The United States military has an AI hype problem, and if officials aren’t careful, it could lead to civil catastrophe.
That’s according to a new analysis by the Brennan Center, a law and policy think tank, contends that the US military’s accelerated deployment of untested AI could lead to “unsafe systems” that inflict “excessive civilian harm and infringe on privacy and civil liberties.”
In 2026, the analysts write, the Department of Defense has requested $13.4 billion to be allocated for “autonomy and autonomous systems.” Those billions of taxpayer dollars aren’t just about embedding AI into weapons platforms, but deploying it for surveillance, maintenance, supply chain, and administrative operations.
As this extensive AI integration ramps up, so do the risks, with algorithmic errors opening the door for indiscriminate killings, wrongful arrests, and a general breakdown of civil liberties at the hands of the most powerful military in the world. Crucially, they note, humans are no foil to unsafe AI.
“These failures could happen even with humans in the loop,” the analysts write. “Commanders and operators of weapons systems are generally supposed to independently verify and confirm AI-generated targets. In reality, they may become too willing to defer to algorithmic recommendations.”
“Additionally, greater reliance on AI reduces the lives of individuals to blips and data points on a screen, which could desensitize soldiers to acts of killing and destruction,” the report reads.
Indeed, the loss of life and civil liberties are already being felt by the people caught up on the wrong end of the AI arsenal. According to the Wall Street Journal, the US military attacked more than 3,000 individual targets in Iran using intelligence gathered by Anthropic’s Claude.
As of March 6, at least 1,332 Iranian civilians had been killed in those attacks, including more than 175 elementary students and staff killed in a double-tap strike on a girl’s school. While it’s still unknown whether AI was involved in the decision to attack that particular location, it’s clear that the military’s AI fever is already associated with a sizable body count — and absent any meaningful changes, it’s certain to produce many more.
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