Russian freelancers use Claude to program autonomous combat drone swarm

Hit hard by sanctions and lacking resources, Russia is left to rely on foreign advanced technologies to compensate. Russia-linked agents appear to use Claude for a broad range of activities, from propaganda and espionage to the procurement of military/dual-use equipment and the development of autonomous drone swarms, according to Anthropic's September 2026 threat report. Anthropic identified a small team of Russia-based freelance developers who used Claude to build software for an autonomous combat-drone swarm called DronDoc or Serafim.

First reported by Tom's Hardware. This page is a short excerpt; the full text is theirs.