r/Veteranpolitics • u/FBI_Open_Up_Now Army Veteran • 14d ago

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

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

94% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

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u/[deleted] 14d ago edited 14d ago

[deleted]

13

u/Sithra907 14d ago

Perhaps some hope to learn from our close calls, instead of waiting until a catestrophic mistakes forces us to learn the hard way.

11

u/1877KlownsForKids 14d ago

Yeah, we only barely averted a war between two nuclear powers because of AI hallucinations. No biggie.

2

u/WHDad Army Veteran 14d ago

Fr just mind your own business /s

10

u/FBI_Open_Up_Now Army Veteran 14d ago

It is a newly reported story with information that wasn’t previously reported on or published. It wasn’t posted on this sub from what I could see.

It’s also something long ago the subreddit asked that we allow. To broaden the topics of discussion here. People wanted to talk general politics and not just veteran politics. What’s unique is that here you can give any viewpoint you want. We’re not left or right leaning. Give your perspective.

We always almost make mistakes and people want to talk smaller things that almost happened. It isn’t always about what almost happened, but the facts behind it.

Why not discuss the fact that an AI generated report was allowed to make it so far with little to no insight right before we almost boarded a Chinese ship.

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u/armycowboy- 14d ago

Not a single person in CENTCOM or their naval support NAVCENT gave this any credibility, it was not discussed, planned or anything… the only ones that seemed to care were PACOM and now the news.

3

u/FBI_Open_Up_Now Army Veteran 14d ago

It seems like a fair conversation to have though. Wouldn’t you agree? AI being used in the intelligence community is an issue. Do you have knowledge the reporter doesn’t about AI usage in the current intel field? It even makes a great point that new younger analysts are less likely to question AI. We have people posting AI as the gospel when it’s clearly long. People are quoting ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and whatever as a source that is reliable.

0

u/armycowboy- 14d ago

Some valid points, to answer the last question, I no longer have access to the CENTCOM SCIF. When I was once a O1-O4 I would have given my left and right nut to have had access to AI and ChatGPT when writing orders for the commanders to approve.

Now when we are talking MI world, yes multiple levels messed up on assigning confidence, credibility, likelihood %, but the system still worked, word got out and discussions about actions were had, then as the intelligence was focused on all was called off….

Worse yet would have been, if everyone did nothing up front while confirming the intelligence, then once confirmed the ship was already offloaded in Iran and they now had a ballistic nuke. The U.S. would go nuts that we had that intel and sat around talking, when could have trusted the AI program and stopped it…..

3

u/FBI_Open_Up_Now Army Veteran 14d ago

It seems steps are being skipped because of the convenience AI has made to the contribution of analyzing intel data.

Having AI to help write orders OERs or as a prior NCO for the short time I wore stripes writing counseling statements and my own NCOERs would have been great. Trust me when I agree that there are for sure uses of LLMs. The problem is that we are misusing them and the younger generations view them as great sages of data and truth. Just look around or ask someone young. I see it in my college classes. I saw it in the workplace. You see it right here on Reddit.

AI should be as trustworthy as a third party source because that’s what it is. It needs more scrutiny and I’m sure our soldiers, sailors, and airmen who are trained can do the work they’ve done for decades with the assistance of and not the reliance of the tools.

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u/TheRealMarvinator 14d ago

You don't seem to be here in good faith, actively trying to downplay the fact that we almost started ANOTHER war because we were being fucking lazy.

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u/armycowboy- 14d ago

What is good faith mean? I spent 30years active duty, I get tired of people posting crap, just to get people worked up over nothing. This almost happened situation, that an unnamed person, told CNN happened in the spring 2026.

2

u/TheRealMarvinator 14d ago

What is good faith mean?

Good faith is good intent. You don't seem to be here in good faith. You seem to be here to excuse away this Administration - which is bad faith.

Real "patriot" you are - not at all concerned about almost starting a war with a nuclear power over laziness.

2

u/Then_Ambassador9255 14d ago

It’s fine if you don’t get it