Using a series of reminders six days before his death by suicide outside the main entrance of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Matthew Livelsberger, a decorated U.S. Army Green Beret from Colorado , consulted with artificial intelligence on the best ways to make a case a success. Rented Cybertruck to make explosives mounted on 4-ton vehicles. According to documents exclusively obtained by WIRED, US intelligence analysts have been warning about this exact scenario for the past year — and among their concerns are that AI tools could be used by racially or ideologically motivated extremists to target critical infrastructure, especially authorities. net.
“We know that AI is going to change the game at one point or another throughout the entirety of our lives,” Chief Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department told reporters Tuesday. “It is certainly a worrying time for us.”
Transcripts of his conversations with OpenAI's ChatGPT show that Livelsberger, 37, pursued information on how to legally amass as much explosive material as possible while en route to Las Vegas, as well as the best way to activate it is with the Desert Eagle gun discovered in the Cybertruck after his death. A screenshot shared by McMahill's office shows Livelsberger prompting ChatGPT for information about Tannerite, a reactive compound commonly used for target practice. In one such suggestion, Livelsberger asked: “How much Tannerite is equivalent to 1 pound of TNT?” He went on to ask how it could be ignited 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, have been circulating within US law enforcement. They revealed that the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly issued warnings about domestic extremists relying on this technology to “create bomb-making instructions” and develop “general tactics for carrying out attacks against the United States.”
The memos, which were unclassified but limited to government employees, state that violent extremists are increasingly turning to tools like ChatGPT to support attacks aimed at disrupting their lives. the downfall of American society through acts of domestic terrorism.
According to note Investigators found on his phone that Livelsberger intended the bombing to be a “wake-up call” to Americans, whom he urged to reject diversity, favor masculinity and rallied around 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, calling for a “hard reset.”
While McMahill argued Tuesday that the Las Vegas incident could be “the first on U.S. soil where ChatGPT was used to help an individual build a specific device,” intelligence analysts Extremists associated with white supremacist and online accelerationist movements are now regularly sharing access, the feds say. to hacked versions of AI chatbots in an attempt to build bombs intended to carry out attacks against law enforcement, government facilities, and critical infrastructure.
In particular, the memo highlights the vulnerability of the US power grid, a popular target for extremists living in “terrorist program,” a loose network of encrypted chat rooms that housed many violent, racially motivated individuals bent on destroying America's democratic institutions. The documents shared exclusively with WIRED were first obtained by People's propertya nonprofit organization focused on national security and government transparency.