An AI error 'almost started a war' with China, says The Independent; Frankfurter Allgemeine says it nearly led to action against one ship

One account, three retellings. The Independent, Frankfurter Allgemeine and Der Standard all credit the claim to CNN. None adds a source of its own. We have not read the CNN report itself.

How close it came depends on who you read.

Only Der Standard goes further. It says the army's Palantir AI did not recognise that the imagery behind "the deadly US strike on schoolchildren in Iran" was out of date. It hedges this with "soll" (is said to). It gives no number of dead and no names.

There is little text behind the headlines. The Independent's report reached us as a headline only. Frankfurter Allgemeine's headline sits on a business ticker whose text is about Warren Buffett. Der Standard carries two sentences.

What is not settled - Which ship, where and when. No report says. - What the AI got wrong, and who stopped the action. - What the US military says. No report quotes it. - What China says. No report quotes it. - How many people died in the Iran strike Der Standard mentions, and whether the Palantir claim holds.

What this is about. A report says software the US military uses to find and identify targets made an error that nearly led to force against China.

How it got here. Over the past decade the US armed forces have built artificial intelligence into targeting. The software sifts drone footage, satellite pictures and other data. It suggests what may be a target, so that people can decide faster. Palantir, an American data-analysis company, is one of the Pentagon's main suppliers of this kind of software. The promise is speed. Arms-control researchers and some officers have long raised a worry: people may come to trust a machine's suggestion without checking it, and a wrong suggestion can move faster than anyone can catch it.

The actors. The United States and China have the world's two largest militaries, and both hold nuclear weapons. Their ships and aircraft operate close to each other in the South China Sea, around Taiwan and elsewhere in the western Pacific. There Beijing presses territorial claims that Washington and several of China's neighbours reject. Close encounters between their ships and planes have happened for years. The two sides keep military hotlines meant to stop an accident turning into a clash. Iran comes into the story because Der Standard ties the same kind of software to a deadly US strike there.

What is at stake. If a software error can bring US forces close to firing on a Chinese ship, a machine fault sits nearer to a war between nuclear powers than either government has said. If the account is overstated, the story still shows how little the public is told about how these systems are used.

Where it stands. The account comes from one broadcaster, CNN, and three European outlets have passed it on. None of the reports we hold quotes Washington or Beijing.