An Algorithmic Loosening of the Atomic Screw? Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Deterrence

Iskander Rehman 

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“It did not take atomic weapons to make man want peace. But the atomic bomb was the turn of the screw. The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.”

— Robert Oppenheimer, commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania, February 28, 1946.

In the annals of transformative technologies, the detonation of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico’s desert in July 1945 stands as a world-changing moment. Today, many query whether the emergence of artificial superintelligence (ASI), an artificial intelligence that surpasses humans in every cognitive field of endeavor, might herald a similarly profound inflection point in global affairs. Experts and government officials regularly draw analogies between the birth of nuclear weapons and the potential dawn of ASI, suggesting that the lessons of the atomic age—from the Manhattan Project to the brief period of US nuclear monopoly to the arcane intricacies of Cold War deterrence theory—might help illuminate the promises and perils of ASI. But how appropriate and useful is this analogy? More importantly, if one is to reach beyond this imperfect parallel, what might the growing use and integration of advanced AI mean for nuclear deterrence?

An Imperfect Analogy

If one starts from the premise that no single analogy is ever perfect, but that the process of analogical reasoning is itself a natural, and deeply human, way of thinking through labyrinthine problem sets then, yes, there is a partial utility in resorting to this parallel. The emergence of nuclear weapons on the world stage was a paradigm shift—one that resulted from remarkable breakthroughs in scientific ingenuity, but also embodied a new, and terrifying, form of existential danger to mankind. In so doing, it abruptly compelled strategists and decision-makers to reconceptualize many, if not all, of their core assumptions regarding the nature of coexistence, competition, and conflict. As the renowned strategist Bernard Brodie famously observed in 1946, “Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them.”