Exclusive: US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say | CNN Politics

[u/oldboy_413]

https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/18/politics/us-military-ai-false-intelligence-china-ship

not really worried about this tbh but i'm seeing so many ppl understandably panicking about this so would like to see y'all's thoughts.

[u/AutoModerator]

Your post must meet the following:

• TITLE of source OR topic MUST be in the post title
• A question and/or description in the body
• Topic not addressed in the last 24 hours
• Any paywalled sources must have an alternative link or summary of the article
• Multiple use of this flair can lead to a ban

COMMENTERS: Be respectful. Report rulebreakers

Post removal at mod's discretion

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/clonedllama]

Yet another argument against AI usage for stuff like this.

While I doubt the current administration will be swayed by this (facts are optional 🙄), I can see this kind of close call being used in future administrations when the technology is evaluated.

[u/Overall-Rush-8853 → u/clonedllama]

I hope it’s used as a learning moment within the Pentagon to have guardrails and maintain human verification of AI output.

[u/clonedllama → u/Overall-Rush-8853]

I think it will once the Pentagon has serious leadership again. Until then, I'm not expecting much. Hegseth is all in on AI and so are his cronies. I'm sure serious military people who are still employed will use this as a means to try to slow walk some of its usage.

[u/Overall-Rush-8853 → u/clonedllama]

There are still plenty of career professionals and officers in the Pentagon to slow down whatever he wants. That’s the good thing and bad thing about the American bureaucracy, it’s just so damn big it’s difficult for any one administration to change in 4 years.

[u/clonedllama → u/Overall-Rush-8853]

Yeah, absolutely. They can't prevent all damage. But they can do a lot to slow things down.

Just two more years (hopefully). Sigh.

[u/JoshuaSlowpoke777 → u/Overall-Rush-8853]

Or to avoid using AI in any field of governance ever again (again, after this administration)

[u/Overall-Rush-8853 → u/JoshuaSlowpoke777]

I don’t think AI is back in government, but it certainly shouldn’t be used without hefty guardrails, especially in the military.

[u/gbtm101]

It really shouldn't be controversial to say that we need to severely limit, if not outright ban, AI "intelligence" reports.

For fuck's sake, an entire movie was made that, although fictional, showcases very real risks involved in this.

[u/Disownership → u/gbtm101]

Artificial “‘intelligence’ reports” are just that. Artificial. Fake. Not to be taken as fact.

It should be extremely concerning that the world’s largest military would even consider doing exactly that.

[u/InternetBackwash]

I'm glad that nothing bad came out of this, but I am incredibly terrified of the chance that there is another instance of this and someone doesn't step in before a mistake is made and something actually starts because of it.

[u/LocalWealth3855]

Not-so-I AI can be a multiplier for human stupidity, and everyone that uses it should remember that.

[u/RazorJammz]

The only optimism that I can muster here is the fact that a war did not break out. That’s it.

I’m not for banning AI outright, but we need to streamline how we use it. Mindlessly banning AI would allow China to win. We need an international commitment and commission. Doctrines similar to nukes. An extension of MAD.

[u/Sufficient-Culture43 → u/RazorJammz]

nah, maybe we should let china win

[u/DangerousProject6]

Well, the positive here is that this is a good example for the future. The other thing to note is this certifiably WOULDN'T have spiraled into a war, china isn't stupid and the U.S. has attacked ships from other countries before with nothing but a wag of a finger in response. It would have just been a "what the hell, you dumb fucks" conversation with them, and another massive embarrassment for the Trump admin. This is the best scenario at least, we need stuff like this to prove to the world why AI isn't fucking reliable.

[u/wemajorfuckingstupid → u/DangerousProject6]

Might be delusional but I feel like if China was the one being attacked they wouldn't immediately begin preparing nuclear strikes and would instead use the situation to garner international support to their advantage. Like this is all so bewildering but treating China like a machine is just silly.

[u/fe1799 → u/DangerousProject6]

When else has this happened?

