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The Pentagon must prepare for battles around the moon: Joint Chiefs chair

Thomas Novelly — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 13:11:23 -0400

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.— The U.S. military’s top uniformed leader says U.S. forces must be ready for war near or possibly even on the moon, a rhetorical leap that comes as service leaders are still wrestling with the legal frameworks surrounding its newly revealed orbital weapons.

“Our task, my friends, is to adapt right now, so the Joint Force is prepared to fight, endure, and win, in global contested environments, from the seabed to cislunar space,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine told airmen, guardians, and industry figures during his keynote address at the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference.

Caine later repeated the thought—“today’s modern battlefield operates from the seabed to cislunar space”—but he did not clarify whether he meant on the moon’s surface. U.S. law is ambiguous, defining cislunar space as “the region of space from the Earth out to and including the region around the surface of the moon.” At least one Harvard Law Journal article interprets the clause to mean on the moon itself, and the White House’s National Cislunar Science and Technology Action Plan explicitly said in late 2024 that it includes the lunar surface. But the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 2021 “Primer on Cislunar Space” appears to treat space and the moon’s surface as two different domains.

Caine pointed to recent comments made about orbital weapons by the Air Force secretary and the Space Force’s chief of space operations. Top space force officials have been hesitant to provide more details on how they would operate in that domain and how they’d responsibly use space weapons in future conflicts.

While top Space Force officials have provided few details about how U.S. forces would fight between the Earth and its moon, they have been vocal about adding sensors and capabilities to watch adversary movements there. Aaron Brynildson, a space law professor at the University of Mississippi said it’s understandable why the military would want to increase awareness within that region.

“There’s a fear that recent Chinese activity on the moon and in cislunar space might outpace the United States,” Brynildson said. “China has a relay satellite in cislunar space and is performing robotic missions on the far side of the moon.”

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which the U.S. signed, outlaws certain military behaviors on the Moon and states that it shall be used “exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

“The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden. The use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited.”

Space Force Lt. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, the head of Combat Forces Command, told reporters during a media roundtable that the 18th and 19th Space Defense Squadrons are now both sharing the cislunar mission among each other.

“Our adversaries, our potential adversaries, such as the PRC, are actively pursuing activities in the cislunar parts of space. So that's sort of the expansion, if you will, of I would say the end zone, if you will, in the football game,” he said.

When asked if the Outer Space Treaty limits the military’s cislunar ambitions, Gagnon said it did not limit orbital operations.

“The United States Space Force will continue to execute safe and responsible space operations in all regions of space and in all orbits,” he said.

Brynildsonn said that while the treaty forbids the creation of military bases on the moon, “The U.S. needs better capabilities in cislunar space to ensure China complies with that obligation and doesn’t militarize the moon. There’s a real coverage gap by the U.S. that needs closing.”

This week’s revelation by Air Force Secretary Troy Meink and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Douglas Schiess that the U.S. has on-orbit space-control weapons has raised legal questions about their responsible use. Experts have speculated that the weapons are likely non-kinetic, such as jammers and electronic warfare capabilities.

When asked whether U.S. policy limits the use of a kinetic space weapon, meaning a destructive capability that would cause debris, Gagnon deferred to policy offices.

“So we have capabilities in the military because we are preparing to defend the nation. The reason we have capabilities is to help create deterrence,” he said. “When you go to war, you break things.”

Brynildson said it’s not clear how current laws limit the use of space weapons.

“It’s unclear what the legal restraints on the use of kinetic or non-kinetic weapons in space might be. The Outer Space Treaty doesn’t give us great answers to what factors a military action must consider,” he said. “The DoD Law of War Manual is also non-committal on the unique aspects of the space domain. At a minimum, general principles from the law of armed conflict would apply, such as only striking military-related satellites, avoiding collateral damage to civilians, etc.”

U.S. lawmakers are also concerned by the lack of space-focused military legal knowledge. A provision inserted by the Senate Armed Service Committee in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act tasks the Defense Department with assessing its “space law requirements” to face rising threats and examine “options for establishing a dedicated legal organization within the Air Force, Space Force, or Space Command.” The amendment adds that senators are “concerned that current legal, policy, and institutional structures within the Department of Defense may not have kept pace with the complexity of space operations.”

Those clarified legal norms may not emerge until it’s too late.

