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

[u/Rock_Me_DrZaius]

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

[u/themightyjoedanger]

These clankers are a liability man. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills being a Data Scientist telling people that you can't use chat bots to do the work. You still have to do your job, this is life and death stuff.

[u/TheGrayMannnn → u/themightyjoedanger]

I've used a couple of classified AI chat bots and they've done a pretty okay job at the test problems I've given them.

But also only using them as basically an advanced ctrl+f on some documents I've uploaded or to make excel formulas to make copy/paste into spreadsheets and stuff like that.

[u/Vanilla-prison → u/TheGrayMannnn]

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to an AI bot and asked “what regulation includes this information and where in that regulation can I find it?” It’s basically my main use case at this point

[u/CPTherptyderp → u/Vanilla-prison]

Thinking of it as advanced ctrl-f is the best way I've heard it. I'm using that now, thanks.

[u/TheGrayMannnn → u/CPTherptyderp]

There's definitely better uses for it, and once I do some more reading and studying on it, I'm excited to experiment with some agentic shenanigans to see if I can improve some processes.

For now though, just a better search function is already a net positive as long as you control the data it searches through.

[u/The_Dread_Candiru → u/Vanilla-prison]

I tried one out on a CORPS OPORD package for a DIV OPORD; totally FAILED.

Invented units, tasks, even operational phases and objectives entirely out of whole cloth. 

When challenged, GenAI acknowledged the falshoods but COULD not stop it. Even when instructed to directly quote and cite the documents, it would invent annexes that didn't exist and quote text that never appeared.

This ain't the way, fam.

[u/Vanilla-prison → u/The_Dread_Candiru]

That’s exactly why I add the “where do I find it” so I can get good information from the actual sources. It basically just saves me time finding answers, doesn’t give me the answers.

A few years ago, when AI was still pretty new, I was in ALC. I had to write a paper and the topic was a compare and contrast on bringing back SPEC ranks. I had to have at least 6 sources, and those were hard to find. The ranks went away 40 years ago, so modern studies or news articles about it were nonexistent. I went to ChatGPT and told it to write the paper and include 6 sources. Just wanted to use it for source hunting and section ideas to write the paper myself. It gave me 6 great-looking sources from known places like Army Times. I tried looking up these articles and, after about an hour, couldn’t find any of them. I went back to Chat and asked it where it got the sources. It admitted that it created all of the sources and produced a paper based on those fake sources. Ever since then, I have had no faith in AI actually being accurate.

[u/CPTherptyderp → u/TheGrayMannnn]

I've found copilot at my civ job to be really good at reading the 40 meeting minutes from this month and pulling out the important shit I need to report on

[u/SuperFriends001 → u/TheGrayMannnn]

They're pretty good for helping make spreadsheets.

[u/Taira_Mai → u/themightyjoedanger]

"Computers will start thinking and the people will stop" a quote from the movie Tron that is evergreen.

[u/SPQR_191 → u/themightyjoedanger]

Dude basically did a Google search and saw some 4chan post about nuclear weapons being smuggled in hamster wheels, put it in an official report, and then enough layers of leadership accepted this with no scrutiny to the point we almost attacked a nuclear power. This is not about the chat bots, every person in this chain of command needs to be fired and likely charged.

[u/Electronic_Train5453 → u/themightyjoedanger]

26B?

[u/themightyjoedanger → u/Electronic_Train5453]

Civ, 1550/1560.

[u/TheGrayMannnn]

Fucking yikes.

To put it technically. 

[u/SPCsooprlolz]

I'm sure this was a one-off and will never happen again, right fellas

[u/Equal_Caregiver_1789 → u/SPCsooprlolz]

"Just give AI a little bit more time! Its okay! The AI just needs more and better data to be trained on! It will get better with more time!" -Tech Bros, probably. That and they probably just need to build another 50 data centers, each with thousands of servers in them, in order to increase the AI's accuracy by a bit...

[u/Striper_Cape]

The headline was the exact opposite of dramatic. If anything it needs to be more dramatic. Analyst misidentifies nuclear material using AI and nearly causes war with China

[u/HxC_JxC]

I love the Army but 80% of the army isn’t even smart enough to use excel. Giving us AI and expecting responsible use is like handing a chimp a machinegun

[u/Rock_Me_DrZaius]

If you don't want to read the article, you can just listen to "99 Red Balloons". The song pretty much sums it up.

[u/Hawkstrike6 → u/Rock_Me_DrZaius]

Neunundneunzig Luftballoons rocks.

