The Pentagon is now armed to the tooth with “frontier AI techniques, primarily based on the Grok household of fashions,” in line with a press release issued Monday. Are you trembling now, ISIS? Does the phrase “Grok” ship a chill down your spines, Tren De Aragua?
This enlargement of what the discharge calls the U.S. “AI Arsenal” is seemingly being slotted into the Pentagon’s extra expansive AI platform referred to as “GenAI.mil,” launched earlier this month with Google’s Gemini for Authorities constructed into it, in line with an earlier press release. U.S. “Secretary of Battle” Pete Hegseth apparently supplied the next quote for that launch, “AI instruments current boundless alternatives to extend effectivity, and we’re thrilled to witness AI’s future optimistic impression throughout the Battle Division.” Hegseth’s quote sounds uncannily prefer it was written by a 22-year-old graduate from the general public relations program at Stanford.
Whereas the Israeli armed forces digital-tools-gaza”>seem to have used AI towards Gaza in chillingly deadly methods, GenAI.mil sounds far more Dilbert-ish. For those who have been anxious the Pentagon’s Aeron chair jockeys have been going to be caught utilizing Gemini for Authorities, I’ve nice information: they’ll even have—when the software program is applied in “early 2026″—thrilling new AI merchandise from an Elon Musk-owned firm, which can allow “the safe dealing with of Managed Unclassified Info (CUI) in day by day workflows,” together with “entry to actual‑time world insights from the X platform, offering Battle Division personnel with a decisive data benefit.”
An April executive order from Trump sought to revolutionize effectivity within the Pentagon by ordering opinions with objectives like, “Get rid of or revise any pointless supplemental laws or every other inside steerage”—the same old Republican thought that you may enhance every part by reducing purple tape. Anyway, now the army’s “bespoke AI platform” will embrace a second set of fashions to use to everybody’s AI-intensive duties, so issues are getting very environment friendly over there.
However whereas the Trump Administration has been unusually friendly to the whims of AI’s cheerleaders, there’s bipartisan precedent for this type of factor. For example, Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt’s involvement in a Biden era effort to “considerably enhance” AI-related spending on protection and safety applications within the federal authorities was referred to as out by Senator Elizabeth Warren as a potential conflict of interest. And xAI and Google are tech-and-silicon-valley-are-transforming-military-industrial-complex”>removed from the one tech firms searching for to intertwine their pursuits with these of the protection trade.
However it’s at present exhausting to image Grok being an important hyperlink within the “kill chain” or one thing. This feels extra just like the Protection Division issuing a press launch a couple of new provider of toner, with a little bit of Dot-Com Bubble taste thrown in. It’s just like the Pentagon is asserting that each desk on the Pentagon, at present outfitted solely with CompuServe, will now get its very personal AOL CD-ROM too. Very cool. Thanks for telling us, Secretary Hegseth.
