US military aborted an armed operation against a Chinese ship after learning the intelligence was an AI hallucination

US military aircraft were already in the air this spring for an armed operation against a Chinese vessel when officials discovered that the intelligence behind it had been hallucinated by an AI chatbot, CNN reported on Friday. The operation was aborted at the last minute, narrowly averting a potential conflict with China. The intelligence report circulated during the war with Iran and claimed the vessel was carrying components for a nuclear weapons program. It originated with a Special Operations Command analyst who queried a chatbot to synthesize open-source data with classified signals intelligence. The chatbot misidentified the ship's cargo manifest. The analyst then used the tool a second time to format the erroneous findings into an official-looking summary, which spread across command channels before anyone questioned it. Sources told CNN that the military's internal systems are mostly repackaged copies of commercial products, that there are no uniform standards for verifying AI-generated intelligence, and that younger analysts tend to trust AI tools without question. One source said AI allows you to get to a bad idea faster. The near-miss comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushes an acceleration strategy for AI adoption across the military, and as the Pentagon describes AI as a significant advantage in speeding up its kill chain. The episode illustrates a concern raised by military officials and outside experts: as decision-makers lean on AI, its errors can travel up the chain of command faster than they are checked.