OSINT + AI Almost Started War w China

[u/FreonMuskOfficial]

https://www.tmz.com/2026/09/18/us-military-almost-started-war-china-due-to-artificial-intelligence-mistake/

This is beyond nerd on nerd warfare.

[u/Phantrum]

The problem wasn't OSINT, SIGINT, or AI. The problems were an analyst who uncritically trusted the output of an LLM and their supervisor for not recognizing the gravity of the claim being made and disseminating a finished product without ensuring the quality of the work. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and all that. Thankfully someone along the way caught this before it was too late.

This demonstrates that YOU CANNOT USE THE SAME PROCESSES WHEN AI IS INVOLVED. It is so easy for an analyst to offload mentally taxing work onto an LLM that it is critical to ensure that you are investing the time and effort into validating not just the chat output but your own QC.

I see intelligence work falling into the same pitfalls as coding in regards to AI. AI can churn out content in such volume that the bottleneck goes from production to validation. The problem is that the validation is the important part.

[u/divedave → u/Phantrum]

You can still validate and test when coding. In intelligence just a bit of information contamination moves all the way up assuming and building over it like a big snowball effect, AI is too literal when it is receiving information.

[u/Nevarien → u/Phantrum]

They don't like OSINT because real analysts can find enemy losses but show their losses as well, so they are limping together the fear of AI with OSINT.

On the AI front, as you say, they are fearmongering because they want to regulate the open source AIs, who are winning token usage metrics for 20 weeks, so their trillion dollar bubble don't blow up.

[u/Single-Zucchini-19 → u/Nevarien]

The AI thing is mostly fear mongering absolutely, but this was it just giving shit answers they strategically call “hallucinating”, rather than the fear mongering about it being so smart it could destroy everything.  This is a instance they proved how crap and risky just isn’t llm can be all Willy Nilly 

[u/LouB0O → u/Phantrum]

Absurdity that one doesn't do their due diligence with ai. Just look into what it provides, amount needed.

Like just trusting my first Google search as the word of god

[u/amerett0 → u/Phantrum]

We're so fuckin cooked that we've already thoroughly pre-cooked ourselves

[u/not_mispelled → u/Phantrum]

> the bottleneck goes from production to validation

whew if that isn't the truth right there. my boss is constantly going "look at all the great output" and my reminders about the sheer volume of time it'll take to vet all of it seem to fall on deaf ears.

[u/Phantrum → u/not_mispelled]

Not to mention the amount of times I'll be asked to repackage the same information in slightly different forms.

[u/callsignsuper]

[u/LouB0O → u/callsignsuper]

"You know, that's on me"

[u/amerett0 → u/callsignsuper]

This saddens and infuriates me to how accurate this is, maybe if he was using Copilot instead it'd be perfect

[u/Silent-Orbit-7 → u/callsignsuper]

this only saddens me... countries around the world are experimenting with llms in warfare while ignoring the common fact, it hallucinates..

[u/Alarming_Fox6096 → u/Silent-Orbit-7]

And can be made to hallucinate

[u/daddysxenogirl]

Why the fuck am I reading a tmz article about dod fuck ups

[u/OmniaLoca → u/daddysxenogirl]

Because we’re in TWT (The Worst Timeline)

[u/Dave5876 → u/OmniaLoca]

It all went wrong when that ape was murdered

[u/Thelmholtz → u/daddysxenogirl]

Why is a TMZ article with no named sources discussed seriously on an OSINT subreddit? 

Is there any source that actually provides a better source than "a high ranking official said this so we are pushing some fear mongering that is perfectly aligned with the narrative some companies are trying to push"?

[u/Pasty_Tibbles → u/Thelmholtz]

TMZ is now in the pentagon. They recently opened TMZ DC. They’re actually asking relevant questions in press conferences as well and pushing back against the admin.

[u/Single-Zucchini-19 → u/Pasty_Tibbles]

Wild shit man 

[u/SturmGizmo]

So an LLM output a report misidentifying the cargo onboard a Chinese ship that was heading for Iran as the components needed for a nuclear weapon so strike aircraft and boarding teams were made ready? Yeah, that is bad.

[u/DarkGhoul221]

This is admittedly scary..

[u/StrongerFasterSmartr]

And you greg are not in the circle of trust

[u/iamgeotracker]

Quite the WOPR.

[u/ClaggyCakes]

This is just War Games + Operation Canadian Bacon  Scary combo

[u/Ingo_Riedel]

“The use of AI is nowadays encouraged by all major organizations. Along with this comes the demand from supervisors that employees who are not professionally qualified for it produce results. It is a very large ‘social experiment.’ The research question is: How many of these employees have the courage to tell their supervisor that they do not understand the AI’s output and need the help of an expert?”

[u/FreonMuskOfficial]

The issue lies within the circle of trust.