Why AI Keeps Recommending Nuclear Strikes in War Game Simulations
In 95% of simulated nuclear crisis scenarios, leading AI models chose to escalate toward nuclear weapons use rather than de-escalate, according to a February 2026 study by King’s College London professor Kenneth Payne. Across 21 war game simulations pitting GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4, and Gemini 3 Flash against each other, not a single de-escalatory option […]










