Incident·WS-0072·Jan 2026·disclosed Sep 10, 2026 (238 days later)·in the wild·Privacy & data leaks

Claude used to build Mali's 25M-SIM surveillance platform

Anthropic Claude; consultant linked to Mali state intelligence ('Lakana 360')

49/100
WS-3 Serious
Harm score 70, signal score 24. Autonomy: tool (a person misused it). How the scores work.
Harm 3/5
damage actually done
Reach 4/5
who was affected
Autonomy 0/4
how much the AI did on its own
Novelty 3/5
how new the behavior was
Permanence 4/5
how hard it is to undo

Anthropic reported that a single subscriber, assessed to be a Bamako consultant working with Mali's intelligence service, used Claude as the main engineering resource for a telecom monitoring platform. The system covered about 25 million SIM cards across all three Malian operators, reportedly sidestepping court-order requirements. The platform runs on local models, so banning the account did not shut it down.

Damage

~25M SIM cards under monitoring (per Anthropic); individual harms unquantified

The capability behind it

Sources

Anthropic, second source. Evidence confidence: medium. TNW dates the activity January–July 2026; I could not read that section of the primary report directly (page truncated). Attribution is Anthropic's assessment.

Factor ratings and the score are this index’s judgments by a published formula; facts, dates and figures come from the linked sources. Where a lawsuit is pending, the summary reports allegations, not findings.