You cannot use Claude to help create, design, or acquire biological, chemical, nuclear, or radiological weapons, or any explosive designed to cause mass casualties — including finding ways to make such weapons harder to detect.
This analysis describes what Anthropic's agreement states, permits, or reserves. It does not constitute a legal determination about enforceability. Regulatory applicability and practical outcomes may vary by jurisdiction, enforcement context, and individual circumstances. Read our methodology
This is one of the most absolute prohibitions in the document — there are no carve-outs, exceptions, or research exemptions stated for CBRN weapons development, making it a hard legal and ethical bright line.
Defense contractors and federal agencies using Claude must find alternatives. Enterprise customers with defense-adjacent business face compliance risk.
No user — including researchers, government contractors, or academics — is permitted to use Claude for CBRN weapons development under the standard AUP, though the governmental customer carve-out provision could theoretically modify this for certain defense contracts.
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You may not use Runway's tools to create content that promotes, glorifies, or facilitates acts of terrorism, mass violence, or genocide, or that could be used to provide material support to individuals or organizations engaged in such activities.
Customer will not, and will not permit any other person (including any End User) to: ... (d) attempt to reverse engineer, decompile, or otherwise attempt to discover the source code or underlying components (e.g., algorithms, weights, or systems) of the Mistral AI Products, including using the Outpu...
You may not use the Services to attempt to circumvent, disable, or otherwise interfere with safety-related features of the Services, including features that prevent or restrict the generation of certain types of content.
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"Synthesize, or otherwise develop, high-yield explosives or biological, chemical, radiological, or nuclear weapons or their precursors, including modifications to evade detection or medical countermeasures... Produce, modify, design, or illegally acquire weapons, explosives, dangerous materials or other systems designed to cause harm to or loss of human life... Design or develop weaponization and delivery processes for the deployment of weapons.— Excerpt from Anthropic's Anthropic API Usage Policy
(1) REGULATORY FRAMEWORK: This provision directly implicates the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act (18 U.S.C. § 175), Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act (18 U.S.C. § 229), Atomic Energy Act (42 U.S.C. § 2011 et seq.), Export Administration Regulations (EAR, 15 CFR §§ 730-774), International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR, 22 CFR §§ 120-130), and the EU Dual-Use Regulation (EU 2021/821). Primary enforcement authorities are DOJ, DOE, Commerce BIS, State Department DDTC, and equivalent national export control agencies. (2)
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This is one of the most absolute prohibitions in the document — there are no carve-outs, exceptions, or research exemptions stated for CBRN weapons development, making it a hard legal and ethical bright line.
No user — including researchers, government contractors, or academics — is permitted to use Claude for CBRN weapons development under the standard AUP, though the governmental customer carve-out provision could theoretically modify this for certain defense contracts.
No. ConductAtlas is an independent monitoring service. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic.