PerspectiveWill Artificial Intelligence Imperil Nuclear Deterrence?

Published 19 September 2019

Nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence are two technologies that have scared the living daylights out of people for a long time. These fears have been most vividly expressed through imaginative novels, films, and television shows. while strategists have generally offered more sober explorations of the future relationship between AI and nuclear weapons, some of the most widely received musings on the issue, including a recent call for an AI-enabled “dead hand” to update America’s aging nuclear command, control, and communications infrastructure, tend to obscure more than they illuminate due to an insufficient understanding of the technologies involved.

Nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence are two technologies that have scared the living daylights out of people for a long time. These fears have been most vividly expressed through imaginative novels, films, and television shows. Nuclear terror gave us Nevil Schute’s On the Beach, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Judith Merril’s Shadow on the Hearth, Nicholas Meyer’s The Day After, and — more recently —  Jeffrey Lewis’ 2020 Commission Report. Anxieties about artificial intelligence begat Jack Williamson’s “With Folded Hands,” William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, and  Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s “Westworld.” Combine these fears and you might get something like Sarah Connor’s playground dream sequence in Terminator 2, resulting in the “desert of the real” that Morpheus presents to Neo in The Matrix.

Rafael Loss and Joseph Johnson write in War on the Rocks that while strategists have generally offered more sober explorations of the future relationship between AI and nuclear weapons, some of the most widely received musings on the issue, including a recent call for an AI-enabled “dead hand” to update America’s aging nuclear command, control, and communications infrastructure, tend to obscure more than they illuminate due to an insufficient understanding of the technologies involved. An appreciation for technical detail, however, is necessary to arrive at realistic assessments of any new technology, and particularly consequential where nuclear weapons are concerned. Some have warned that advances in AI could erode the fundamental logic of nuclear deterrence by enabling counter-force attacks against heretofore concealed and mobile nuclear forces. Such secure second-strike forces are considered the backbone of effective nuclear deterrence by assuring retaliation. Were they to become vulnerable to preemption, nuclear weapons would lose their deterrent value.

“We, however, view this concern as overstated,” Loss and Johnson write. “Because of AI’s inherent limitations, splendid counter-force will remain out of reach. While emerging technologies and nuclear force postures might interact to alter the dynamics of strategic competition, AI in itself will not diminish the deterrent value of today’s nuclear forces.”