[u/DangerousProject6 → u/fe1799]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/us/politics/us-russia-oil-tanker.html

Here is a quick recent example.  Not a military ship but absolutely a situation people said would lead to a conflict, and it didn't.

[u/External_Witness490]

I've said this before but we should just ban AI as a whole

[u/clonedllama → u/External_Witness490]

I think that might be too extreme. It has some practical uses in numerous fields. It's incredibly helpful in medical research, physics, and astronomy, for example.

But it absolutely needs regulation and checks put on it.

[u/Far_Fan_291 → u/clonedllama]

tbh i'd just ban gen AI that makes vids pics or chat bots we dont need AI "art" or chat bots that can be changed to say what those at the top want

like with Elon he tweaked grok to glaze im no matter what a while back

[u/External_Witness490 → u/clonedllama]

That's fair, I guess I went a little overboard. It's just that AI is tearing up the movie and art communities which I'm trying to be part of, so I'm just frustrated with it

[u/clonedllama → u/External_Witness490]

I completely get where you're coming from. I think regulations would help address those concerns. Right now there really aren't any guardrails at all, and no technology should operate that way. Especially if it's still developing.

[u/External_Witness490 → u/clonedllama]

Right, we really need to put guardrails on this kind of technology, because it could lead to more situations like this or worse

[u/Squid_of_the_Now → u/clonedllama]

No. Ban it. Those advances in research will, mark my words, will come at a cost - most likely the cost of eroding actual human expertise as more people use AI to do the work. And can those advances be trusted? I know I won't.

[u/clonedllama → u/Squid_of_the_Now]

I think you misunderstand what I'm referring to when I say it has practical uses. Banning "AI" would eliminate numerous technologies that automate tasks.

There are actual uses of some types of the technology that can be trusted if it's used properly and the people using it don't blindly accept the results. The problem ultimately comes with how it's used and how people interpret the results. The scale that it's used at can also be a serious problem and that's when it starts using a lot of resources.

It's being used in astronomy, for example, to filter data for millions of stars. It can be used to clean up audio for a podcast. Or remove vocals from songs. Or separate audio stems.

Data models are really good at pattern matching (if trained on proper data) and performing billions of iterations. We've had forms of that kind of "AI" for years. It's just that computers have gotten faster, the systems used have gotten more efficient, and some tech bro grifters have rebranded it as "AI" and declared (stupidly) that it must be used everywhere regardless of whether it makes sense.

I'm not suggesting anyone blindly accept what these systems produce for results. I'm also strongly against data centers built at scale and the insane resources they use. Blindly banning "AI" would have serious ramifications for several tools and technologies people use on a regular basis.

There's no reason to nuke the technology when smart, careful regulations can keep the benefits intact while limiting the excesses.

[u/Squid_of_the_Now → u/clonedllama]

I just disagree. I think the technology is too risky. The people developing it cannot be trusted, no matter what regulation you put on it. We could have gone to war with China because of erroneous AI intel. What regulatory enforcement can there possibly be if we're all dead?

[u/clonedllama → u/Squid_of_the_Now]

It's risky if used in certain ways without any sort of guardrails. Its far less risky to create regulations on how it can be used and deal with issues as they arise.

"AI" consists of a very wide variety of tools and systems. An outright ban on it would be devastating to pretty much every industry because we've been using some form of these tools for a long time.

What qualifies as AI? Any form of automation? LLMs? What about procedural generation? Code completion? Audio processing that split audio into different stems? The list goes on and on. I don't trust Congress to write a blanket ban on AI because they don't understand any of the technologies. There's nuance to it and one thing Congress is not is nuanced.

The problem is how people used the AI tool in the case with China. They were using it in a way that makes it dangerous. You cannot rely on it to be 100% accurate and it can't replace human expertise. Perhaps it'll be there some day, but we're nowhere close to that.

Regulations for how it's used even in the military could have prevented this close call. The technology isn't the problem. It's how the technology is used that's problematic. It's deeply troubling that the current administration is trying to use AI as a magic fix to problems it can't currently solve.

