AI Finds Its Way To Nuclear Weapons, With The Pentagon, Meta And China Exploring Military Use

It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) are revolutionizing industries the world over.

However, the technology is about to find its way into a highly secretive area – defense and military.

Unsurprisingly any technology that enhances operations, boosts turnaround time and improves accuracy will find itself applied to defensive purposes.

According to a report, the United States Department of Defense wants to integrate AI capabilities into US nuclear weapons systems. This will include enhancing processes such as command, control and communications systems.

The move comes despite the country declaring that it would always keep humans in charge of controlling nuclear weapons and not allow AI to take over.

Instead, US Strategic Command leader Air Force Gen. Anthony J. Cotton announced last month that the agency was “exploring all possible technologies, techniques, and methods to assist with the modernization of our NC3 capabilities.”

Cotton went on to relieve stressed-out people by saying “We must never allow artificial intelligence to make those decisions for us.”

“Advanced systems can inform us faster and more efficiently,” added Cotton, “we must always maintain a human decision in the loop to maximize the adoption of these capabilities and maintain our edge over our adversaries.”

This move would simply add to a long list of existing weaponry developed over the last few years that are controlled by (or at least blended with) AI, including jets, drones and machine guns. However, the impact of a nuclear weapon would be a lot worse than the others. 

Some even compared it to sci-fi movies dealing with similar plot lines, for example, the opening scene of 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day.


On the other hand, tech conglomerate and AI leader Meta, a company that’s completely supporting an open-source AI ecosystem, recently published a blog post saying such open models could “Help America Lead in AI and Strengthen Global Security”.

“Meta’s open source Llama models are increasingly being used by a broad community of researchers, entrepreneurs, developers and government bodies,” said Meta’s Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs, in the blog post.

Now, the company is making Llama available to US defense and national security agencies, as well as private sector partners supporting their work.

“As an American company, Meta wants to play its part to support the safety, security and economic prosperity of America – and of its closest allies too,” reads the blog post.

This move includes a partnership with companies such as Accenture Federal Services, Amazon Web Services, Anduril, Booz Allen, Databricks, Deloitte, IBM, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir, Scale AI and Snowflake to boost the initiative.

Speaking about the capabilities of AI in the defense sector, Gregg mentions “They can help to streamline complicated logistics and planning, track terrorist financing or strengthen our cyber defenses.”

If the US Department of Defense hasn’t already used Meta’s Llama, they might have been beaten to the punch, as the publicly available model has already been used by top Chinese research institutions linked to the People's Liberation Army.

This claim comes from a report citing three academic papers and analysts, which mention that the Llama model was used to develop an AI tool for potential military applications. This includes the model being used as a base for a product called “ChatBIT”.

Reportedly, the tools could “gather and process intelligence and offer accurate and reliable information for operational decision-making” and were fine-tuned and "optimized for dialogue and question-answering tasks in the military field.”

According to Sunny Cheung, an associate fellow at the Jamestown Foundation who specializes in China's emerging and dual-use technologies (including AI), “It's the first time there has been substantial evidence that PLA military experts in China have been systematically researching and trying to leverage the power of open-source LLMs, especially those of Meta, for military purposes.”

With Meta’s stance on open-source AI, the risk of adversaries using its AI technology against the company’s home nation increases.

Do you think defense agencies should abstain from using AI capabilities in potentially world-altering weapons? Do you think the use of such technology is justified in the pursuit of protecting one’s nation?

Let us know in the comments below!