I served many moons ago and only watch from afar these days but here’s my two cents. And if anyone has a more direct take than I feel free to correct me here…

I served many moons ago and only watch from afar these days but here’s my two cents. And if anyone has a more direct take than I feel free to correct me here… But it seems that the military these days is enamored by the attention that the silicon valley tech world has gotten over the last couple decades. And its true that the military can be ridiculously inefficient and could use more ‘lean startup’ in its procurement process. But I don’t think they’ve seen enough hype cycles to be able to filter useful tech from hype/hysteria. For example, I recently saw a senior Army officer talk about the need to incorporate AI decision making tools for senior leaders. Which seems to me to be the absolute last thing you’d want. A technology that needs large training data sets is diametrically opposed to the military profession where the classic mistake is to be ‘fighting the last war’ instead of the current situation. Not only are there differences from conflict to conflict and situation to situation, but you’re going up against a human opponent whose lives literally depend on doing the opposite of what you expect and is continually evolving. Another example I think would be the Army building out its Cyber Command while being caught completely flat footed with electronic warfare (jamming, spoofing, etc.) Having an adversary hack into your network is a huge concern for a corporation or against foreign espionage. But ignores the fact that TCP/IP ports and zero days matter a lot less when someone switches on a 10kW jammer, cuts a fiber optic cable, or takes out the power staion and generator you were relying on. Put another way, the upper layers of the ol’ network stack aren’t worth a lot if you can yank the physical layer away. So regarding AI, I’m sure there are useful applications but I’m doubting much of the use of the term in a military context. Drones and drone warfare? Sure. But that may or may not require anything that should really be called AI.