A Strong National Security Requires a Pro-family AI Policy

The rise of artificial intelligence cannot come at the expense of solvent family structures and healthy communities. As the Trump Administration further develops AI policy, it must not misallocate intellectual capital to initiatives that disregard the most important structure for human flourishing—the family. 

Any such policy must first be tested for how it encourages or prevents the family from flourishing. Only after this consideration will the American people truly understand if its government has their best interests in mind. Any policy that hurts the family hurts the nation, making the policy indefensible and nation undefendable. We cannot justify defending a nation that is unwilling to defend its families with a coherent, family-first AI policy platform.

In March, the Institute for Family Studies made five recommendations to the Trump Administration on how to shepherd the viability of the family amid rapid advancements in AI. Responding to the President’s recent executive order on AI, IFS observed that “much of the deepest thinking around AI has focused on the administration’s latter two policies, e.g. economic competitiveness and national security,” and that “while these three goals are fundamentally interrelated, human flourishing cannot simply be reduced to economic and military dominance.” 

Indeed, the only way in which sustainable national security and economic competitiveness are achievable is if they are founded on human flourishing, and that means ensuring the viability of the family in light of potentially destructive advances in AI.

However, recent developments in AI threaten this viability by replacing real, embodied human interaction with digitally mediated substitutes. A recent IFS study found that a shocking 25% of young adults believe AI partners could replace real-life romance. While this trend may be the result of cultural hype and corporate manipulation, it puts the nation at real risk because it results in fewer families being made and increased social isolation, both of which harm the nation’s health and make defending it arbitrary. 

Perhaps these threats are unintended byproducts of impressive technological innovation, but these technologies are enabling American adults to devalue marriage and having children – a reality which ultimately threatens the health of the nation and any notion of a coherent national security. 

As IFS expressed in A Future for the Family: A New Technology Agenda for the Right, “the family generates society, and a culture of thriving families is an indispensable condition of social health. A nation that is hostile to the family is hostile to itself.” The Trump administration needs to actively put AI in its rightful place by contextualizing it as a convincing non-human mimic. Otherwise, it gets placed on a social pedestal and tricks youth into believing it has inherent value worth protecting. 

The only way in which sustainable national security and economic competitiveness are achievable is if they are founded on human flourishing, and that includes ensuring the viability of the family in light of potentially destructive advances in AI.

Romantic AI partners could also be the logical development of a nation already crippled by the widespread use of hardcore pornography, another social epidemic that requires significant, and perhaps parallel, policy intervention. The same study found that “more than one third of heavy porn users (35%) believe that AI girlfriends or boyfriends have the potential to replace real-life romance, compared with 20% of young adults who rarely watch porn.” While this may be unsurprising, it shows how AI has the power to make temporary singleness a permanent fixture among the most fertile generation of adults, contributing to the precipitous population decline and national vulnerability.

All the while, characters like Mark Zuckerberg are touting the possibility of AI friendships made available by Meta’s black box algorithm. In May, The Conversation responded to the developments with the wisdom of Aristotle: “Without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” Indeed, AI friendships are no friendships at all. Human relationships, romantic or platonic, are formed by people with a body and soul. Any suggestion otherwise misunderstands human psychology and anthropology.

Results from another IFS study reflect a tendency for relational and erotic AI to “encounter less disapproval from daily pornography users – many of whom will meet the clinical definition of being a pornography ‘addict’ – and those who come from non-intact households.” It should not be surprising that unstable family relationships, undoubtedly aggravated by porn use, make resorting to AI substitutes more appealing which, in turn, increasingly fragment the family structure and unsettle the foundation on which societies flourish.

While these trends take hold, the administration wants to advance AI in the classroom. The goal is to “[foster] early exposure to AI concepts to develop an AI-ready workforce,” acknowledging the inevitability of an AI-driven future for new generations. 

However, even if AI did not already pose a danger to children, do American youth need more exposure to the same screens and disembodied interactions that have made them less literate and more depressed? Perhaps children need education that teaches them about the world in which they live physically, mentally, and spiritually, which can subsequently be augmented by optional use of AI in the classroom and direct social contextualization that emphasizes its non-humanity. Denying them this foundation neglects their humanity and disorders human relationships, resulting in a nation without a grounded existence worth defending. 

Furthermore, deploying AI in schools may, following the recommendations from IFS, “erode the authority and rights of parents in education, nurture, and supervision of their children.” If children are exposed early on to highly-advanced AI that mimics human conversation and interaction, they will spend less time learning from their teachers, peers, and parents, and their desire to approach them with challenges and questions will diminish. Not only does this remove parents and acquaintances from being involved in their education, but it also chips away at the cultural fabric that holds the community together, preventing younger generations from keeping the cultural flame alive and safeguarded.

The Trump Administration must not forget that a strong nation means a strong family. Beyond America First, it must develop a family-first AI policy that wrests it from the unmitigated encroachment separating individuals from their families, and families from their communities. 

The human relationships Americans form with family and friends are the only relationships worth protecting. They are what constitute a nation at its core and, therefore, any justification for securing it. We cannot ensure national security apart from healthy families and communities.

Aidan Thies is a linguist who has worked in AI data annotation and development. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in linguistics from the University of Virginia. 

Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or views of the Institute for Family Studies.

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