Takes out their offense, but not ours. Effective counter-forcing is technically impossible, but the perception of effective A.I. targeting itself is destabilizing.
Geist & Lohn 18, Edward Geist: Policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Formerly a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation and a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at RAND, Geist received his Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina in 2013. Andrew J. Lohn: Senior Fellow at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), where he works on the CyberAI Project (How Might Artificial Intelligence Affect the Risk of Nuclear War? RAND Corporation, Available Online at: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE296.html)
The effect of AI on nuclear strategy depends as much or more on adversaries’ perceptions of its capabilities as on what it can actually do. For instance, it is extremely technically challenging for a state to develop the ability to locate and target all enemy nuclear-weapon launchers, but such an ability also yields an immense strategic advantage. States therefore covet this capability and might pursue it irrespective of technical difficulties and the potential to alarm rivals and increase the likelihood of conflict. The case could be made on technical grounds that advanced AI would still struggle to overcome obstacles originating from data limitations and information-theoretic arguments, but the tracking and targeting system needs only to be perceived as capable to be destabilizing. A capability that is nearly effective might be even more dangerous than one that already works.