{"id":688431,"date":"2026-07-13T00:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688431\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T00:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:21:09","slug":"ais-manhattan-project-why-countries-are-now-treating-artificial-intelligence-like-a-nuclear-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688431\/","title":{"rendered":"AI\u2019s Manhattan Project: Why countries are now treating artificial intelligence like a nuclear weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Less than a year after the US<\/a> dropped two atomic bombs<\/a> on Japan<\/a>, bringing an end to the Second World War<\/a>, President Harry S Truman abruptly ended nuclear <\/a>cooperation with America’s allies. This included the United Kingdom, despite British scientists having played a pivotal role in the development of nuclear arms through the Manhattan Project<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The move triggered a nuclear arms race<\/a>, costing the UK \u00a3150m \u2013 equivalent to the entire planned annual budget for the newly created NHS \u2013 at a time when the country was still struggling with rationing and post-war reconstruction. But the success of Operation Hurricane, as it was known, ensured that Britain would not remain permanently dependent on Washington for its national security.<\/p>\n

Eighty years later, the same scenario could be about to play out with AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, a group of MPs warned that the UK \u201cmay not be able to count on its allies\u201d for access to critical AI<\/a> technologies and risks being cut off without warning. The report from the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee called for the government<\/a> to set out an AI<\/a> sovereignty strategy amid a new global race that is redefining geopolitical rivalries, just as nuclear technology reshaped the balance of power after the Second World War.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a global race for sovereignty in technologies like AI<\/a>, whether the government recognises it or not,\u201d said Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government needs a realistic plan to achieve sovereign capabilities in critical areas or risk having its access cut off at the whim of its partners… Without this, we risk falling even further behind in the global race for science and technology capability, undermining our economic prosperity and national security.\u201d<\/p>\n

The warning follows recent restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on some frontier AI models built by Anthropic, which were deemed a \u201cnational security risk\u201d. <\/p>\n

The export ban blocked access to the US company\u2019s most advanced Fable and Mythos models<\/a>, which Anthropic claims have already uncovered software vulnerabilities in \u201cevery major operating system and every major search engine\u201d in the world \u2013 including ones that have gone undetected for decades. The models pose a threat to the very foundations of the internet, though newly introduced safeguards mean most of the controls have since been lifted<\/a>. But Mythos remains unavailable to any organisations outside of the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Anthropic episode shows that AI sovereignty is no longer an abstract policy debate,\u201d Joe Hancock, head of cyber risk and complex investigations at the London-based law firm Mishcon de Reya, told The Independent. \u201cThis episode shows how an advanced AI capability, sold commercially and relied upon operationally, can be withdrawn from every non-US user by unilateral government action at a few hours\u2019 notice, with no transition period.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time that the US was blocking Anthropic\u2019s models, authorities in China were reportedly holding meetings with leading domestic tech firms to potentially restrict overseas access to their most capable AI models. Chinese authorities have already blocked Meta\u2019s $2bn acquisition of the high-profile AI startup Manus<\/a>, which was founded in China. The move by Beijing is designed to prevent US firms from taking local talent and intellectual property, which would set them back in the AI arms race.<\/p>\n

One Chinese startup claims to have already created a \u201ccyber nuclear weapon\u201d<\/a> that matches the capabilities of Anthropic\u2019s Mythos, able to discover and exploit software vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure at a scale that has never before been possible.<\/p>\n

\"TrumpTrump flanked by OpenAI\u2019s CEO Sam Altman, left, and Google DeepMind\u2019s Demis Hassabis at the G7 (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

This type of rhetoric has been echoed by CIA director John Ratcliffe, who described the capabilities of advanced AI models as \u201cakin to digital nuclear weapons\u201d. Speaking at the AWS summit in Washington last month, he said: \u201cAI, in particular, is a domain in which the CIA must excel, because every algorithmic decision has implications for US strategic advantage and for the national security of all of our people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just like the 1946 McMahon Act, which ended nuclear cooperation, the US\u2019s decision to restrict access to AI technologies appears to have set off a new arms race \u2013 one in which most of the rest of the world outside of China is already lagging way behind. But unlike nuclear weapons, where there is a relatively clear technological endpoint, the extraordinary pace of AI development means other countries may struggle to catch up.<\/p>\n

The race only ends when one country or company achieves superintelligence<\/a>, or artificial general intelligence (AGI), whereby an advanced AI exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in all domains. At this point, its development may no longer be under human control, as AI systems rapidly self-improve and pursue goals that are no longer aligned with human interests.<\/p>\n

The heads of Google DeepMind and ChatGPT creator OpenAI have both warned of the existential threat posed by this type of AI<\/a>, with Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis signing a statement from the Center for AI Safety calling on governments to take the \u201csevere risks\u201d more seriously. \u201cMitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,\u201d the statement<\/a> read.<\/p>\n

In May, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a non-profit research organisation based in California, published a draft framework modelled on a treaty established in the depths of the Cold War to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Based specifically on Article I of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, MIRI\u2019s 50-page \u201cInternational Agreement to Prevent the Premature Creation of Artificial Superintelligence<\/a>\u201d calls for an international agreement prohibiting the development of technologies that would be \u201ccatastrophic for humanity\u201d if allowed to proceed unchecked.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the US and China currently lead the world in AI capabilities by a substantial margin, this draft is framed as a bilateral agreement between the two countries,\u201d the proposal stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe note that bans are not usually the best way to address dangerous technologies, but artificial superintelligence is uniquely dangerous… For a halt to be effective, it must extend to all countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

To date, no countries have signed the agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Less than a year after the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, bringing an end to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-688431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}