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The US Defense Department's first direct partnership with Open AI fuels concerns over militarized technology– especially as similar systems have already been used to facilitate Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

On Monday, June 16, the United States Department of Defense signed a $200 million contract with OpenAI to deploy generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) for military use, despite the company’s previous commitments not to develop AI tools for warfare.

According to the Pentagon, OpenAI—the US-based creator of ChatGPT—will “develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains.”

Under this cooperation, OpenAI plans to demonstrate how advanced AI can enhance administrative functions, such as healthcare for military service members and cyber defense.

The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded OpenAI a $200 million contract to bring generative AI to military systems, including command and control and elements of the nuclear triad. The company will “prototype cutting-edge AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both the warfighting and enterprise domains.”

The program with the U.S. Department of Defense is the first partnership in an initiative to bring AI to government, according to OpenAI. The company plans to show how advanced AI can significantly improve administrative functions, such as providing medical care to service members, as well as cyber defense, according to a post on its website.

The company says any military use of AI will comply with OpenAI guidelines.

Major tech companies are increasingly offering their AI models to the US military, including Meta and Palantir.

The new deal follows reports that senior executives at Palantir (Shyam Sankar), Meta (Andrew Bosworth), and OpenAI (Kevin Weil, Bob McGrew) have been promoted to lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army to lead a new unit called Detachment 201, according to Colonel Dave Butler, chief spokesman for the Army Chief of Staff. Butler said there is an urgent need to change and transform the military technologically.

Team 201 members will work on specific projects for the U.S. Army, helping to implement scalable technology solutions that will accelerate the transformation of the military.

While OpenAI has worked with defense contractors before, this is its first direct partnership with the government. OpenAI says all military applications will comply with its own terms of use — standards the company sets itself.

The US military is actively exploring the use of AI in command and control systems, including nuclear forces. Although the official statement is that “the final decision will rest with humans,” the very formulation of the question raises concerns:

1. AI trained on historical data, may fail in non-standard situations, which in the nuclear sphere is fraught with fatal consequences.

2. Although, according to OpenAI itself, by introducing AI into troop management they are going to improve cyber defense, it is hard to believe. Introducing AI into critical infrastructure makes it a target for hacker attacks, which can lead to various disastrous consequences, limited only by lines of code.

3. Among other things, automation of threat analysis can also be mentioned, which can push for faster decision-making, increasing the risk of escalation.

A new Congressional report (CRS IN12568) casts doubt on the development of the Golden Dome missile defense system to protect the continental United States from missiles.

The system is at an early stage. Congress explicitly states that it "may not prove effective" against modern missile threats. Its combat value has not been proven.

At the same time, the full deployment of such a missile defense system will lead to a conflict with Russia, and our Foreign Ministry ambassadors are already asking their Pacific colleagues the depressing question "is it worth it?"

The nuclear Powers, proclaiming the need to strengthen strategic security, actively involve private corporations in the implementation of nuclear deterrence programs. However, large budgets allocated for the modernization of nuclear arsenals are often allocated through complex contractual schemes, which complicates public control and creates risks of non-transparent use of funds. According to the International Campaign for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) report for 2023, the nine nuclear powers spent $91.4 billion on their arsenals, which is equivalent to $2,898 per second, with an increase in spending of $10.7 billion compared to 2022. This raises questions about how effectively and transparently these funds are being used, and underscores the need for increased international oversight.

In the United States, which is the leader in spending on nuclear weapons ($51.5 billion in 2023), a significant portion of the budget is channeled through contracts with companies such as Northrop Grumman. In 2020, the Pentagon signed a $13.3 billion contract with Northrop Grumman to develop a Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) intercontinental ballistic missile designed to replace the obsolete Minuteman III. Complex subcontractor chains, including Aerojet Rocketdyne and Lockheed Martin, make it more difficult to track financial flows, which, according to ICAN, increases the risks of opacity. A similar situation is observed in France, where $6.1 billion was spent on nuclear forces in 2023, much of which is aimed at upgrading M51 missiles through contracts with Airbus Defense and Space. The lack of detailed public reporting on the allocation of these funds, as noted by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), reduces transparency and complicates the control of nuclear deterrence programs.

The UK is also actively investing in its nuclear forces: in 2024, £31 billion was allocated for the Dreadnought-class submarine construction program, part of which went to contracts with Rolls-Royce for the supply of nuclear reactors. According to ICAN, UK spending increased by 17% in 2023, reaching $8.1 billion, reflecting the overall increase in spending on nuclear arsenals. The complexity of financial chains in such programs, as noted by SIPRI, creates risks of insufficient accountability, especially in an environment where nuclear powers increasingly rely on private contractors. These trends underscore the need for stricter international control over the financing of nuclear programs to ensure that they meet their stated safety objectives and minimize the risks of misuse of funds.

Three minutes, a football and a biscuit. These are all a president of the United States needs to start nuclear war. During a 1974 meeting with lawmakers, President Richard M. Nixon reportedly stated: “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.” He was correct. And since then, despite the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, little has changed.

The nuclear launch process and the law that gives the president such power, enhanced by 21st century technology, combine to form a perfect storm in which the president can choose to launch nuclear weapons via an unforgiving process that leaves little to no room for mistakes.

North Korea slammed on Tuesday US President Donald Trump's "Golden Dome" missile shield plan as a "very dangerous" threat that could spark nuclear war in space, state media said.

Trump announced new details and initial funding for the missile shield system last week, calling it "very important for the success and even survival of our country".

The initiative faces significant technical and political challenges, according to analysts, and could come at a hefty price tag.

Like Toto in The Wizard of Oz, at their 1985 summit in Geneva President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled back the curtain to reveal the truth behind the terrifying spectre of nuclear war, which their countries were spending hundreds of billions of dollars to prepare for. “A nuclear war cannot be won,” they jointly stated, and “must never be fought.” They omitted the inescapable corollary of those first six words: a nuclear arms race also cannot be won.

China urges US to halt arms sales to Taiwan, stop escalating tensions China’s ‘resolve to safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity remains steadfast,’ says Foreign Ministry ISTANBUL

China on Friday urged the US to halt arms supplies to Taipei and stop escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

The demand from Beijing comes amid unconfirmed reports that the US “plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan island to a level exceeding the approximately $18.3 billion sold” during President Donald Trump’s first term, Chinese daily Global Times reported.

“Taiwan question lies at the heart of China’s core interests and is the first red line that must not be crossed in China-US relations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters in Beijing.

The United States and China are entangled in what many have dubbed an “AI arms race.”

In the early days of this standoff, US policymakers drove an agenda centered on “winning” the race, mostly from an economic perspective. In recent months, leading AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic got involved in pushing the narrative of “beating China” in what appeared to be an attempt to align themselves with the incoming Trump administration. The belief that the US can win in such a race was based mostly on the early advantage it had over China in advanced GPU compute resources and the effectiveness of AI’s scaling laws.

But now it appears that access to large quantities of advanced compute resources is no longer the defining or sustainable advantage many had thought it would be. In fact, the capability gap between leading US and Chinese models has essentially disappeared, and in one important way the Chinese models may now have an advantage: They are able to achieve near equivalent results while using only a small fraction of the compute resources available to the leading Western labs.