than one-third of “gentle parents” report burnout.4

“Gentle parenting is really hard, and some parents are finding themselves frustrated,” adds Berard. “A big misperception about this parenting style is that by acknowledging the feeling, you can avoid tantrums. This isn’t true. No parenting style completely avoids tantrums; it’s about how you as the parent respond.” 

Gentle parenting also asks you to be present with the tantrum, acknowledge the feeling, and wait for it to pass, she says. “I think many parents are drawn to other styles that tell them it’s OK to not sit in difficult, uncomfortable feelings, and don’t shame them for getting frustrated with their children,” says Berard.

‘Cycle‑Breaking’ vs. Hybrid Parenting

When parents take a hybrid approach to parenting, they often incorporate several different parenting styles in order to create their own unique version of parenting. At its core, hybrid parenting involves considering your family’s goals and values, as well as your temperament and your child’s temperament, and parenting in a way that makes sense for you and your child. 

“Hybrid parenting looks like holding two things at once,” explains Emily Guarnotta, PsyD, PMH-C, a licensed clinical psychologist, certified perinatal mental health specialist, and owner of Phoenix Health. “It’s considering your child’s feelings while also holding your boundaries.”

For example, let’s say your child is screaming because they want more screen time. “A permissive approach would be to give in and allow them to have more screen time,” says Dr. Guarnotta. “A hybrid approach acknowledges the feeling, but also maintains the boundary.”

As for cycle-breaking parenting, it requires parents to examine how they were raised, identify the impact it had on them, and evaluate how they would like to do things differently with their children, says Berard. 

Why Parenting Styles May Be Shifting

Boomer and Gen X parents were raised with more authoritarian and traditional approaches that emphasized obedience, respect for authority, and independence, says Dr. Guarnotta. But millennial parents were the ones to spearhead the gentle parenting movement in reaction to their own childhoods, she says.

“Gen Z parents are new to the conversation,” says Dr. Guarnotta. “They grew up seeing millennial parents document their struggles with burnout, and they want to find a place in the middle.”

What seems to be losing favor among younger parents is the notion that you need to stick to only one parenting philosophy. The idea that you have to be gentle 100% of the time is being replaced by a flexible, hybrid approach.

Dr. Guarnotta also says that this shift is not necessarily a rejection of gentle parenting, but an evolution of it.

“Parents today are asking, ‘What is sustainable and realistic for my family?’ We’re seeing a pushback against picture-perfect parenting and an emphasis on being authentic and considering parental mental health,” says Dr. Guarnotta.

The benefits of this model are significant, says Dr. Vejar, explaining, “Parents who intentionally reflect on family patterns are more likely to have a parenting style that is proactive and devoid of knee-jerk tendencies that are familiar and automatically passed down throughout the generations.” 

Plus, she says the combination of empathy and consistent consequences have a best-of-both-worlds approach. They integrate the strongest aspects of different parenting philosophies to avoid lopsided outcomes.

“However, there are risks when parenting styles become reactionary in nature—such as, ‘I resented my parents for doing X, so I’m going to do the opposite,’” says Dr. Vejar. “A balanced, reflective stance helps parents avoid swinging wildly from one extreme to the other.”

 

Parents today are asking, ‘What is sustainable and realistic for my family?’ We’re seeing a pushback against picture-perfect parenting and an emphasis on being authentic and considering parental mental health.

— Emily Guarnotta, PsyD, PMH-C

 

What This Means for Parents Today

There’s a lot of noise out there for parents. “We have Google and ChatGPT at our fingertips as well as influencers on social media telling us what to do, what not to do, and how small things can have massive impacts on your children (whether true or not),” says Berard.

She says it’s a natural response to be overwhelmed by this information overload and to respond by throwing your hands up and going back to what feels right, versus what others are telling you to do.

The beauty of a hybrid approach to parenting means that you have the permission to let go, adds Dr. Guarnotta. Take what works from gentle parenting and other parenting styles and leave the rest. Also consider your own emotional well-being, which is important for the marathon of parenting, she says.

“It’s more sustainable for parents long-term,” says Dr. Guarnotta. “It’s also clearer for children, as they are being given boundaries. And it’s authentic. It allows parents to be human without trying to be perfect all of the time.”

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Photo: Parents/GettyImages/Maskot

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Iran has named Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the country’s slain supreme leader, as his father’s successor, according to a statement from top clerics published on state media. His ascension, announced early Monday morning, signals the government’s desire for continuity as Iran faces expanding attacks from the United States and Israel nine days into the war.

Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, was appointed by a committee of senior Shiite clerics after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in the country for more than three decades, was killed in an airstrike during the opening blow of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. He is known for having close ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and takes the helm not just as Iran’s new religious and political authority but also as the commander in chief of its armed forces.

Iran’s security establishment celebrated Mojtaba Khamenei’s selection.

Iran’s military and hard-line political forces trumpeted the selection of Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the recently killed supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as his father’s successor, celebrating the ascension of one of their own.

The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps endorsed Mr. Khamenei in a statement, praising him as a “new dawn and a new phase for the revolution and the Islamic republic’s rule.” Mr. Khamenei, 56, was seen as their favored candidate. He is believed to have especially close ties with the Revolutionary Guards because he served in their ranks during the last years of the Iran-Iraq war.

Iran’s state television switched from somber coverage of war and religious mourning to upbeat revolutionary anthems after the selection of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader. It amplified voices supporting him, cutting to scenes of large crowds celebrating in public squares in different cities. State media, highly censored and controlled by the country’s hardline faction, did not interview opponents or show chants heard in Tehran against the new leader.

Here’s what happened in the conflict on Sunday.

Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s slain supreme leader, as his father’s successor, according to a statement from top clerics published on state media early Monday local time. As the U.S.-Israeli war continued, the Pentagon announced that a seventh U.S. service member had died after sustaining injuries last week from an Iranian strike on a Saudi military base where American troops were stationed.

Here’s what else happened on Sunday.

Several Iranians opposed to the government and hoping war would bring an end to the clerical rule said in messages that they feared the younger Khamenei would rule with an iron fist and double down on hostility toward the U.S. and Israel. Alireza, an engineer from Tehran, said he believed the selection was a sign that conditions will get much worse.

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Mojtaba Khamenei, center, the son of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in 2019. Credit…Rouzbeh Fouladi/Middle East Images, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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A new catalog of gravitational waves more than doubles the known number of these spacetime ripples

When black holes collide, the crash generates ripples in the fabric of spacetime—gravitational waves. These distortions travel far out into the universe, but by the time they reach Earth, they have become faint, making them extremely hard to detect. Thanks to a global network of observatories—called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), Virgo, and the Kamioka Gravitational-Wave Detector (KAGRA)—scientists have found scores of these tiny wobbles in spacetime. And now the collaboration has released its latest dataset, more than doubling the number of detections.

The results reveal that our universe is reverberating with cosmic collisions. Some of the waves stem from pairs of black holes colliding, and others appear to have come from crashing black holes and neutron stars—the dense, dead cores of massive stars—as well as from two neutron stars smashing together.

The new catalog also reveals a greater variety of known black holes, including some that appear lopsided, and others that spin incredibly fast. Together, the observations are “phenomenal,” says Zsuzsanna Márka, an associate research scientist at Columbia University, who was previously involved in the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration.

“We are really pushing the edges, and are seeing things that are more massive, spinning faster, and are more astrophysically interesting and unusual,” said Daniel Williams, a research fellow at the University of Glasgow and a member of the collaboration, to MIT News.

The expanded set of detections enables astronomers to test Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which holds that gravity is a geometric property of spacetime.

Doing so can help answer one the holy grails of the field, says Szabolcs Márka, a professor of physics at Columbia University, who has worked on LIGO and is married to Zsuzsanna Márka. “What is beyond Einstein’s general relativity theory? Large catalogs are paving the way towards deep understanding of these enigma,” he says.

According to the theory, mass warps the shape of spacetime, causing objects to travel on curving pathways near heavy masses. The gravitational waves produced by these cosmic collisions will reveal new details about this warping that can confirm or challenge the predictions of Einstein’s theory.

The catalog will be detailed in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, and a paper about it was recently published online in the journal. Soon, it may be possible to release real-time data from the collaboration, the Márkas say.

“Each new gravitational-wave detection allows us to unlock another piece of the universe’s puzzle in ways we couldn’t just a decade ago,” said Lucy Thomas, a co-author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology’s LIGO Lab, to MIT News. “It’s incredibly exciting to think about what astrophysical mysteries and surprises we can uncover with future observing runs.”

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MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images

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DISGRACE: U.S. SHIP STRIKE COULD BE WAR CRIME

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A week into their war on Iran, the United States and Israel have attacked a vast array of targets — about 4,000 in all — from the land, air, and sea.

The bombing campaign, one of the most intense periods of strikes involving U.S. forces in decades, reveals a broad strategy. The United States and Israel are seeking to loosen the grip of Iran’s repressive security and intelligence services and possibly topple its authoritarian government. They are also trying to eliminate Iran’s ability to produce and launch missiles, to seriously degrade its navy, and to prevent the country from being able to produce nuclear weapons.

