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CNAS Wonk Proposes Bombing China’s Artificial Intelligence

Critics argue that an attack on China has the potential to start a nuclear war

By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | September 6, 2026

Jacob Stokes, a former White House official, has suggested taking military action against China to prevent it from winning the race for AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence. AGI is a hypothetical AI system that could learn, reason, adapt, and solve problems across a broad range of intellectual tasks at roughly human or greater capability.

Stokes served on the White House national-security staff under then–Vice President Joe Biden during the Obama administration. He is a senior fellow and deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the CNAS.

Center for a New American Security, established in 2007 by Michèle Flournoy, is associated with the Democratic Party. Flournoy held the position of deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy during President Bill Clinton’s administration and served as under secretary of defense for policy under President Barack Obama.

Previously, CNAS was led by CEO Victoria Nuland, who acted as undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2021 to 2024 within the Biden administration’s State Department. According to the Washington Post, CNAS is regarded as Washington’s primary think tank on military matters.

In a CNAS report titled Superpowers and AGI, Stokes argued that Washington should consider extreme scenarios in which China might achieve AGI first, including diplomatic pressure, espionage, cyber operations, sabotage, and military action against data centers.

On September 3, during an online event, Stokes stated that multiple US agencies, including the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, should evaluate the intelligence required to substantiate such actions, according to the South China Morning Post.

Stokes and other analysts believe conventional bombs may be used to destroy the physical hardware China needs to train future AI models. It is speculated that the destruction of China’s AGI infrastructure would delay Chinese development by a few years, thus giving the US an advantage.

Although China is very advanced in frontier AI, it does not appear to possess AGI. The best current assessment is that China is probably slightly behind the United States in top-end model capability, while matching or exceeding it in some areas, including efficiency, deployment, open models, robotics, and industrial integration.

Critics argue that an attack on China has the potential to start a nuclear war between the two superpowers. William Hartung of the Project on Government Oversight characterized an attack on Chinese data centers as “the height of recklessness.” He warned that it could trigger a war with “tragic consequences for all concerned.”

Others question whether bombing data centers would actually halt Chinese AI development. China’s AI ecosystem is spread across numerous companies, universities, government labs, cloud providers, chip facilities, and research teams.

Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of China’s state-backed Global Times, warned that if the United States attacked Chinese data centers, Chinese retaliation would not be limited to US targets in the Asia-Pacific region. Instead, it could include missile strikes on the US mainland. A Global Times editorial described the proposal as a “dangerous delusion” and argued that treating civilian data centers as military targets was “indistinguishable from terrorism.”

There is no indication that the Trump administration has officially supported, accepted, or directly addressed Jacob Stokes’ suggestion to prepare for the dismantling of Chinese AGI infrastructure. As of September 6, 2026, reports suggest that neither the Department of Defense nor the NSA has provided an official response to the proposal.

Nonetheless, the administration has taken the extensive U.S.-China AI rivalry very seriously. Its approach has focused on ensuring American supremacy in AI, military integration, intelligence gathering, cyber defense, technology regulations, and diplomatic efforts – not openly on preemptive strikes or sabotaging Chinese data facilities.

September 6, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Militarism | China, United States