Tool and target: US law enforcement grapple with AI-enabled terrorism and anti-tech extremism

From the FBI to local police departments, US authorities are increasingly warning of would-be terrorists using chatbots to plan attacks and anti-AI extremist threats In May 2025, a 25-year-old man detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic, killing himself and injuring four others.

For many, it was a wake up call about the threats to reproductive care facilities.

For the FBI, though, it was also a sign of what the agency had feared for years: bad actors were using generative AI to plan and execute terror plots.

The suspect used an unnamed generative AI tool that failed to detect his request for bomb-making instructions, law enforcement officers wrote in a previously unreported document reviewed by the Guardian.

The privacy of his conversation with the AI chatbot hindered alerting police that someone was looking up how to make a bomb, according to the memo.

How extremists could use AI to devise attacks and recruit new members How AI could be used to disseminate and produce everything from deepfakes to election misinformation and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) How people seeking information on how to make weaponry or bombs could use AI to circumvent police detection How to ensure that officers could take advantage of AI tools in policing, for things like social media monitoring, while managing public concern over the use of these tools Monitoring social media for opposition to AI and potential extremist attacks on datacenters Continue reading...