CIA Director John Ratcliffe says AI equals digital nuclear weapons

CIA Director John Ratcliffe told an audience at the AWS summit in Washington that the most advanced artificial‑intelligence models should be compared to "digital nuclear weapons," adding that such a comparison "would not be misplaced." He said tracking emerging technologies is his highest priority, alongside concerns about China.

The remarks came after the U.S. government forced Anthropic to halt access to its two leading models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, under a newly applied export‑control regime. A partial lift later restored Mythos 5 for a limited circle of U.S. partners, while Fable 5 remains offline. On the same day, OpenAI released its GPT‑5.6 model with very restricted access, agreeing to let the government vet authorized partners case by case.

Ratcliffe also noted that adversaries are attempting to "steal and manipulate America’s advancements" and described a CIA reorganization around cybersecurity as a "sword and a shield." He mentioned meetings with Elon Musk and senior executives from Amazon, Google and Dell. At the conference, Amazon Web Services announced a $1 billion credit program for U.S. intelligence agencies and a classified cloud service for defense contractors.