US military nearly intercepted Chinese ship over AI-generated false intelligence report

The US military nearly intercepted a Chinese ship in the Middle East this spring after an AI-generated intelligence report falsely claimed it was carrying nuclear weapons program components, CNN reports.

According to four sources familiar with the episode, armed US military personnel were preparing to board the vessel and military planes were in the air before officials discovered the report — compiled by a special operations command analyst using a chatbot — had “entirely false” findings, misidentifying the ship’s cargo.

One source told CNN the report “almost started a war,” given that any operation against a Chinese vessel risked spiraling into armed conflict between the two nations.

The analyst had queried the chatbot on intelligence from US Special Operations Command Pacific, which fused open-source data with classified signals intelligence before generating its flawed conclusion.

The incident, sources said, is not an isolated case of AI “hallucination” within the intelligence community, further exposing the risks as the Pentagon races to embed AI across military targeting and decision-making without uniform safety standards.