President Trump said on Friday that the conflict would continue until Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” indicating that the war may just be getting started. But so far, Iran has not folded.

The bombing has killed the country’s supreme leader and other top officials, but the Islamic government that has ruled the country since 1979 remains in place. Though it has been weakened, Iran’s military is still firing missiles and drones at Israel and at countries in the region where U.S. troops are deployed. The vast Iranian security forces also appear to be intact. And while the United States and Israel have struck at least one site at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program, the extent of the damage is unclear.

 

In the first minutes of the war, Israel sought to paralyze the chain of command in Iran. Israeli warplanes fired a barrage of missiles that struck the Iranian leadership compound in central Tehran.

At the time, senior Iranian national security officials had gathered in one building at the compound. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was in another building.

Among those who died in the attack last weekend was Ayatollah Khamenei. Israel later hunted down the highest-ranking Iranian commander responsible for operations in Lebanon, killing him in Tehran.

Mr. Trump has said that several potential successors to Khamenei are now dead, and that he wants a say in the selection of Iran’s next leader. The United States and Israel are undoubtedly looking for opportunities to kill more Iranian officials they want out of the picture.

The bombing campaign has targeted the security and intelligence agencies responsible for the repression of dissent in Iran. The aim is to weaken the regime’s grip on power.

Among the targets is Iran’s most powerful military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the Basij, a plainclothes militia affiliated with the Guards. Israel said it had used dozens of warplanes in one attack to blast a compound in eastern Tehran that served as the headquarters for the Basij, the Guards, and the Quds Force, the arm of the Guards responsible for foreign operations.

Israel estimates that hundreds of Basij and Guards personnel have been killed, along with thousands of other security personnel. The Pentagon said it had bombed sites linked to the Guards, which, along with its proxies, has targeted Americans in numerous attacks over the decades. In addition, the United States and Israel have struck detention centers and television and broadcasting facilities.

Missiles and Defense

Perhaps the most vital part of the U.S.-Israeli campaign has been the effort to establish air superiority with attacks on Iranian air defenses, missile depots and launchers, and air bases.

The Israeli military says that more than 300 Iranian missile launchers and about 150 air defense systems have been disabled, and that it was continuing to target the country’s ballistic missiles and launch sites.

The United States says it has crippled Iran’s navy, destroying 30 vessels, including a submarine. The American military used a submarine to fire a torpedo and sink an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, and also struck an Iranian drone carrier ship.

The aim of the naval operations is to weaken Iran’s capacity to menace shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil exports and significant quantities of natural gas.

Nuclear Program

The United States and Israel say they are determined to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.

In June, the two nations carried out attacks in Iran that Mr. Trump said had “destroyed” the country’s nuclear potential. But U.S. and Israeli forces have resumed striking the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, attacking the Natanz site, where Iran has produced a vast majority of its nuclear fuel.

The site is considered the heart of the country’s nuclear program. Satellite imagery shows that the new strikes destroyed the entrances to an underground cavern at Natanz that held centrifuges for uranium enrichment. It is not clear whether Isfahan and Fordo, two other sites that were struck in the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June, have been targeted again.

This week, Israel destroyed a previously secret underground facility in Minzadehei, northeast of Tehran, that it said was used to develop parts for a nuclear weapon. Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, said Iran had “intended to pair nuclear-enriched uranium with a missile delivery system” at the compound.

More on the Fighting in the Middle East

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• Leadership Rift in Iran: Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, apologized for Iranian strikes on Gulf states before backtracking after criticism from other Iranian leaders. Despite his remarks, Iran has continued its attacks.

• U.S. Assessment on Regime Change: A report by the National Intelligence Council completed before the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran assessed that even a large-scale military assault on the country would be unlikely to topple its theocratic government, according to U.S. officials briefed on the work.

• Iran’s Navy: The country’s naval forces have suffered heavy losses in the first week of U.S. and Israeli strikes, according to a New York Times analysis of satellite data and videos. But challenges remain for U.S. and Israeli forces seeking to neutralize it completely.

• Europe’s Role: European leaders are facing diplomatic headwinds and criticism at home as they take part in a conflict they did not seek.

• Russia Sharing Intel with Iran: The information has included satellite imagery showing the locations of military personnel, according to U.S. officials. But some officials played down the significance of the partnership.

• Food Production:  The Persian Gulf is a major source of fertilizers, making the conflict disruptive to the global production of food. And those in the most vulnerable countries could face hunger.

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Sources: Satellite images by Vantor (first three images) and Planet Labs (bottom right). The New York Times

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