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…