CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Is Artificial Intelligence in Charge of Nuclear Weapons?

US nuclear bomb exploding over Micronesia, 1946. Public Domain.

On October 16, 2025, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that as long as nuclear weapons exist, they should never be controlled by artificial intelligence (AI). Six states proposed the AI resolution: Austria, El Salvador, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Malta and Mexico. They were rightly convinced that AI should not be part of nuclear armaments.

The UN resolution highlighted and explained the “risks” of incorporating AI in command, control and communications affecting nuclear weapons. It warned that

“artificial intelligence-driven decision-

making related to command, control and communications systems of nuclear weapons could reduce human control and oversight, increasing the possibility of induced distortions in decision-making environments and shortened action and response windows, particularly when related to the most sensitive and critical stages such as decision to launch, which could heighten the risk of accidental, unintended or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons.”

The resolution also highlighted “inherent technical limitations of artificial intelligence systems, including but not limited to the potential for malfunction, exploitation or intrusion, and cognitive and automation biases impacting training data and algorithmic design.” These technical deficiencies, the resolution said, “could produce hallucinations and flawed, inaccurate or misleading outputs and understandings, which in turn could have serious and catastrophic outcomes such as the accidental, unintended or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons.”

These are not minor problems afflicting AI. They could lead to nuclear catastrophe or nuclear war. For these legitimate concerns, the resolution demanded that, “pending the total elimination of nuclear weapons, human control and oversight is maintained over command, control and communications systems of nuclear weapons, including those that integrate artificial intelligence technology.”

“The resolution is a major steppingstone,” says the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “because it nudges the debate beyond the baseline notion of “keeping humans in control of nuclear weapons decisions” towards a more fine-grained recognition of how AI could fuel unintended escalation in decision processes…. Substantively, the text [of the UN resolution] reflects and attempts to build on, political commitments that several states—such as France, China, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the United States—have already endorsed in statements or in outcome documents in other forums. At the same time, it attempts to extend these commitments to nuclear command, control, and communications more broadly, namely the whole architecture that underpins nuclear decision-making.”

True, the resolution reflects the ideology, politics and terror of the decades-old existence of nuclear weapons, as well as the hubris of the nuclear states. However, the resolution goes far deeper. It is a serious first step for the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons. It reminds civilized people that AI and especially nuclear bombs, in combination or alone, are inhuman nightmares of possible forthcoming destruction of people and civilization and nature. Artificial Intelligence may seem harmless and profitable but, like nuclear bombs, it is becoming another version of nuclear bomb. “Like nuclear bombs, AI-machines are bound to explode. Money and profits laces the talk of engineering experts constructing AI........

© CounterPunch