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. FBI officers fear the scenario is set to repeat itself: “Threat actors will likely increase their use of GenAI tools for attack planning,” said the memo, which was distributed by the bureau’s Los Angeles division in May 2026.
Law enforcement officers, by contrast, have been grappling with what they fear are the present-day threats that AI enables, including violent crimes. A previously unreported cache of law enforcement and intelligence agency documents show that law enforcement agencies have, since 2021, considered AI both a tool and a target of would-be terrorists. Law enforcement has been trying to keep pace with the ways bad actors may be using AI for harm, concerned that the rapidly evolving technology may supercharge new and existing types of crimes.
At the same time, as public sentiment over AI and its impacts on society and the environment has soured, agencies have sought to protect AI infrastructure. The documents show police and intelligence officers are closely monitoring online opposition to datacenters among various groups with what they describe as extremist ideologies. The Guardian exclusively reviewed more than 80 documents and memos that were distributed among a nationwide network of federal, state and local law enforcement offices – including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI and the New York City police department (NYPD) – between 2021 and 2026.
They were obtained by the government transparency non-profit Property of the People and shared with the Guardian. 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 misinformation and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) How people seeking information on how to make weaponry or bombs could use AI to circumvent police detection How to ensure that officers could take advantage of AI tools in policing, for things like social media monitoring, while managing public concern over the use of these tools Monitoring social media for opposition to AI and potential extremist attacks on datacenters The FBI did not respond to detailed questions on its monitoring of anti-AI sentiment and use of AI, but pointed to a general fact sheet on the agency’s use of the technology. The NYPD stated that its threat analysis report on artificial intelligence was related to the “AI 2027” project – an influential forecast from several AI researchers that speculated about the technology’s rapid growth and the threats it could present.
In one of the project’s possible futures, it predicted bioweapon-armed drones wiping out humanity. Law enforcement agencies’ concerns over AI and extremism fall into two broad categories, the documents show. One focuses on the burgeoning threat of extremists using new tools such as generative AI to plot attacks or promote their ideology.
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