TAMPA, Fla. (AP) – The Trump administration is pushing to unleash the power of artificial intelligence on the U.S. military…
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — The Trump administration’s push to unleash the power of artificial intelligence for the U.S. military has prompted calls from some companies and even warnings from top leaders in uniform to put guardrails around the rapidly evolving technology.
Gen. Frank Bradley, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, told attendees at the recent Special Forces Annual Conference in Tampa, Florida, that the military “needs to be very careful about how we get to the point where we adopt[AI]and the inspiration to deliver lethality.”
Bradley said he could see a future where AI decides which targets to attack, but “we humans have to have confidence that it will only bring violence where it is intended.”
Mr. Bradley, who oversees the military’s most difficult and dangerous operations, spoke about the need to ensure safeguards as his boss, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, pushes for the rapid evolution of the military with AI. The move led to a clash with some tech companies concerned about safety measures.
Hegseth argued that the Pentagon will be allowed to use the technology in any legal way it sees fit. In January, he told SpaceX employees that he rejects any AI model that “doesn’t lead to war,” and said his vision for the technology is a system that operates “without ideological constraints that limit legitimate military use.”
The military use of AI is part of a larger push by the Republican administration to expand capabilities that it sees as a unique advantage of the United States, even as it faces pressure to ensure responsible safeguards.
President Donald Trump abruptly halted plans to sign a new AI executive order hours before a scheduled White House ceremony, citing concerns that the move could blunt America’s lead in AI technology.
“We lead China, we lead all countries, and we don’t want to do anything that gets in the way of that lead,” Trump told reporters.
Two different AI worlds within the military
Asked about Bradley’s comments, a Pentagon official said the focus is on leveraging AI to develop “functional battlefield tools” that can help the military find and identify targets more quickly, thereby speeding up attacks on targets. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to be more candid.
U.S. Special Operations Command officials have spoken of AI not as something that can help eliminate targets, but rather as a tool that can give troops more time to focus on missions.
Maj. Andrew Krogman, the top noncommissioned officer for U.S. Special Operations Command, said at the conference that AI could handle administrative tasks to free up operators or help modernize the way the military does business.
Melissa Johnson, the command’s chief of acquisitions, said AI should “reduce the cognitive workload of routine tasks.”
“We are increasingly leveraging AI, but it is not replacing operator judgment, it is enhancing it,” she added.
Both of these different descriptions of AI in the military are true, said Helen Toner, interim executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technologies.
“The potential uses of AI in this type of bureaucratic environment are vast, and the U.S. military is actively exploring them,” Toner said.
Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, head of Air Force Special Operations Command, told a Congressional committee in May that during the Iran war, the Air Force used AI “bots” to convert top-secret information into classified classifications within seconds, making it easier to share with drone operators on the ground.
But there is no doubt that AI is also helping militaries find and attack targets.
Two years ago, the center directed by Toner published a case study about how the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps used AI to target artillery fire “as efficiently as the best units in recent American history,” and with 2,000 fewer troops.
“Human operators still make critical decisions, but AI is…enabling us to operate at new levels of speed and scale,” she said.
Public debate erupts between the Pentagon and humanity over AI safety
The conflict over the integration of AI into the military, over who has ultimate control over the technology and the ethics behind its use, has unfolded in an unusually public manner under the Trump administration.
Hegseth and Anthropic are embroiled in a bitter contract dispute over the company’s concerns about unchecked government use of its technology, including fully autonomous armed drones and the risk of AI-assisted mass surveillance that could track dissent.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth accused Anthropic of endangering national security after CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down, citing concerns about how the chatbot Claude was being used on sensitive Pentagon networks.
The Pentagon formally recognized the San Francisco-based company for supply chain risk, terminated a $200 million defense contract, and barred other government contractors from working with the company.
Anthropic filed a lawsuit alleging that the Pentagon is unlawfully retaliating by stigmatizing the company with a designation intended to protect against sabotage of national security systems by foreign adversaries. Since then, the Pentagon has emphasized relying on rivals to humanity, including Google, OpenAI, and SpaceX, to secure AI technology that can “enhance warfighter decision-making in complex operational environments.”
“The public seems to be underestimating the prudence with which the U.S. military approaches new technology,” said Toner, a former OpenAI board member who was fired after a conflict with CEO Sam Altman.
“Commanders want mission success, and that means both being able to produce lethal effects at scale and avoiding unintended consequences such as friendly fire, civilian casualties, or simply misidentifying targets,” she said.
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