US and China urged to keep nukes on "human-only" mode before AI skips the launch codes 🤖

Security researchers from the United States and China are calling on Washington and Beijing to bar artificial intelligence from independently launching cyberattacks against nuclear command systems or authorizing the use of nuclear weapons. A joint report by Brookings and Shanghai-based Fudan University asks U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to extend their existing commitment to human control of nuclear weapons to other military uses of AI, including cyber operations targeting nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) systems. "Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping can lead in governing these dangers by agreeing that only humans, not AI, should make the decision to initiate a cyberattack against each other's nuclear command, control, and communications systems (NC3) or critical infrastructure," the researchers wrote.

NC3 systems help governments detect threats, evaluate whether to use nuclear weapons, and transmit launch orders, and the authors warn that failures at any stage could disrupt communications, misread an attack, encourage a first strike, or trigger an accidental or unauthorized launch. "Extending the principle applied to nuclear weapons—that attacks with strategic effects should express human intent and must be subject to human accountability—does not require Washington and Beijing to share other principles of cybersecurity or infrastructure protection," the researchers wrote. The proposed agreement would require both countries to reduce the risk that chance, human error, unpredictable AI behavior, or unauthorized actors could trigger attacks with strategic consequences.

Concerns over AI-enabled military escalation intensified in February, when models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic used nuclear weapons in 95% of tested war-game scenarios, though experts cautioned the simulations may have encouraged escalation. That same month, Anthropic refused Pentagon demands to remove Claude's restrictions on mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using the company's technology, but a federal judge ruled on Aug. 28 that the administration had illegally retaliated against Anthropic. Calls for restraint have since spread across the AI sector: Earlier this month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged developers to slow capability gains, winning support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI owner Elon Musk, while OpenAI asked Congress whether companies could coordinate a slowdown without violating antitrust law.

With no binding slowdown in place, the Brookings authors propose a narrower rule requiring humans to authorize any attack on nuclear command systems or any use of nuclear weapons. "The governance of military AI is not a negotiation that can afford to wait—it's a race against time," they wrote, framing the nuclear safeguard as a first step in governing military AI between the world's two largest nuclear powers.