AI and the New Blueprint of Terrorism

AI Summary

AI combined with advances in robotics, sensors, and energy production is enabling small groups to conduct increasingly sophisticated targeted violence, democratizing advanced force projection. The article argues that national security discourse is too focused on large-scale AI scenarios and neglects the super-empowerment of small terrorist actors. This shift will affect state-on-state conflict, low-intensity operations, and internal security enforcement.

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 The post AI and the New Blueprint of Terrorism appeared first on War on the Rocks.