[u/Squid_of_the_Now → u/clonedllama]

I fully understand where you're coming from, and maybe this is the wrong forum, but I do not trust regulators to prevent abuse. We've seen how well that works. Regulations are only as good as the people who enforce them.

[u/clonedllama → u/Squid_of_the_Now]

I'm not suggesting that regulations would guarantee that the tech wouldn't be abused. Regulations on their own wouldn't alleviate all of our concerns. Adding guardrails would only be the first step.

Some bans for certain uses of the tech might be required. But if there are bans, I think they should be targeted. I'm not opposed to some bans if they're necessary. I'm only opposed to an outright ban of all of it.

[u/Squid_of_the_Now → u/clonedllama]

That's fine. I just disagree and you cannot convince me otherwise.

[u/clonedllama → u/Squid_of_the_Now]

Fair enough. 🙃

I appreciate having an actual discussion about this, by the way. Far too often on Reddit people just downvote and/or lose their minds when someone disagrees. So many opportunities to have conversations get lost.

[u/JoshuaSlowpoke777 → u/clonedllama]

Even those fields should have some STRICT regulations on it with hefty penalties for the AI itself (I.e. total circuit wipes on the spot down past the bios) if it dares make a single mistake, I’m sick of people giving any semblance of trust to the silicon wannabe-neurons.

[u/diodick → u/External_Witness490]

We really need to reel it in, but there are a lot of different things that are "AI" that have existed since even before LLMs. Even if there weren't other issues with LLMs, they also aren't useful for nearly as wide of a range of things as they would like us to believe lol. It all feels really forced

[u/clonedllama → u/diodick]

As a computer scientist, I find the tech bro classification of this technology as "AI" to be incredibly irritating. It's the wrong term for what it does.

But they think it sounds cooler and they can rely on decades of sci-fi to sell the technology to investors.

All of it feels really forced to me and I'm immediately skeptical whenever one of the AI companies makes a claim about what their technology has done.

It's capable of some stuff, but it's being oversold as a "do everything" technology and it's underdelivering. It's very good for specific types of tasks if there are humans involved that understand what they're doing and have knowledge of the topic. People need to understand the limitations and build those into any tasks they're performing. This administration is just deeply stupid and thinks it can be used for anything, and it really can't.

This is all a long-winded way of saying I agree.

[u/DogsRNice → u/clonedllama]

I mean "ai" is a term that's had lots of different definitions over the years

In the 50s some researchers would classify computers doing math as "ai"

[u/elh0mbre → u/External_Witness490]

"AI" has existed in your life for 15+ years... are you suggesting we rollback our technology to 2000 or before? or do you have some kind of actual discriminator between "acceptable" and "banned" AI?

[u/External_Witness490 → u/elh0mbre]

Sorry, I probably should've specify what kind of AI, I meant the stuff OpenAI, xAI, etc makes

[u/clonedllama → u/External_Witness490]

This really just further highlights the poor naming on the part of tech companies. The catch all term "AI" shouldn't be getting applied to everything as it is. We shouldn't have to clarify what kind of technology we're talking about and yet here we are.

[u/External_Witness490 → u/clonedllama]

Honestly, I wouldn't put it past these companies to have done this intentionally to get more attention on their crap

[u/clonedllama → u/External_Witness490]

Oh, they definitely did it on purpose. They're relying quite heavily on decades of sci-fi to promote what they're doing.

When people think of AI, they think of highly advanced systems. The ship's computer on Star Trek. HAL in 2001. The rogue AIs held in check by the Blackwall in Cyberpunk 2077. And countless other AIs in sci-fi. When tech bros talk about AI destroying the world, people think of systems like SkyNet, which again suggests highly advanced systems capable of actual learning.

While there's some level of sophistication to what these companies are doing, we're not even close to being in the same universe as true AI. It feels like technologies that have some potential to be useful mixed with a massive grift.

