Before Las Vegas, Intel analysts warned that bomb makers would turn to AI
Matthew Livelsberger, a decorated U.S. Army Green Beret from Colorado, used a series of prompts and consulted with an artificial intelligence about the best way to turn around six days before his suicide death outside the main entrance of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas rented a Cybertruck into a four-ton vehicle-borne explosive. According to documents obtained exclusively by WIRED, US intelligence analysts warned of exactly this scenario last year – and fear, among other things, that AI tools could be used by racially or ideologically motivated extremists to compromise critical infrastructure, especially the power supply Visor to take net.
“We knew that at some point in our entire lives, AI was going to be a game changer,” Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department told reporters on Tuesday. “Absolutely, it’s a worrying moment for us.”
Copies of his exchanges with OpenAI’s ChatGPT show that the 37-year-old Livelsberger was seeking information on how to amass as much explosives as he legally could on the way to Las Vegas and how best to use it with the Desert Eagle discovered in -The Cybertruck was able to detonate the weapon after his death. Screenshots shared by McMahill’s office show Livelsberger asking ChatGPT for information about tannerite, a reactive compound typically used in target practice. In one such prompt, Livelsberger asks, “How much tannerite is equal to 1 pound of TNT?” He then asks how it could be ignited “at close range.”
The documents obtained by WIRED show that concerns are circulating among U.S. law enforcement agencies about the danger of using AI to support serious crimes, including terrorism. They reveal that the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly warned about domestic extremists relying on the technology to “generate bomb-making instructions” and develop “general tactics for carrying out attacks against the United States.”
The memos, which are not classified but only addressed to government personnel, say violent extremists are increasingly turning to tools like ChatGPT to stage attacks aimed at collapsing American society through domestic terrorist attacks.
Accordingly Notes Investigators found on his phone that Livelsberger intended the bombing as a “wake-up call” to Americans, urging them to reject diversity, embrace masculinity and rally behind President-elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr . He also called on Americans to remove Democrats from the federal government and military and called for a “hard reset.”
While McMahill claimed Tuesday that the Las Vegas incident may be the first “on U.S. soil in which ChatGPT was used to help a person build a specific device,” federal intelligence analysts say extremists using White supremacist and accelerationist movements online are now frequently sharing access to hacked versions of AI chatbots to build bombs to carry out attacks on law enforcement, government facilities and critical infrastructure.
The memos particularly highlight the vulnerability of the US power grid, a popular target for extremists among the population.Terrorgram“, a loose network of encrypted chat rooms home to a number of violent, racially motivated individuals seeking to destroy American democratic institutions. The documents, provided exclusively to WIRED, were first obtained by property of the peoplea nonprofit organization focused on national security and government transparency.
