The US is increasingly treating frontier artificial intelligence as a strategic national security asset, with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe likening the most capable AI models to nuclear weapons.
“In conversations with many of the president’s other national security and economic security advisors, we’re talking about the impact of these frontier AI models,” Ratcliffe said at the Amazon Web Services Summit in Washington.
“It would be… not misplaced to refer to their capabilities as akin to digital nuclear weapons.”
His remarks come as President Donald Trump‘s administration tightens controls on advanced AI, imposing export restrictions on some of the most powerful models developed by US companies to limit access by foreign adversaries.
Under the policy, AI startup Anthropic restricted access to its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models. While Mythos 5 was later made available to a limited group of approved US partners, Fable 5 remains restricted.
OpenAI has also released GPT-5.6 with limited availability, allowing the US government to vet authorized partners on a client-by-client basis.
The restrictions have drawn criticism from some observers, who argue they effectively create a licensing system for advanced AI despite the absence of a formal licensing framework.
Ratcliffe said monitoring emerging technologies has been one of his top priorities since taking office, alongside tracking China.
He accused US adversaries of trying to “steal and manipulate America’s advancements” and said the CIA has reorganized around cybersecurity, serving as both “a sword” and “a shield” to protect critical infrastructure.
