INDOPACOM was all in on Anthropic. Now it’s working to adjust

Bob Stephenson, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command's director of requirements and resources, gets briefed about a semi-autonomous aircraft at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, on July 28, 2025. U.S. Air Force / Matthew Clouse

HONOLULU—“What happens when you concentrate on one [AI] model and all of a sudden that model isn’t available to you?” That’s the reality that U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is living right now, its resources and requirements director said here Monday.

The audience, after a beat, laughed cautiously at the realization that Bob Stephenson was likely referring to Anthropic’s Claude model.

“It happens,” Stephenson said Monday at the Pacific Operational Science & Technology conference. “You know, I actually started thinking about this last September. We were working on a plan to be more model-neutral in our workforce. Now we’re just going faster.”

More than a year ago, INDOPACOM integrated AI throughout its ...