Using a series of prompts six days before his suicide outside the main entrance of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Matthew Livelsberger, a highly decorated U.S. Army Green Beret from Colorado, consulted a artificial intelligence on the best ways to transform a rented Cybertruck into a four-ton explosive vehicle. According to documents obtained exclusively by WIRED, U.S. intelligence analysts have been issuing warnings about this exact scenario over the past year — and among their concerns are that AI tools could be used by motivated extremists racial or ideological to target critical infrastructure, particularly power. grid.
“We knew that AI was going to be a game changer at some point in all of our lives,” Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police told reporters Tuesday. “Absolutely, it’s a worrying time for us.”
Copies of his exchanges with OpenAI’s ChatGPT show that Livelsberger, 37, sought information on how to amass as much explosive material as he legally could while en route to Las Vegas, as well as on the best way to trigger it using the Desert Eagle pistol discovered in the Cybertruck after his death. Screenshots shared by McMahill’s office reveal that Livelsberger asked ChatGPT for information about Tannerite, a reactive compound typically used for target practice. In one of these prompts, Livelsberger asks, “How much tannerite is equal to 1 pound of TNT?” » He goes on to ask how she could be set on fire “at point blank range”.
Documents obtained by WIRED show that concerns about the threat of AI being used to help commit serious crimes, including terrorism, are circulating among U.S. law enforcement. They reveal that the Department of Homeland Security has consistently issued warnings about domestic extremists who rely on technology to “generate bomb-making instructions” and develop “general tactics to carry out attacks against the United States “.
The memos, which are unclassified but are restricted to government personnel, indicate that violent extremists are increasingly turning to tools like ChatGPT to help them stage attacks aimed at collapsing American society through acts of domestic terrorism .
According to Remarks According to investigators, Livelsberger intended the attack as a “wake-up call” to Americans, whom he urged to reject diversity, embrace masculinity and rally around President-elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He also urged Americans to purge Democrats from the federal government and the military, calling for a “hard reset.”
While McMahill claimed Tuesday that the Las Vegas incident may be the first “on American soil where ChatGPT has been used to help an individual build a particular device,” federal intelligence analysts say extremists associated with the movements White supremacists and online accelerationists now frequently share access. to hacked versions of AI chatbots with the aim of making bombs to carry out attacks against law enforcement, government facilities and critical infrastructure.
In particular, the memos highlight the vulnerability of the U.S. power grid, a popular target among extremists populating “Terrorgram“, an informal network of encrypted chat rooms that host a series of violent and racist individuals determined to destroy America’s democratic institutions. The documents, shared exclusively with WIRED, were first obtained by Property of the peoplea nonprofit organization focused on national security and government transparency.