“Ultimately, I think the first space conflict might be the time when most of these rules get written,” Brynildson said.

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How a MAGA influencer with ties to Russia became Trump’s Arctic adviser

Heather Vogell , ProPublica — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 18:51:27 -0400

For more than 40 years, the U.S. Arctic Research Commission has advised Congress and the president on what to study in the frigid and dynamic far north, from the environment to military security. It’s typically done so without making waves, led by people well-versed in science and public policy.

That was until December, when President Donald Trump appointed a Texas venture capitalist and MAGA influencer with no formal background in science as the commission’s chair. Since then, Thomas Dans has traveled the globe generating headlines. Serving as the administration’s main voice on the Arctic, he’s advanced some of the president’s wildest ambitions, like a takeover of Greenland, and rankled NATO allies in the process.

Yet as Dans holds forth in the U.S. and abroad, it’s not always clear where the administration’s agenda ends and his own begins.

He has repeatedly said, for example, that the U.S. needs more icebreakers, ships that Trump has long viewed as critical to dominating the Arctic. In doing so, Dans has championed one shipbuilder in particular — Damen Shipyards, a Dutch company with which he had a business relationship.

“They’re the largest builder of icebreakers and ice-class vessels in the world,” Dans said at an event in Anchorage, Alaska, in April. At the time, his consultancy was working to help Damen land an icebreaker contract with the federal government.

As he’s spoken to audiences of government officials, diplomats, academics and journalists, Dans — who wears his Arctic commission lapel pin and exudes a professorial air — has also waded into foreign policy.

In the media and at public events, he’s backed Trump’s push to take over Greenland. And he’s advocated enthusiastically for closer U.S. relations with Russia — even as a bipartisan group of lawmakers calls for tougher sanctions on the country and more aid to Ukraine. Dans and Damen have long done business in Russia, and Dans has regularly shared social media posts that reflect a pro-Kremlin viewpoint.

“We want a peaceful Arctic, we want a peaceful world,” he said at an event a few days after he announced plans to travel to Moscow. “Russia and the United States gotta get along for that to happen.”

Opining so broadly on foreign policy is “far beyond” the Arctic Research Commission’s scientific mandate, said Fran Ulmer, who served as commission chair for more than nine years before being replaced by Trump in 2020. “And certainly outside the bounds of what the U.S. Arctic Research Commission has done in the past.”

Dans, whose consultancy Almiranta Strategies “advises investors and businesses working in the Arctic,” according to his profile on the Arctic commission’s website, is far from the first in the Trump administration to mingle public and personal interests. The finances of many senior officials and the industries they regulatehave drawn scrutiny as Trump has disarmed government safeguards against conflicts.

“It’s become standard for people to pursue their personal financial interest,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of the nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen.

Under the law, Dans’ position gives him access to government information from other federal agencies — an arrangement that could benefit his private interests. Such potential conflicts are typically governed by federal ethics rules. But the nature of Dans’ role affords him more leeway than other appointees. Commission members are not considered government employees and thus not required to file an ethics form disclosing conflicts.

Indeed, a White House official told ProPublica that Dans’ consulting work did not constitute a conflict of interest for that very reason.

“Tom Dans is doing a great job leading the Arctic Research Commission, and his shipbuilding expertise has helped him succeed in this role,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly. “The President appreciates all he is doing to advance American interests in the Arctic.”

The White House official said Dans is one of two commission members the law designates as representatives of “the interests of industry.”

Even so, Dans’ lack of research experience stands out. The other industry rep is a Ph.D. and former director of the United States Geological Survey.

Dans declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this story and did not respond to written questions from ProPublica, but he told The New York Timesthis year that his post did not preclude him from working in private business.

The Arctic commission has arguably never been more important. The region is warming at unprecedented rates, accelerating sea-level rise and causing severe weather in the U.S. and elsewhere. The melting ice also has geopolitical consequences. Russia and China are conducting joint military exercises in the far north. New shipping lanes have opened there. And mineral deposits are becoming potentially more accessible.

At a public appearance in July, Dans cited the commission’s four priorities: military and national security, energy security, economic development in the Arctic and “what we’ll call ‘community security.’” He did not define the term.

From Russia, With Love

Dans has long been taken with Russia, the country that has by far the most Arctic coastline.

His fondness dates back at least to seventh grade, when he says he was recruited to learn Russian in his Maryland public school. He later visited Moscow as an exchange student, then returned to work in finance in the mid-1990s.

He worked at a private equity fund financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which aimed to grow the private sector after the Soviet Union’s breakup. In a LinkedIn post last year, he reminisced about how he and Kirill Dmitriev, a Harvard-educated banker who now serves as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intermediary with Trump officials, traveled in the same circles early in their finance careers.

Decades later, in Trump’s first term as president, Dans landed a job in the Treasury Department as a senior policy adviser for international affairs. There, he served on a secret National Security Council task force on U.S. control of Greenland, a role first reported by The New Yorker. A former Trump administration official told ProPublica the group’s purpose was to strengthen the United States’ strategic position in Greenland and devise policies to bring the two closer.

Perhaps because of that work, Trump named Dans to the Arctic Research Commission for the first time in late 2020. His tenure was short-lived. When President Joe Biden took office in 2021, the new administration fired Dans and three other Trump appointees.

Dans was angry.

“We were fired without notice and anonymously slandered by the White House for ‘lacking relevant expertise,’” he wrote in The Hill. “At the time, I was the first commissioner in the agency’s 37-year history to speak fluent Russian, the language of the world’s largest Arctic nation.”

Dans launched an investment firm with two other former Trump Treasury officials, but it was short-lived, closing in late 2023. That year, Dans said on Substack that he was the “first American” to launch an effort to buy the Helsinki Shipyard in Finland, where about half the global icebreaker fleet was built. One of its Russian owners at the time was a business partner of a former Putin deputy minister. The effort failed.

He traveled the world, talking with officials in places like Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Romania. He lobbied on behalf of the Kazakhstan Embassy and that country’s state-owned national oil and gas company, records show. He devised policy recommendations “for Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction” as a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, his LinkedIn profile says. He also contributed to Heritage’s federal workforce-slashing Project 2025, of which his twin brother Paul was director.

Then in May 2024, he launched a nonprofit called American Daybreak. Its goal was to foster ties between the U.S. and Greenland.

After Trump’s victory, Dans promised in comments on Substack that “the next Trump Admin is going to Make America a Great Arctic (MAGA) nation!” In early January 2025, Dans and American Daybreak helped arrange a visit by Donald Trump Jr. and late conservative activist Charlie Kirk to the Arctic island. He then sought to bring Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha, to watch a popular dog sled race (the trip was scaled back after protests). Dans also enlisted Greenland’s most outspoken MAGA enthusiast, a bricklayer named Jørgen Boassen, whom Dans has called a “good friend,” to generate support for U.S. control of Greenland.

“The Best Icebreakers in the World”

Dans was not named to a new full-time post in the second Trump administration. But he remained in the Trump orbit.

He was a frequent guest on conservative activist and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. He spoke for one episode from Romania, plugging far-right Romanian presidential candidate George Simion (who was later seen with Republicans at the Kennedy Center cutting up a cake shaped like Greenlandwith American flag frosting). “There’s a phenomenon here that’s the silent George Simion voter, kind of like your silent Trump voter,” Dans told Bannon. “And that’s significant.” (Simion lost and afterward unsuccessfully sought to have the election annulled.)

By August of last year, Dans found another opportunity in the private sector. He posted on LinkedIn that he was “very excited to announce that I am working with Damen Shipyards Group, one of the world’s leading shipbuilders.”

At the time, Dutch prosecutors were investigating the company for supplying Russia with equipment that they said could be used for military purposes, in violation of European sanctions. In his post, Dans shared a photo of himself arm-in-arm with three high-ranking company executives, including Rutger Dolk, who was later detained by Dutch authorities as part of the probe. The case is ongoing. (Dolk did not respond to a request for comment. In response to questions, Damen shared a press release that said it “has always acted in accordance with the applicable sanctions packages and that full transparency has been exercised about its activities.”)

Dans said he was working with the shipbuilder “to bring some of the best icebreakers in the world to the United States” and noted that the U.S. Navy had recently chosen Damen “to help it fast-track a new fleet” of a different type of vessel: up to 35 medium-sized ships to move troops and supplies to shorelines. According to records, the Navy bought the designs for the ship from Damen for $3.3 million without going through the typical bidding process, saying it would save time and money to go with a “proven” design. (The Navy did not respond to requests for comment.)

