Where this was said
Boko Haram Is Using AI to Build Better Bombs
At 1:00:00 · chapter starts 51:00
The Cambridge paper — titled 'God Has Helped Us and So Will AI: How the Terrorist Group Boko Haram Uses Frontier AI' — gives the hosts a jumping-off point for a wide-ranging conversation about AI governance failure. Boko Haram members describe using Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok in three ways: learning to assemble weapons and manufacture bombs, improving surveillance, and planning specific attacks. One fighter says AI told them which chemicals to add to make their bombs 'heavier.' ISIS has dedicated AI units. Ben argues this is the predictable consequence of building transformative technology entirely in private hands with no regulation, no legislation, no international dialogue between the US and China, and no UN summits. Even if US companies add safety filters, open-source replicas will replicate the dangerous capabilities — a dark AI will emerge just as the dark web did. Tommy adds parallel threats: North Korean coders infiltrating US tech companies, AI-generated targeting for military strikes, and the bio-threat frontier where AI could help synthesize novel pathogens faster than any defensive response. Ben's bottom line: there's no single villain — the overall failure is that we cannot slow down long enough to put rules around a technology that companies insist is the most transformative in human history.
A Cambridge University study based on interviews with 27 former Boko Haram fighters found the group used AI chatbots to design explosives, plan attacks, and improve operational security.
A Boko Haram member told Cambridge researchers that before AI, their bombs were smaller, but AI told them which chemicals to add to make explosives more powerful.
Even if US AI companies add safety filters, open-source replicas won't have them — and there will be a dark AI just like there is a dark web. Ben Rhodes says the US and China, the two AI superpowers, have had zero diplomatic dialogue about any of this. No legislation, no international summits, nothing.
Nicole Perlroth's reporting at the New York Times revealed that North Korea trains elite coders and gets them hired as IT employees at major US tech companies, giving them insider access to critical systems. Some companies, knowing this, are reluctant to fire them because they're genuinely good at their jobs.
Turkish President Erdogan gave every leader at the NATO summit a personally engraved vintage .357 Magnum with six live rounds. The gifts immediately created legal chaos: Belgium's PM had to hand his to police, Canada's Carney took the gun but left the ammo behind, and others decommissioned theirs at embassies. Turkey is now the world's third-largest exporter of small arms.
