Former US energy secretary Moniz warns on dangers of AI in nuclear weapons loop

Reassurances on humans in control may not be enough to prevent deception of a president

Former US energy secretary Ernest Moniz has spoken to The National about his fears for the impact of artificial intelligence in the use of nuclear weapons and the danger that a leader could be misled into ordering a strike.

Technologies are advancing so rapidly as to make assurances that a human would always be in the loop obsolete. Many countries have arrangements to ensure that humans do remain in control.

"There are many disruptive technologies emerging at very, very rapid clock speed. AI, clearly, is the poster child for this," Mr Moniz said.

"Given the very short decision time that a leader of any of these countries would have – and we've had cases where mistaken data has been transmitted to the leader – the reality is, who's going to produce the briefing package for that president in one millisecond? It's going to be AI and we don't understand how AI even reaches its conclusions."

The scientist, who served as US secretary of energy from 2013 to 2017, is now a campaigner for the Nuclear Threat Initiative and is in Germany for this year's Munich Security Conference.

Munich Security Conference - in pictures

The campaign presented a report to the conference, Three Essential Steps for Reversing the Slide to Nuclear War, which included the recommendation that nuclear armed states conduct “fail-safe” reviews to strengthen safeguards against cyber and other interference in their systems.

"We have to discuss a lot of new approaches. We will have to discuss them unilaterally, bilaterally and possibly multilaterally, going forward."

Mr Moniz also forsees much more nuclear energy in the advanced economies both due to the needs of addressing carbon challenges to climate change and the soaring demand from the big data economic revolution.

The option of more nuclear including small modular reactors is a vital choice.

"To succeed in reaching the scale we need for climate reasons, meeting electricification needs, reinforcing grid reliability and resiliency," he said. "When you choose the nuclear technology, when you choose the supporting services, we say put the security considerations first.

"Starting with a clean slate like modular reactors gives everyone the opportunity to design a safety system properly."

In advancing the safe use of nuclear technology, Mr Moniz reserves particular praise for the UAE's introduction of reactors to its energy grid and the priority given to safeguards around the four units of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant.

"I'm just going to give a shout out to the UAE, which I think deserves enormous credit for how they built the four operating nuclear reactors," he said.

"They addressed those security concerns right at the beginning. Adopting those security approaches up front helped them to build the reactors efficiently because it allowed international collaboration to be offered without reservation."