‘Kind of Like Electricity’—Where DOD Stands With AI

The Department of Defense introduced its Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, or CDAO, in early 2022, out of a dissatisfaction with the progress made by the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, known as the JAIC. In the two and a half years since the CDAO’s establishment, though, how much progress has the Pentagon made with this rapidly growing technology?

AI in the DOD: By the Numbers

Deputy CDAO Margaret Palmieri said at a recent conference that the DOD is currently utilizing more than 1,000 AI programs, fueled by about $1.5 billion in funding. Its uses include as an enabling agent for DOD staff and warfighters and for other technological systems.

“How do we look through our current portfolio, pull across the capabilities that may be in the research and development phase now, but have to get into the hands of operators, have to be tested and evaluated and trained, and make sure that we’ve got good pipelines to do that?” Palmieri said of where her and her office’s minds are currently on the subject.

Want to gain a deeper understanding of AI’s defense applications and the other technologies that are currently being researched and integrated? Register for the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Defense R&D Summit. This January event, now over a decade running, is a central gathering for contractors working with the DOD. Last year’s event featured Heidi Shyu as the opening keynote speaker. Don’t miss out!

An Opposing Viewpoint

At another recent conference, Sean Moriarty, CEO of PrimerAI, contended that the DOD isn’t taking full advantage of the AI opportunities available to it. He said “the gap is enormous” between the progress being made in the private sector and that of the government.

From Moriarty’s perspective, the DOD needs to come together and collectively embrace and deliver strategies that prioritize AI — as opposed to, potentially, just leaving it up to the CDAO.

“I think the big challenge upon us now is we recognize the world is increasingly dangerous. Can we actually get ahead, or is the necessary forcing function a terrible event which allows us to just rip out these barriers to innovation and response?” wondered the PrimerAI chief executive.

Effective AI Implementation in the DOD

Large-scale, reorienting geopolitical events have thus far influenced the DOD to take AI more seriously, Moriarty said. In the timeframe directly after Hamas’ retaliation against Israeli occupation of Palestine on Oct. 7, 2023, the Pentagon was able to tap into generative AI to help sort through and disregard misinformation and biased sources about the events.

Similarly, at the Potomac Officers Club’s GovCon International Summit on Thursday, U.S. Central Command Chief Technology Officer Schuyler Moore said large language models are doing valuable work as the first line of defense when determining if data is releasable to foreign allies or not. Before, human officials might have labeled a whole dataset as unfit for international eyes based off one small part of the intelligence, but now LLMs are able to be simultaneously faster and more thorough (though Moore assured the audience that human oversight would of course need to take place at a later stage.)

AI also serves a more subsidiary—and frankly, abstract—role at the DOD. In her remarks, Palmieri said, “AI is kind of like electricity. It’s not a specific thing. It’s an enabler of a bunch of different mission areas.”

To support this function, the CDAO deputy shared that the Defense Department is working on building up an AI-fluent workforce, equipping itself with the appropriate compute and putting in place effective learning models.

Save the date—Jan. 23—for the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Defense R&D Summit, where you’ll get to dialog with top DOD leaders about their most critical tech initiatives, including AI.