Webster and Corrado: AGI Could Push North Korea Into 'Use It or Lose It' Nuclear Posture

Writing in The Diplomat, Joseph Webster and Jonathan Corrado argue that North Korea's nuclear posture could become more aggressive if Kim Jong Un believes the United States is approaching artificial general intelligence, because Pyongyang would fear a first strike capable of eradicating its arsenal before it can retaliate. The authors contend that North Korea's perception of US AGI progress matters more than actual capability acquisition, meaning the risk of miscalculation precedes any real AGI deployment.

If the authors' prospect-theory framing is correct, then any public US government claim of AGI progress — including commercial announcements from OpenAI or Anthropic that Pyongyang's analysts might interpret as dual-use — could compress North Korean decision timelines without any deliberate military signal from Washington.

That places the State Department's public diplomacy on AI and the Commerce Department's export control narrative in an unintended role: each statement about US AI leadership that is designed to deter China simultaneously feeds the threat perception in Pyongyang that Webster and Corrado say is the actual trigger.

WHY IT MATTERS

INDOPACOM planners and the NSC's deterrence staff face a signaling problem the authors identify precisely: North Korea's hair-trigger posture means the danger window opens on Pyongyang's perception timeline, not Washington's deployment timeline.

Webster and Corrado argue that non-AGI nuclear powers facing a perceived AGI gap are more likely to respond with aggression than to pursue survivability or arms control, which forecloses the diplomatic off-ramps that US Korea policy has historically relied on.

The article does not specify a trigger date, but the authors note that key AI breakthroughs may be a business cycle or more away, which puts the perception risk inside the current decade.

WHAT THIS DOESN’T TELL US

Do US intelligence assessments of North Korean nuclear doctrine already account for Pyongyang's perception of the US-China AI race, or does the IC treat DPRK nuclear posture as driven solely by conventional military balance?

Fault Lines

Strategic intelligence, synthesized daily — with a public track record. Every call graded against what actually happened.

Front page → Get the weekly brief →