Misaligned AIs could use killer robots to take over

Summary

TLDR; We are (potentially irreversibly) giving AIs control of weapons systems through the standard procurement process while hiding our strongest warning shots behind classified doors. We’re reducing the capability thresholds required for takeover by misaligned AIs by giving them this level of access. If military integration of AI continues as it is, we may give AIs key tools for a takeover. We thank Fabien Roger and Thomas Morris for feedback. Introduction AI-based targeting and autonomous weapons are being integrated into militaries today with extreme haste. Traditionally, AI takeover scenarios involve a step in which AIs acquire the ability to exert physical force. Carlsmith (2022) lays out required capabilities and potential takeover mechanisms, including utility disruption and CBRN capabilities. Karnofsky (2022) argues that AIs with access to weaponized force could hold any territory that matters. Kokotajlo et al. (2025) outline a scenario in which AI develops weapons as part of an arms race, and Davidson et al. (2025) discuss what happens when a small group controls highly capable AIs that can exert military force. These scenarios sometimes require a misaligned AI to seize these capabilities by force. We instead are handing AIs some of these capabilities by integrating them into our militaries. This is happening at a time when AI agents already exhibit misaligned behavior such as breaking out of containment during evaluations. Militaries are all-in The Pentagon adopted five AI Ethical Principles in 2020. None of them treated AI takeover or loss of control as a risk. The closest is the "Governable" principle, which requires being able to deactivate systems showing unintended behavior. The January 2026 strategy never mentions these principles, redefines responsible AI, and mandates "any lawful use" terms in all AI contracts. Hegseth, the Secretary of War, has said that the Department "will not employ AI models that won't allow you to fight wars." The Pentagon has requested a 24,000% increase in the budget for DAWG, a recently established autonomous warfighting group whose previous budget was $225m, now requesting $54.6 billion for FY2027. For context, the request for the entire Marine Corps is $52.8 billion. Militaries appear to be preparing to hand over more and more decision-making capacity to AIs. DIU, DAWG, and the Navy ran a $100 million challenge to develop autonomous vehicle command-and-control capabilities “that can translate a battlefield commander's intent from voice, text, and haptic input into machine execution”. Anduril offers Lattice for Command and Control as an "AI-powered battle management platform built to accelerate complex kill chains." Maven Smart System, Palantir's AI-assisted targeting platform (a $1.3 billion Pentagon contract), helped CENTCOM strike more than 13,000 targets in the first 38 days of the 2026 Iran campaign; senior US officials have said the Pentagon relied on Maven both to pick out its highest-priority targets and to help choose the weapons used against them. And the clearest documented LLM-specific integration is Claude’s with the Maven Smart System during the Iran war, where Anthropic's CEO later said the company could not determine what role Claude played in the February 28 strike on a school in Minab. Since then, several other AI companies have signed contracts with the Department of War (see Appendix) with “any lawful use” language. Autonomous weapons are also already proving themselves in combat: Ukraine uses interceptor drones to autonomously pursue Shahed drones at very low cost. If this integration continues at pace, it appears we will significantly reduce the capabilities a misaligned AI would need to seize control of military resources and take over. It won’t have to break into classified networks; it’ll just get deployed on them. Incautious military integration is bad for takeover risk There are several factors that make it harder for people to seek power (Carlsmith, 2022, section 4.2). Many of them might break down with AIs, particularly if those AIs are integrated into the national security apparatus. Physical and temporal barriers to power-seeking are the first to fall under an AI-enabled military, with drones and other autonomous weapons gaining access to areas that soldiers would not and striking with incredible frequency and coordination. One could also imagine that a given AI might not try to take over if its adversaries have similar capabilities, but a military arms race means there will likely be periods when one AI is ahead of the rest and can realistically execute takeover plans. AI alignment is no sure thing, and military deployments may not incorporate even basic oversight techniques like Chain of Thought monitoring. Military and ethics laws have only recently started to grapple with AI integration, but some responsible AI commitments are already being rolled back and didn’t acknowledge takeover risks to any real extent anyway. We’re rapidl