A defense contractor connected Anthropic's Claude Code to a secure Department of Defense system, according to a Wired scoop discussed on the publication's Uncanny Valley podcast. Hosts Brian Barrett, Leah Feiger and Zoë Schiffer described the arrangement as one of the most outlandish government uses of AI reported to date. The episode also covered Anthropic's public IPO filing and volunteer efforts preparing for ICE agents potentially appearing at polling sites in the midterms.
Anthropic filed to go public this week, a move that would make it the first major US company focused solely on building AI software to list on public markets. The company's valuation rose from $183 billion a little over a year ago to $965 billion in its most recent round, and the filing is expected to raise more than any IPO in history. Revenue reached $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, more than 14 times the same period a year earlier, while losses were also in the billions. The filing discloses hundreds of billions already committed to compute.
On the podcast, Schiffer attributed the revenue growth largely to Claude Code and enterprise coding customers, a business she said was not clearly viable when ChatGPT first appeared. Barrett noted that nearly half of the company's revenue came from three tech companies' cloud marketplaces, which he called a vulnerability because those partners also compete with Anthropic. Schiffer said Ramp has reported that about 80 percent of revenue for both Anthropic and OpenAI comes from roughly the top 1 percent of AI spenders.
The hosts also flagged the S-1's risk language, which states that concerns have been raised that sufficiently advanced AI systems, if not developed and safeguarded appropriately, could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. Barrett counted three uses of the phrase existential risk in the document, twice referring to humanity and once to society. Schiffer and Barrett treated the disclosure as notable given the stakes of the IPO for the broader US economy.
The episode additionally examined grassroots volunteer organizing nationwide ahead of the midterms, which the hosts framed as a response to a deeply uncertain election cycle.
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