Hamza Chaudhry

"Although a nuclear confrontation based on fake intelligence may seem unlikely, the stakes during crises are high and timelines are short, creating situations where fake data could well tilt the balance toward nuclear war.

"The evolution of nuclear systems has led to further ambiguity in crises and shorter timeframes for verifying intelligence. An intercontinental ballistic missile from Russia could reach the U.S. within 25 minutes. A submarine-launched ballistic missile could arrive even sooner. 

"Many modern missiles carry ambiguous payloads, making it unclear whether they are nuclear-tipped. AI tools for verifying the authenticity of content are not sufficiently reliable, making this ambiguity difficult to resolve in a short window.

"The likeliest nuclear hotspots are also the arenas involving actors with low levels of trust on both sides — be that the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party or Russia, or India and Pakistan. Even if communication is established in a narrow time frame, leaders will be forced to weigh the compelling disinformation as evidence against an opposing government’s calls to stand down.

"Even if the U.S. can guard against such disinformation there is no guarantee that other nuclear-armed states would have the technical capacity to do so. A single strike from another actor could precipitate global nuclear war, even if the U.S. had done its due diligence to reject the spurious intelligence."