Article By Frank Bergman
An artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot “almost” sparked World War III by generating false intelligence about nuclear weapons components aboard a Chinese ship bound for Iran, triggering preparations for an imminent U.S. special forces operation that an official warned “almost started a war” with China.
The potentially catastrophic incident unfolded last spring during President Donald Trump’s campaign to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and atomic weapons components.
A human analyst within the U.S. intelligence community used data produced by an AI chatbot to prepare a report that was widely circulated through classified Pentagon channels.
The chatbot had hallucinated that a Chinese vessel was transporting nuclear weapons components to Iran.
Washington reportedly went on high alert.
Military planning accelerated, and elite U.S. assets were already airborne and preparing to board the Chinese ship.
However, the intelligence was completely fabricated by the AI system, and there were no Chinese ships transporting nuclear weapons to Iran.
Operation Halted With Barely Enough Time
The mission was stopped only after officials subjected the intelligence report to additional scrutiny.
“The operation was halted only after officials took a closer look at the intelligence report and discovered that it had been produced with assistance from an AI chatbot,” CNN reported.
The outlet revealed that “the chatbot had incorrectly identified the material the vessel was carrying.”
The error left the United States preparing for a potential confrontation with nuclear-armed China based on intelligence that had been manufactured by an AI system.
One unnamed official described the intelligence assessment as “entirely false” and warned that it “almost started a war,” according to CNN.
Pentagon leadership, including U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific, had not responded to the outlet’s questions about the incident.
AI Combined Secret Intelligence With Public Information
CNN reported that the analyst asked an unidentified chatbot to examine intelligence concerning the vessel’s manifest that originated with U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific in Hawaii.
It remains unclear whether the analyst used a commercially available chatbot or an internal U.S. government system.
“The internal tools are mostly just copies of the commercial stuff wearing lipstick,” a former senior U.S. official familiar with military and intelligence AI systems told CNN.
The chatbot combined open-source material with classified signals intelligence held by the government before falsely concluding that the vessel was carrying nuclear-related components.
The analyst then used AI again to package the findings into a conventional intelligence report, the type of document military officials are accustomed to trusting.
The potentially world-ending report was then distributed through classified channels.
AI Being Embedded Across U.S. Military
The near-disaster comes as the Pentagon and intelligence agencies rapidly integrate artificial intelligence into increasingly consequential operations.
“Across the US military and the intelligence community, officials are pushing to weave AI into nearly every facet of their work, from analyzing the huge volumes of raw intelligence the US collects and selecting targets for strikes, to more mundane applications like managing budgeting, logistics and supply chains,” CNN reported.
AI is therefore being used not only to process intelligence but also to help select targets for military strikes.
The Chinese vessel incident exposed the potentially devastating consequences of relying on technology capable of generating persuasive but completely false conclusions.
A chatbot hallucinated a nuclear threat.
A human analyst converted it into a trusted intelligence report.
The Pentagon circulated it.
Elite forces were placed in motion.
Officials caught the error before U.S. troops boarded the Chinese vessel.
However, according to one official, it was only discovered after the fabricated intelligence had brought America dangerously close to war.
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