How the military is computing the killing chain
Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images
What is being built here is “civil-military fusion,” a concept the Chinese have long championed and which the United States is now adopting with a convert’s zeal. The Department is actively courting the private sector, mentioning commercial AI models such as Google’s Gemini and xAI’s Grok. It is bringing in tech executives to run the show, with a new chief technology officer empowered to clear bureaucratic blockers.
The transformation is not limited to the battlefield but permeates the “enterprise,” a sterile word for the three million personnel who make up the Department’s nervous system. The vision is total: Under a program called GenAI.mil, every analyst, logistician, and staff officer will be issued a secure AI assistant to draft reports and code software. The goal is to embed AI systems across war-fighting, intelligence, and support functions until the distinction between soldier and data processor dissolves. The focus is on “decision superiority,” out-thinking the opponent at every turn.
The drive for decision superiority leads to a profound shift in the role of human judgment. The memos describe “Agent Network,” a project to develop AI agents for battle management “from campaign planning to kill chain execution.” They speak of “interpretable results,” a concession to the idea that humans should know why the machine decided to fire. The momentum is toward “human on the loop,” in which a human may abort an attack, rather than “human in the loop,” in which the human must initiate it. We are entering an era of “hyper-war,” in which AI systems could escalate a conflict in seconds, before a human commander can pour a cup of coffee.
The Department is betting that American ingenuity, harnessed in code, will secure the future, that it can maintain “America’s global AI dominance” through force of will and capital. The memos outline a future in which algorithms join soldiers on the battlefield, data platforms become as crucial as tanks, and decisions are increasingly informed by machines. It is a grand experiment in efficiency. We have decided that if warfare is now a battle of algorithms, we intend to algorithmically outgun the world. The name on the building has changed to reflect the reality: We are no longer defending. We are computing the kill.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.