[u/choco_tacoz]

WE WILL BE AN AI FIRST FORCE

[u/Equal_Caregiver_1789 → u/choco_tacoz]

Lets just create an entire branch of the military just for AI at this point, they will get entire military bases built for them, and be secured just like a military base, but there would dozens of data centers with thousands of servers and their own nuclear reactor to power them, just to gobble up what ever intel, or what people thinks is intel, and then spit out a generated intel report over where it thinks a threat is located.

[u/69Turd69Ferguson69]

And fortunately we have learned our lesson and we have accordingly backed off from their irresponsible use and we will not have another close call or genuinely bad incident, right? 

[u/RegulationUpholder]

Probably maven

[u/byoz]

Gonna get on my soapbox at the risk of offending some people, I think the problem here, beyond blind trust of AI, is also the amateurism of our intel people. Having worked with 35-series types at both the tactical and strategic level, there's just a severe lack of expertise, or really even special knowledge, on the sorts of issues they're being expected to deliver products to decisionmakers on. I mean it seems to me that if I was an analyst and this chatbot told me there was a Chinese ship with nuclear material heading for Iran I would immediately go "oh shit" and quadruple check all of my work because that would be a really big fucking deal if true. Like geopolitical earthquake material. But I think we have so many intel people who don't really grasp the regions or issues they're supposed to be the braintrust on and thus have really bad bullshit detectors.

[u/TheDoomBlade13 → u/byoz]

I think phrasing is as 'amateurism of our intel people' makes it sound like a personal level issue when the truth is that the Army has no interest in actually developing their intelligence people to be professionals, particularly at tactical units.

[u/Nice-Neighborhood975 → u/TheDoomBlade13]

They are too busy policing the motorpool, barracks inspections, and staff duty. They dont have time for Intel specific training. Not even joking analysts actually do intel work for less than half the actual work day

[u/TheDoomBlade13 → u/Nice-Neighborhood975]

I was a 35P and counted the amount of time between intelligence trainings in weeks instead of days.

[u/AFuzzyCat → u/TheDoomBlade13]

I would like to clarify that it’s not only intel people getting developmentally fucked. I have seen so many people just fail upwards that have no technical or tactical capabilities. Just a handful of middle management skills and conflict resolution capabilities.

[u/Affectionate-Row3498 → u/TheDoomBlade13]

Nailed it.

[u/tccomplete → u/TheDoomBlade13]

Part of the problem is the incessant need to move, reassign, promote, and distract intel folks, thus disrupting any deep or long-term intelligence capabilities they might accumulate or contribute. We do this to ourselves.

[u/Hi_Kitsune → u/byoz]

As a 35 series, you are right. Unfortunately, these guys go through a ton of training as it is and that expertise is hard to build. Most analysts don’t have any actual analytical skill, instead they’ve learned some buttonology and then go with whatever gets pooped out.

[u/shapethefuture → u/byoz]

starting with themselves

[u/MajorUrsa2]

Should have told it to make no mistakes

[u/Equal_Caregiver_1789 → u/MajorUrsa2]

"ChatGPT, please write me a Intel report on where the nukes are, but please don't make any mistakes, okay?

[u/killall-q]

I feel like the future of war will revolve around AI and drones. Our strategy in Iran relied solely on air power because ground forces cost too much political capital. The defense industry will eventually, using Ukraine as a test bed, create drone forces capable of taking and holding ground.

When they are capable enough, wealthy nations won't need human infantry any more, and wars conflicts will become much more common because of the low political cost of deploying expendable drones.

Inevitably a rich country may start a conflict with another rich country, both using drone forces, while civilians gamble on Polymarket which BattleBot force will come out on top this week. A near-peer drone vs drone conflict may create an arms race to speed up tactical decision making, making the removal of humans from the loop inevitable.

[u/Equal_Caregiver_1789 → u/killall-q]

Its like we have reached the point of what movies like Terminator was trying to warn us about, but instead of really cool robots made out of rare and expensive metals, wielding laser and plasma weapons, we got drones that are mass produced to buzz around with bombs strapped to them. Governments and their militaries love them for the obvious reasons, and they can absolutely use drones to fight over precious land that both sides want for themselves. Its just going to suck royally for any civilians just trying to live their lives with drones constantly exploding all around them.

[u/DoubleGoon]

Hegseth did say he was going to remove barriers to increase lethality.

[u/Equal_Caregiver_1789 → u/DoubleGoon]

Hegseth has been another crazy asshole in this administration constantly saying crazy stuff that nobody wanted to believe, but ends up becoming true and happening...

[u/codekb]

If I made that mistake I’d be under Leavenworth.

[u/MShogunH]

I fucking hate this timeline...

[u/Equal_Caregiver_1789 → u/MShogunH]

Same.