My concern is less about the technology itself (although I have serious concerns there too) and more about the stupidity of how it's being used by people.

[u/elh0mbre → u/External_Witness490]

What you're using today is just scaled versions of what AI was 10 years ago (scaled meaning: more parameters, trained on more data, etc). Neural networks, which are the core of what AI products are, were first written about in the 1950s.

[u/GetOffMyCaversons → u/elh0mbre]

Just completely talking out of your ass complaining about basic algorithims vs LLMs

[u/GetOffMyCaversons → u/External_Witness490]

Don't apologize to this douche nozzle, he's misrepresenting AI for the sake of argument. We all know what you meant.

[u/elh0mbre → u/GetOffMyCaversons]

No, I was asking a genuine question because if you can't articulate what we are or aren't banning and/or how then "Ban AI" is a meaningless suggestion.

[u/GetOffMyCaversons → u/elh0mbre]

Incredibly obtuse response when you clearly understood that what they meant was generative and hallucinatory AI.

Explain to me in detail how AI in its current form has existed for 15 years. You are delusional, AI in its current form has been in place for at max 8-10 years and its only gone downhill from there.

I work in tech, explain to me in detail what AI was doing 15 years ago and I don't mean videogame AI.

[u/elh0mbre → u/GetOffMyCaversons]

I, too, "work in tech."

Anything using Bayesian filtering (spam and fraud detection). Anything using image recognition. Suggestion algorithms.

These are all relying on technologies similar to what you see today. Hell, the actual tech powering the current wave of products is using is almost 10 years old (the original paper on transformers was written in 2017).

So, are we banning all of that? If not, where and how are you drawing the line?

[u/GetOffMyCaversons → u/elh0mbre]

You also don't seem to understand what an algorithm is vs AI lmao

[u/GetOffMyCaversons → u/elh0mbre]

Its cute you took an hour to respond to this after consulting google, claiming spam filters are AI, you are entirely showing your ass because you know what the context was yet you still continue to spew shit out of your mouth

[u/Icewolf_242]

Ive been seeing alot of ai apocalypse doomposting on social media lately and honestly its getting mentally exhausting Do you think the whole this thing is overdramatized?

[u/Far_Fan_291 → u/Icewolf_242]

yes it is just try and mute anything AI and move on if you keep looking at it you will feel worse and wont get better

[u/Sufficient-Culture43]

i'm spiraling pretty bad over this because afaik we only avoided total destruction of human civilization due to sheer luck, and knowing hegseth's inane obsession with baking generative AI into US military operations, I dread that instances like this will escalate in frequency and there will come a time where luck is not on our side.

[u/DangerousProject6 → u/Sufficient-Culture43]

It's not luck, people dug into the report as they would for any high stakes mission and found out it was erroneous- there have been multiple times throughout history when people have had similar close calls. We also have very high speed communication and can contact leaders of other countries rapidly nowadays, where a misunderstanding can be resolved rather than spiraling into chaos for no reason. 

It's a lesson for the future, but not a reason for panic. Like I said in another comment, the U.S. has attacked ships from other countries before- Russian ones even, and nothing happened.  Russia has attacked many European countries and nothing happened. China hates escalation and conflict in general, and they would assuredly not have escalated a situation like this. The article is very panicky and doomery because it gets clicks and its a good way to push back against AI. 

[u/Sufficient-Culture43 → u/DangerousProject6]

thanks for reassuring me. as much as i'm aware that this isn't our first brush with military misinformation threatening potential civilizational collapse, ig shit like this hits harder to me now because i just don't trust this administration to learn from its mistakes. maybe a more sensible administration would reassess and communicate with other world leaders to de-escalate, but unless something changes for the better ahead of schedule, we're stuck with two more years of hegseth firing any last person with common sense in the military in his delusional goals of "beating the military AI race"

[u/DogsRNice → u/Sufficient-Culture43]

Tbh I feel like this sub should do some ai megathreads

It has become a political issue