✨ Are we ready for a rogue AI attack? We should be

A think-tank wargame suggests America’s biggest vulnerability isn’t killer code but the human confusion and coordination breakdown that would follow it

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers in America and around the world:

The “fog of war” plays a key and deeply unsettling role in the excellent 2024 book Nuclear War: A Scenario¹ by journalist Annie Jacobsen and the recent Netflix film A House of Dynamite, also a nuclear thriller. In both, national leaders are forced to make decisions amid chaos, confusion, and fragmentary information. Warning systems glitch, communications break down — with civilization-altering impacts.

The inescapable haze of uncertainty that blinds decision-makers is likewise present in a recent wargaming exercise conducted by the RAND Corporation. It begins in the near future² with a wave of cyberattacks that cripples autonomous vehicles, drones, and infrastructure across America, killing 26 people in Los Angeles and sowing confusion nationwide. Similar attacks happen internationally, as well.

The White House scrambles to convene its national-security principals, but no one knows who is responsible. China? A terrorist group, domestic or international?

Some national security officials even suspect the culprit could be a runaway artificial intelligence. But no one is too confident. With the power grid flickering and comms faltering, officials must decide whether to retaliate, cooperate or simply shut the systems down — all the while grappling with the unnerving possibility that the enemy may be digital.