Anthropic: AI Misuse Is Entering a New Phase: From Cybercrime to Surveillance, Propaganda and Weapons
Brief
AI is becoming an operational force for cybercrime, surveillance, propaganda, fraud and weapons development, lowering the cost and scale of attacks.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more than a tool for people who want to do something malicious. It is increasingly becoming part of the operational machinery itself.
That is the main message emerging from Anthropic ‘s latest Threat Intelligence report, which examines malicious activity identified and disrupted between December 2025 and August 2026. The cases cover cyber operations, influence campaigns, surveillance, fraud, biological research, conventional weapons and attempts to extract the capabilities of frontier AI models.
The actors involved are equally diverse. Anthropic describes suspected state-sponsored groups, financially motivated criminals, commercial surveillance operators and politically motivated individuals.