AI and the new blueprint of terrorism

Advanced violence is democratizing.  AI, in conjunction with dramatic improvements in robotics, energy production, and sensors, will increasingly enable ever-smaller groups of people to use targeted violence more effectively, and from a distance. Over time, this shift will dramatically impact all varieties of force projection: state-on-state war, various forms of low-intensity conflict, and how states enforce internal order. 

Perhaps understandably, however, national security discourse about the AI revolution has generally focused on more earth-shattering scenarios: superintelligence, state-to-state conflict, and the prospect of unleashing new biological weapons. These are all critical questions that deserve extensive scrutiny. But super-empowering small groups of people will shift security dynamics in crucial, if less dramatic, ways as well. Non-state actors will use AI-backed tools to conduct relatively simple attacks using increasingly autonomous weapons. In this scenario, it will be the ability of AI-empowered weapons to deliver destruction discriminately, rather than at a catastrophic scale, that will be critical. 

There are structural reasons that AI’s impact on non-state violence is relatively under-examined. National security thinkers often default to analyzing interstate competition, the rise of China is the central geopolitical feature of the early 21st century, and AI labs, for reasons of both public and self-interest, often highlight such concerns. These companies understand how AI will shape the 21st century and so recognize genuinely critical issues. They also see the government as a customer and regulator — and understand the political utility of highlighting AI’s importance to core national security interests at a moment of emergent regulation and government investment. 

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