The U.S. military planned to board a Chinese vessel in the Middle East based on bad intelligence from an artificial intelligence tool but backed out at the last minute, according to a new report from CNN. The determination to even consider a boarding action against the China-flagged ship relied on an AI-hallucinated claim it was shipping nuclear weapon components and “almost started a war,” according to an anonymous source who spoke with CNN.
Details about the incident in the Middle East remain scarce, but what we do know is that the faulty intel originated with a special operations command analyst who used a chatbot in their duties. That chatbot “inaccurately identified the material the ship was carrying,” according to CNN, apparently believing that it had something that could be used to make nuclear weapons.
China is a one of nine countries with nuclear weapons, including the U.S., Russia, France, the UK, Pakistan, India, North Korea, and Israel (Israel has never publicly admitted to having them). The AI chatbot’s analysis claimed the ship was delivering components to a nuclear program in Iran, which the U.S. and Israel have been bombing since Feb. 28 in a war that Donald Trump said would be over in weeks, not months.
Trump banned CNN from the White House on Friday in an announcement on Truth Social. The president also said he was banning MSNOW and Politico. It’s unclear if CNN’s report on the potentially catastrophic fuck-up had anything to do with Trump’s decision.
CNN had not been kicked out of the White House as of Friday afternoon, according to media reporter Brian Stelter, who said on CNN that confusion about the immediate ramifications of the ban appears to be the flavor of the day. Trump’s Truth Social post stated he will ban other news outlets as well, but didn’t name them. In a press conference on Friday afternoon, Trump said he hadn’t taken the step of banning the “disgusting” New York Times and the Washington Post yet, but could any time he pleases.
Q: You posted that you intend to ban CNN, Politico, and MS Now from the White House. Every president takes an oath to uphold the Constitution, which includes the First Amendment. How do you justify this?
TRUMP: Because they’re fake news. There may be others to join them.
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 18, 2026 at 1:09 PM
Trump gave a number of different reasons for the Iran War when it first started, including the liberation of its people, who he promised to back up if they overthrew the government. (The help never materialized; Iranian authorities have since crushed organized, internal dissent and have reportedly killed dozens of protesters.) But in recent months he’s more likely to say that he started the war to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Trump tore up the deal his predecessor, President Barack Obama, had negotiated to do just that.
The screw-up with the Chinese vessel is likely not an isolated incident, given the way that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has promoted AI at the Department of War [sic]. Bloomberg reported on Friday that when U.S. forces launched a missile at an Iranian school on the first day of the war, U.S. intelligence analysts relied too heavily on Palantir’s Maven Smart System, an AI tool that fuses together dozens of data inputs. The attack on the Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School killed more than 150 people, including 123 kids.
Experts from the United Nations said Thursday that there were “reasonable grounds” to say the U.S. had committed war crimes in its strikes against the school, according to the Associated Press. The experts are expected to present their findings on Monday to the UN Human Rights Council.
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