Pete Hegseth at the 2026 National POW/MIA Recognition Day Ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, DC on September 18, 2026.Credit: Kent NISHIMURA / AFP
An “entirely false” report generated by AI “almost started a war” with China, sources told CNN.
In an exclusive, several sources familiar with the incident told CNN that the fake report stated that a Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapon. Members of the U.S. military planned to board the ship, and military planes were in the air — but before any action was taken, officials realized the report was false.
A special operations command analyst assembled the report using AI, CNN reported, though it’s unclear whether they used a commercially available LLM or an internal government one. A former senior official familiar with AI systems used by the military told CNN that internal tools are “mostly just copies of the commercial stuff wearing lipstick.”
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The report seemed to originate from the Hawaii-based U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific. Neither that department nor the Pentagon responded to CNN’s request for comment.
This reporting comes amid cresting concerns about AI that went into overdrive after an Anthropic researcher quit and said the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
But the Trump administration has been bullish on AI, with top military officials among its advocates. In Jan. 2026, the Department of War launched an “<a href="https://myappsplus.com/better-artificial-intelligence-stock-aehr-test-systems-vs-kla-corporation/" title="Better Artificial Intelligence Stock: Aehr Test Systems vs. KLA Corporation”>Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy,” with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth commenting, “We will become an ‘AI-first’ warfighting force across all domains.”
This month, President Trump has called fears around AI a “hoax.”
TopicsArtificial IntelligencePolitics
Anna Iovine is the associate editor of features at Mashable. Previously, as the sex and relationships reporter, she covered topics ranging from dating apps to pelvic pain. Before Mashable, Anna was a social editor at VICE and freelanced for publications such as Slate and the Columbia Journalism Review. Follow her on Instagram.
