The Fog of AI | Foreign Affairs

Artificial intelligence (AI) can reinforce national security by improving intelligence gathering, threat assessment, and decision-making processes.
AI can amplify defenses and help ensure that signals of capabilities and resolve are clear and credible to adversaries.
Adversaries can exploit AI systems through model poisoning and information warfare tactics to manipulate data and public sentiment.
Such manipulation can distort a country’s perception of threat levels and its own capabilities, undermining effective deterrence.
A potent new form of ‘cognitive warfare’ using AI-driven influence can spread fake content and synthetic personas, seeding confusion and weakening domestic support for action.
To counter these threats, policymakers must develop safeguards to detect and neutralize AI-driven information warfare and ensure AI systems remain reliable in crises.
Collaboration between governments, academia, and private sectors will be critical to designing robust defenses and information handling against AI-based manipulations.