Slate Daily Feed What Next: TBD | If You Give A.I. a Nuke
Nov 30, 2025
Josh Keating, a senior correspondent at Vox and an expert on foreign policy, dives into the intricate relationship between AI and nuclear weapons. He unveils the growing role of AI in military systems, from predictive maintenance to automated retaliatory frameworks. Keating highlights the clash between military leaders' skepticism and tech firms' push for automation. He warns about cyber vulnerabilities and the accelerated pace of conflict that AI introduces, ultimately reshaping nuclear policy discussions in a post-Cold War era.
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False Alarm Nearly Triggered Nuclear Response
- In 1979 Zbigniew Brzezinski nearly woke President Carter over a false missile alert caused by a defective chip. He learned the alarm was a cheap hardware fault before ordering a response.
Officer's Pause Averted Soviet Retaliation
- Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov judged a Soviet early-warning missile alert as a false positive and delayed reporting. His hesitation appears to have averted a catastrophic retaliatory launch.
Nuclear Systems Are Older Than You Think
- Much of the U.S. nuclear command-and-control infrastructure is surprisingly low-tech, with legacy systems used until recently. Modernization plans explicitly include AI, raising questions about how much decision-making will be ceded to machines.