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National Security Impact

How do AI incidents impact national security, and what threat characteristics do they exhibit? Incidents are scored across five NatSec impact categories (physical security, information warfare, sovereignty, economic/tech security, societal stability) and classified along three threat dimensions (autonomy, novelty, imminence). Source data from the AI Incident Database and the MIT AI Risk Repository.

How to read this

Toggle between Impact and Threat views. In Impact mode, the Overall filter shows incidents stacked by risk domain with a configurable severity threshold (medium or high). Selecting a specific impact category shows score distributions (1-5) for that category. In Threat mode, select a dimension (autonomy, novelty, or imminence) to see how incidents classify across three levels. Use Count vs Proportion to switch between raw counts and normalized views. Click any bar segment to browse matching incidents.

Key Takeaways

1.1,366 incidents have national security relevance, with 314 scoring medium or higher overall impact (score >= 3).
2.Societal Stability is the most frequently impacted NatSec category, with 175 high-impact incidents.
3.The dominant threat profile is Human-supervised autonomy, Established threat novelty, and Long-term imminence.
4.Switch between Impact and Threat views to explore severity distributions vs threat classification characteristics.

Impact Timeline

Discrimination & Toxicity

Privacy & Security

Misinformation

Malicious Actors & Misuse

Human-Computer Interaction

Socioeconomic & Environmental

AI System Safety, Failures & Limitations

National security impact scores and threat classifications from the AI Incident Database. Incidents prior to 2015 not shown.