According to an earlier press release, this expansion of what the release called the US “AI arsenal” is apparently being fed into the Pentagon’s more expansive AI platform called “GenAI.mil,” which launched earlier this month with Google’s Gemini for Government. US “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth apparently provided the following quote for that release, “AI tools offer limitless opportunities to increase efficiency, and we are thrilled to see the positive impact AI will have on the future at the War Department.” Hegseth’s quote sounds uncannily like it was written by a 22-year-old graduate from the public relations program at Stanford.
While the Israeli armed forces appear to have used AI in extremely lethal ways against Gaza, GenAI.mil seems much more Dilbert-ish. If you were worried that the Pentagon’s Aaron Chair jockeys were going to get stuck using Gemini for the government, I have great news: When the software is implemented “in early 2026,” they’ll also have exciting new AI products from the Elon Musk-owned company, capable of providing “secure handling of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in daily workflows” as well as “access to real-time global insights from the X platform.” Will be. Department personnel with a decisive information advantage.”
An April executive order from Trump sought to revolutionize efficiency at the Pentagon by ordering a review with goals such as “eliminating or modifying any unnecessary supplemental regulations or any other internal guidance” — echoing the typical Republican idea that you can improve everything by cutting red tape. Anyway, now the Army’s “bespoke AI platform” will include a second set of models to apply to everyone’s AI-intensive tasks, so things are looking up. Very Skilled there.
But while the Trump administration has been unusually friendly toward the whims of AI cheerleaders, there is bipartisan precedent for this kind of thing. For example, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s involvement in a Biden-era effort to “significantly increase” AI-related spending on defense and security programs in the federal government was called out by Senator Elizabeth Warren as a potential conflict of interest. And xAI and Google aren’t the only tech companies looking to combine their interests with the defense industry.
But at present it is difficult to imagine that Grok is an important link in the “kill chain” or something else. It looks like the Department of Defense is putting out a press release about a new supplier of toner, with a bit of dot-com bubble flavor added to it. It’s as if the Pentagon is announcing that every desk in the Pentagon, currently equipped only with CompuServe, will now also get its own AOL CD-ROM. Very quiet. Thanks for letting us know, Secretary Hegseth.
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