North Korea’s Kim gifts rifles to officials and his daughter takes aim after party congress

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un gifted new sniper rifles to top government and military officials following a weeklong ruling party congress celebrating his leadership, with state media highlighting an image of his teenage daughter taking aim at a shooting range as her increasingly prominent appearances fuel speculation Kim is grooming her as a future leader.

Kim presented the rifles to senior party and military officials on Friday, calling them a sign of his “absolute trust” and gratitude for their commitment over the past five years since the last Workers’ Party congress in 2021, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.

The report also confirmed Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, who in recent years has served as his fierce spokesperson toward Washington and Seoul, now serves as the general affairs director of the party’s central committee following a promotion at the congress. Her new title signals a broader role overseeing the party’s internal operations and administrative affairs.

State media photos showed Kim Yo Jong and other top officials aiming the rifles handed out by Kim Jong Un at a shooting range. Kim’s young daughter, wearing a brown leather coat similar to her father’s, also was seen handling the weapon as smoke rose from the barrel.

Since first appearing in public at a long-range missile test in November 2022, the girl — believed to be named Kim Ju Ae and about 13 years old — has accompanied her father to a growing number of events, including military demonstrations, factory openings and a trip to Beijing in September, where Kim Jong Un held his first summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in six years.

The party congress, which concluded Wednesday in Pyongyang after seven days, is North Korea’s most significant political event, held every five years since 2016, and a carefully choreographed spectacle glorifying Kim's leadership before thousands of delegates.

At this year’s meetings, Kim doubled down on his plans to accelerate North Korea's nuclear arsenal, which already is equipped with various weapons systems threatening the United States and U.S. allies in Asia, and confirmed his hard-line view of rival South Korea.

But he also left the door open for dialogue with the U.S., reiterating Pyongyang’s earlier stance calling for Washington to abandon demands for the North’s denuclearization as a precondition for resuming long-stalled dialogue.

South Korean officials and experts closely monitored the congress for signs Kim was preparing to extend the family's dynastic rule to a fourth generation by cementing his daughter as successor. Earlier this month, South Korea’s spy agency said it assessed Kim Jong Un was close to designating her as heir.

She was not seen at party meetings during the congress but shared center stage with her father at a military parade Wednesday night marking its conclusion. Despite speculation she might receive a formal party post at the congress, state media reports indicated no such move and party rules require members to be at least 18.

Some experts say if Kim Jong Un sought to use the congress to solidify his daughter as successor, the signals would likely be subtle, such as self-congratulatory statements about North Korea’s survival and crediting that endurance to the successful inheritance of the socialist cause.

In a report assessing the congress on Thursday, North Korean state media said the meetings “laid a solid foundation for the sacred effort to ensure and realize the glorious succession and development of our party.”

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un visits Kumsusan Palace of the Sun with members for the Workers’ Party congress, in Pyongyang, North Korea, Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, Kim Yo Jong, left, sister of its leader Kim Jong Un, and other senior officials test-fire new sniper rifles at a shooting range in an undisclosed location, North Korea Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, left, with his daughter, test-fires a new sniper rifle at a shooting range in an undisclosed location, North Korea Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, the daughter of its leader Kim Jong Un test-fires a new sniper rifle at a shooting range in an undisclosed location, North Korea Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) ２７日、新型狙撃銃で射撃を行う金正恩朝鮮労働党総書記の娘

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un test-fires a new sniper rifle at a shooting range in an undisclosed location, North Korea Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Friday ordered all U.S. agencies to stop using Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology and imposed other major penalties, escalating an unusually public clash between the government and the company over AI safety.

President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials took to social media to chastise Anthropic for failing to allow the military unrestricted use of its AI technology by a Friday deadline, accusing it of endangering national security after CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company's products could be used in ways that would violate its safeguards.

“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump said on social media.

Hegseth also deemed the company a “supply chain risk,” a designation typically stamped on foreign adversaries that could derail the company’s critical partnerships with other businesses.

