Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth may be very excited to roll out his new AI software as a result of it’s “the future of American warfare” and can by some means “make our fighting force more lethal than ever before.”
No, actually. Right here’s the official press launch:

“There is no prize for second place in the global race for AI dominance. We are moving rapidly to deploy powerful AI capabilities like Gemini for Government directly to our workforce. AI is America’s next Manifest Destiny, and we’re ensuring that we dominate this new frontier.”
This glob of nonsense comes from Emil Michael, the Beneath Secretary of Protection for Analysis and Engineering. Michael was the chief enterprise officer at Uber, so he is aware of how one can hype a rollout.
Manifest Future is, in fact, the ethos that President Donald Trump likes to invoke. In fact he adores the concept the US of America was simply so gosh darn distinctive that God wished us to broaden westward and displace or kill the individuals already there,
That stated, it isn’t clear how AI is our new Manifest Future, as a result of what?? However given that is coming from Hegseth and this administration, it principally means “Somehow, we will use AI to kill more people more better.”
Now, the Pentagon already had its personal inner giant language mannequin for years, however what good is that? Why would this administration use an present authorities software when it will possibly as a substitute throw your taxpayer {dollars} on the massive tech corporations looking for to curry Trump’s favor? So now, each DOD worker has obligatory GenAI, which is principally simply Google’s Gemini.
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The rollout of this factor was a typical administration occasion, lengthy on hype however quick on execution. Hegseth did a giant video with a bunch of phrase salad and bought a bunch of consideration, however on the time of launch, the hyperlink to the much-vaunted GenAI.Mil went to an empty web site.
Service members discovered about this from a bizarre shock invitation and, since they’d by no means been instructed they have been getting the thrilling reward of a chatbot, thought the invite regarded suspicious.
To be honest, even when the invite wasn’t suspicious, it was dumb.
“Victory belongs to those who embrace real innovation not antiquated systems of a bygone era. It’s time to deliver efficient, decisive results for the warfighter,” the missive claimed.
Buddy, it’s a chatbot.

The Pentagon can be hyping this effort with AI-generated posters of Hegseth, a la Uncle Sam, saying, “I would like you to make use of AI.
Really a stirring name to motion.
Whereas all of that is silly as hell, that doesn’t imply it’s not additionally an indication of one thing horrible. Tech creeps like Alex Karp at Palantir are already embracing ongoing U.S. strikes on Venezuelan boats as a enterprise alternative, a method to higher leverage or synergize their expertise to assist Hegseth do murders.
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Having Hegseth be the face of a expertise push is ridiculous, on condition that when he tried to make use of the encrypted Sign app as a method to sidestep necessities to maintain data, he ended up on a bunch chat sharing labeled details about army actions with the editor in chief of The Atlantic.
What that is actually about is constructing an alliance between the DOD and AI corporations in order that the federal government {dollars} can maintain flowing to these corporations, together with an assurance that there can be no pesky rules. And also you thought the earlier military-industrial complicated was dangerous!