The TL;DR
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, senior military officials warned that AI is pushing decision-making on the battlefield faster than humans can process, overtaking nuclear weapons as the biggest strategic concern. Ukraine and the US-Iran conflict have been cited as live examples of AI already shaping combat operations.
The dangers of artificial intelligence have overtaken nuclear weapons as the central concern of a stability panel during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, with senior military officials warning that AI-driven systems are disrupting human decision-making in conflicts. The annual defense conference, held from 29 to 31 May, drew defense ministers and military chiefs from across the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
Lieutenant General Nauman Zakria, Commander of the 1 Corps and the Army Rocket Force Command of the Pakistan Army, framed the threat according to the OODA loop, the military’s decision-making cycle of observing, directing, deciding, and executing. The AI compresses that loop until it gets to the point where it creates fog “one cannot assess the situation quickly enough,” he said.People will act irrationally, and actions will go to extremes.“
Already on the battlefield
The warnings weren’t just theory. General Onno Eichelsheim, the defense chief of the Netherlands, noted that AI had already appeared in the war. Ukraine’s military has deployed AI systems to anticipate Russian attacks and coordinate drone operations across the front line, using machine learning trained over years of battlefield imagery to identify targets and adapt countermeasures in real time.
The United States also agreed to use AI tools in planning strikes against Iranian targets. The Pentagon has confirmed that warfighters are gaining strength “advanced AI tools” to sift through data and make quick targeting decisions during Operation Epic Fury, which has hit more than 13,000 targets since it began.
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“AI is a major threat to escalation. I think that is clear,” said Eichelsheim.But I’m not stupid. It will be used in the domain. It is already in use.”
ICRC warning
Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the only panelist not directly involved in defense, offered a sharp assessment of the humanitarian risk of AI. He warned that while technology has the potential to improve lives, it greatly increases the risk of war.
“We don’t know where the trigger is pulled,” said Spoljaric.It could be thousands of kilometers away. So while there is potential for AI to protect citizens, what we are currently seeing is only the negative side.“
The ICRC has long argued that autonomous weapons systems should retain rational human control over targeting decisions, a position that is gaining urgency as AI-enabled systems move from experimental programs to operational deployment. No major military power has committed to binding restrictions on conventional weapons, despite years of negotiations at the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
China’s nuclear and AI positions
Nuclear weapons still figure in the debate. Major General Meng Xiangqing reaffirmed China’s non-proliferation policy and proposed that all five known nuclear-weapon states negotiate a non-proliferation agreement. “If we can do so, we can reduce risk and improve strategic stability,” he said.
China has also called for international rules governing the military use of AI, including binding legal entities. But its stance on autonomous weapons remains unclear. Beijing has published a position paper on military AI legislation that makes no mention of limiting autonomous weapons systems, and the PLA is investing heavily in AI-enabled military capabilities.
Stress problem
The thread running through the panel was not that AI itself is inherently dangerous, but that its speed creates a structural problem for conflict management. Traditional deterrence assumes that decision makers have time to assess information, consult with partners, and weigh the consequences before taking action. AI-enabled systems can identify targets, recommend responses, and execute tasks faster than any human guidance process could.
That pressure is especially important during peak periods. When one-dimensional AI systems detect an incoming threat and recommend an immediate response, a decision maker may have seconds rather than minutes or hours to assess whether a threat assessment is accurate. Military analysts have warned for years that this dynamic could turn miscalculations into full-blown conflicts before anyone has time to intervene.
The Shangri-La Dialogue did not produce new agreements or binding commitments on military AI, and efforts to establish legal frameworks to govern AI remain fragmented among jurisdictions. But the fact that the task force on strategic stability, usually discussing the nuclear and missile defense posture, spent most of its time on artificial intelligence shows a change in what the world’s security agencies now consider the most pressing threat to international security. The question is no longer whether AI will be used in war. It is whether people will be able to control enough to prevent catastrophic mistakes.