In a statement issued Friday evening, Anthropic said it would challenge what it called an unprecedented and legally unsound action “never before publicly applied to an American company.”

Anthropic had said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that its AI chatbot Claude would not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon said it was not interested in such uses and would only deploy the technology in legal ways, but it also insisted on access without any limitations.

“No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons," the company said. "We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.”

The government’s effort to assert dominance over the internal decision-making of the company comes amid a wider clash over AI’s role in national security and concerns about how increasingly capable machines could be used in high-stakes situations involving lethal force, sensitive information or government surveillance.

Trump said Anthropic made a mistake trying to strong-arm the Pentagon. He wrote on Truth Social that most agencies must immediately stop using Anthropic's AI but gave the Pentagon a six-month period to phase out the technology that is already embedded in military platforms.

“The United States of America will never allow a radical left, woke company to dictate how our great military fights and wins wars!" he wrote in all caps.

After months of private talks exploded into public debate this week, Anthropic said Thursday that the government's new contract language would allow "safeguards to be disregarded at will.” Amodei said his company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the demands.

Anthropic can afford to lose the contract. But the government's actions posed broader risks at the peak of the company’s meteoric rise from a little-known computer science research lab in San Francisco to one of the world’s most valuable startups.

The president’s decision was preceded by hours of top Trump appointees from the Pentagon and the State Department taking to social media to criticize Anthropic, but their complaints posed contradictions.

Top Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Thursday that Anthropic’s unwillingness to go along with the military’s demands was “jeopardizing critical military operations and potentially putting our warfighters at risk." Hegseth said Friday that the Pentagon “must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic.”

Trump’s social media post also mandated the company “better get their act together, and be helpful” during a six-month phase-out period or there would be “major civil and criminal consequences to follow.”

However, Hegseth’s choice to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk uses an administrative tool that has been designed for companies owned by U.S. adversaries to prevent them from selling products that are harmful to American interests.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, noted that this dynamic, “combined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations.”

The dispute stunned AI developers in Silicon Valley, where venture capitalists, prominent AI scientists and a large number of workers from Anthropic’s top rivals — OpenAI and Google — voiced support for Amodei’s stand in open letters and other forums.

The move is likely to benefit Elon Musk’s competing chatbot, Grok, which the Pentagon plans to give access to classified military networks, and could serve as a warning to two other competitors, Google and OpenAI, that have still-evolving contracts to supply their AI tools to the military.

Musk sided with Trump’s administration, saying on his social media platform X that “Anthropic hates Western Civilization.”

But one of Amodei’s fiercest rivals, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, sided with Anthropic and questioned the Pentagon’s “threatening” move in a CNBC interview and a letter to employees that said OpenAI shared the same red lines. Amodei once worked for OpenAI before he and other OpenAI leaders quit to form Anthropic in 2021.

“For all the differences I have with Anthropic, I mostly trust them as a company, and I think they really do care about safety,” Altman told CNBC, hours before he gathered employees for an all-hands meeting Friday.

Retired Air Force Gen. Jack Shanahan, a former leader of the Pentagon’s AI initiatives, wrote on social media this week that “painting a bullseye on Anthropic garners spicy headlines, but everyone loses in the end.”

Shanahan said Claude is already being widely used across the government, including in classified settings, and Anthropic’s red lines were “reasonable.” He said the AI large language models that power chatbots like Claude, Grok and ChatGPT are also “not ready for prime time in national security settings,” particularly not for fully autonomous weapons.

Anthropic is “not trying to play cute here,” he wrote Thursday on LinkedIn. “You won’t find a system with wider & deeper reach across the military.”

O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

Pages from the Anthropic website and the company's logo are displayed on a computer screen in New York on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison)

FILE - Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stands outside the Pentagon during a welcome ceremony for the Japanese defense minister at the Pentagon in Washington, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File)

Pages from the Anthropic website and the company's logos are displayed on a computer screen in New York on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison)