FT News Briefing How AI is changing warfare
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Nov 28, 2025 
James O'Donnell, a senior reporter at MIT Technology Review with expertise in AI and defense, shares insights on how artificial intelligence is reshaping warfare. He discusses the practical uses of AI in military logistics and cyber operations. Concerns about human oversight vs. autonomous weapons are explored, highlighting the risks of AI making battlefield decisions. O'Donnell also addresses the challenges of AI hallucinations in military intelligence and debates around international regulations on AI in defense. Lastly, he compares the military AI capabilities of the US and China.
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AI Use Spans Support To Targeting
- Militaries use AI across logistics, cyber, intelligence analysis and battlefield targeting.
- Targeting is most controversial because it involves high-level decisions about attacks and lives.
Hallucinations Undermine Military Use
- Large language models hallucinate and mirror biases present in their training data.
- Those flaws limit LLMs' reliability for sensitive military decisions that require secret, contextual knowledge.
Marines' Exercise With LLMs
- U.S. Marines tested large language models to analyse multilingual intelligence during an exercise in the South Pacific.
- The models produced outputs that became hard to fact-check as operators leaned on them for sensitive decisions.