Mother Jones reports Americans largely unaware of AI's lethal use in Iran war
4 Sep 19 5:00 PM · 4d ago · 5 articles · 52 posts · 20 comments · 7 sources · development 4 of 6
Mother Jones published reporting and new poll data showing the US-Israel war on Iran has involved an unprecedented use of AI in military operations, but most Americans know little about it.
“People would be pretty shocked that what they’re using for their homework or to summarize emails is also being used by intelligence officers.”
Source cited by Mother Jones
Pete Hegseth US Defense SecretaryKatie Bo Lillis CNN national security reporterUS Special Operations Command Pacific analyst Military intelligence analyst (unnamed)US Special Operations Command Pacific / Pentagon Agencies involved in the incident
The whole story articlesvideospostscomments the bright band is this development · numbered dots are the others · click one to jump
Reported in the same hours no headline names this development itself — these 5 claims were published in its stretch
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first by The Independent, 4d ago · also TechSpot
1 more headline
- An AI hallucination nearly started a war between the US and China TechSpot · 4d ago
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first by Mastodon, 4d ago · also Mother Jones
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first by The Hindu, 4d ago
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first by Times of Israel, 4d ago
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first by Mashable, 4d ago
What people said 24 voices · best of 57 · verbatim
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BREAKING: 🇺🇸🇨🇳 Major US-China confrontation avoided in last minutes after the US was falsely informed by AI that a Chinese ship was carrying nuclear material to Iran - CNN The US military nearly intercepted a Chinese ship over an AI-generated intelligence report that falsely
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The US-Israel war on Iran is not only the least popular war the United States has ever waged, but also represents an unprecedented application of AI in warfare. New data shows that this present weaponization of AI has flown under the radar.
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K
Contrary to what AI doomers proclaim, AI won't kill us through some AGI leap. It will be callous people using AI. And in this respect we're already there - for a while now. https:// edition.cnn.com/2026/09/18/pol itics/us-military-ai-false-intelligence-china-ship
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The intelligence report, circulated across the US military this spring in the midst of the war with Iran, immediately set off alarm bells: A Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program. The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the…
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It’s possible that they’re hiding that the friendly fire incident in Kuwait in March 2026 (3 jets destroyed, $250mm+ loss) was a real incident caused by AI. The timing of that incident seemed impeccable as that is right after Anthropic started their dispute with DoD over the use of their products in military (and mass domestic surveillance)…
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Why AI agents replacing humans is a pipe dream AI hallucination of Chinese nuclear components almost led to US military attack
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RE: https:// infosec.exchange/@WPalant/1153 80794950758884 Gotta love the world we are living in now. report put together by a special operations command analyst and found it had been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) — and that a chatbot the analyst had used inaccurately identified the material the ship was carrying. The…
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The fact that AI in a general sense has only been a technology that is for all intents and purposes still in its infancy is being used as TACTICAL ANALYSIS for the Military is CRAZY and that should be talked about, pushed and prodded at by members of congress. And i don't know what's worse, Trusting AI intel blindly and just "Doing what you're…
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You’re absolutely right, I shouldn’t have assumed that the Chinese freight ship was smuggling nuclear weapons into Iran. That’s on me.Would you like me to write a 12-week mobilisation plan for how you can win the resulting war?
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Una alucinación generada por IA sobre componentes nucleares chinos casi provocó un ataque militar estadounidense. La IA se inventó que China estaba transportando armas nucleares a Irán
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Wargames much? Stuff's going great... 🙄 # NoAI https:// edition.cnn.com/2026/09/18/pol itics/us-military-ai-false-intelligence-china-ship
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yeah, "hallucinations" are a necessary part of how LLMs work. Relying on them to get things right consistently is destined to fail because you are clearly misunderstanding the nature of the tool you are using. I think that's a big part why they work so well in coding: if it doesn't work you immediately see that it's not executing correctly and you…
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cant wait for this to be a constant problem cuz everyone will try to use "ai" llms to save money in every single industry that used to be highly audited
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We've all seen plenty Stupid AI Tricks. This one almost started a war. AI IS NOT like normal coding! You can't predict what it will do. You can't 'debug' its mistakes. ITS OUTPUT MUST BE CONSIDERED BS UNTIL VERIFIED BY HUMANS! DOD reliance on it is beyond stupid.
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Reminder that # AI does what the humans make it do. https:// edition.cnn.com/2026/09/18/pol itics/us-military-ai-false-intelligence-china-ship https:// berryvilleiml.com/2026/09/12/a utonomy-intent-and-security/
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It's way simpler than that: Do not blindly trust a machine. Any machine. Ever. People doing that with LLMs is just the latest (and probably the worst) manifestation of this same problem that has existed for as long as information-handling machines have existed in one form or another.
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Crazy word salad that further proves to me that we don't understand these things. Speaking as an ML engineer.
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That would have required learning from your mistakes. That's a difficult task when you aren't capable of admitting you've made one.
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# AI "US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say The intelligence report, circulated across the US military this spring in the midst of the war with Iran, immediately set off alarm bells: A Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program. The US military swung into…
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your mistake is thinking that they don't. governments have an incentive to keep up both the population and tax revenue to survive and compete against others. reducing this to an individual emotional response of care is just childish and myopic.
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We're going to start a nuclear war because people used "artificial intelligence" as a branding term for LLMs and Machine Learning
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US DoD reportedly came close to starting a military conflict with China over a false intelligence report produced by GenAI. While humans-in-the-loop ultimately saved us from starting WW3, this is the exception that proves the rule that we cannot trust GenAI systems for high-risk work even with human review. That human intervention occurred far too…
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could you explain how you jumped to that conclusion? isn't it obvious i am talking about the possibility of a rogue ai getting to a point where it can successfully manipulate humans? not that ai will be less accurate? reading is hard
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J
This is a fine example of *my* concerns about the dangers of #AI: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/report-us-almost-boarded-chinese-ship-over-hallucinated-ai-arms-report/ Many people freak out about "the bots are going to take over the world!" I'm dubious -- that's panicking about a scenario […]
All 6 developments of AI chatbot's hallucinated report nearly triggered US strike… →
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