In December, Trump appointed Dans to head the Arctic Research Commission. The announcement said Dans’ primary focus as a businessman was “shipbuilding and transportation where, among other projects, he is leading an effort to develop icebreakers and ice-class vessels for the United States while helping restore America’s Maritime Base.”

Since then, Dans has championed Damen in conversations and at a public appearance. In April, he said that “outside of the commission, I wear a hat working for one of the world’s largest shipbuilders, which is a group called Damen.”

While ProPublica was reporting this story, Damen terminated its agreement with Dans, which would have paid him if the company got a contract to build an icebreaker.

If Dans was seeking to advance Damen’s interests, he may have been required under the law to register either as a lobbyist or a foreign agent, said Josh Rosenstein, an attorney who is an expert on the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Documents show he’d done neither.

“It certainly would raise questions, you know, in my mind about what sort of interactions he, on behalf of Damen, had with the U.S. government,” Rosenstein said. “And with whom.”

The White House pushed back. “These so-called ‘experts’ have no idea what they are talking about,” said Kelly, the spokesperson.

Whether Dans has other business ties that could impact his government job is unclear. When at the Treasury, he reported holding a stake in Global Restaurant Management LLC, the parent company of a firm that operated multiple Papa Johns restaurants in Russia at the time. The status of that investment — which Dans reported had a value of between $250,000 and $500,000 — isn’t publicly known today because he’s no longer required to disclose his financial interests.

Christopher Wynne, who headed Global Restaurant Management, said he could not discuss another person’s investments.

Unlike most high-level presidential appointees, the Arctic commission chair — who is eligible only for a stipend of up to about $55,000 a year — is not a federal employee under the law. And while the commission has a policy seeking to prevent conflicts of interest, there are no penalties for violating it.

Dans’ outside commitments could be problematic if he used his access to the federal government to improperly benefit another employer or country, said Virginia Canter, who served as an ethics lawyer at the White House and other agencies during Republican and Democratic presidencies.

“The fact that he has foreign entanglements and access to government-wide information,” she said, “it should raise national security concerns.”

ProPublica asked the White House about Canter’s comments but it did not respond.

A Chilly Reception in Greenland

Tensions over Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, have flared since Dans returned to the Arctic commission.

A month into Dans’ tenure as commission chair, Trump said he would take Greenland “one way or the other.” He initially refused to rule out military force. Dans echoed Trump, telling the BBC that month that “everything’s on the table.”

While Dans is a minor player in the federal government, “when he speaks, international audiences and officials see him as representing U.S. policy,” said Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In his first five months as chair, Dans spoke often to the foreign press and traveled to locales that included Denmark, Norway, Italy and Canada — as well as Mar-a-Lago in Florida and the Explorer’s Club in New York City, records show. The commission spent about $87,000 on his travel expenses.

He did not return to Greenland. But the administration’s rhetoric put Denmark on a war footing. The country sent soldiers to Greenland armed with explosives and plans to blow up airfields in the event of an American invasion. At one point, a Greenlandic politician told ProPublica, some schoolchildren were instructed to practice hiding under their desks in case of such an event.

Greenlanders have repeated a refrain: Open for business, not for sale. Dans’ remarks only seem to have further deepened divisions. In February, while at a conference in Norway, he was caught on a hot mic telling a Greenlandic politician that “the check’s in the mail.” A former chairman of the Arctic Research Commission, Michael Sfraga, was at the same conference and publicly told the politician to “rip the check up.”

Trump has continued to press the cause. In mid-July, he posted a picture on Truth Social of a map that included Greenland with the American flag superimposed on it.

The rhetoric has had consequences for Arctic research. Several Danish researchers said they will no longer participate in research with the U.S. One noted that her colleagues avoided Dans at a recent conference.

Dans’ current role in Greenland is unclear. He said at a recent conference he is not involved in talks among negotiators for the U.S., Greenland and Denmark that began earlier this year. In May, Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, and the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, Ken Howery, attended a business conference in the capital of Nuuk without Dans. Landry and Howery appeared for photo ops and opened a new, bigger consulate building, as protesters shouted outside.

A White House official told ProPublica that Greenland is “critical from the standpoint of U.S. national security” and “we are very optimistic that we’re on a good trajectory” in the diplomatic talks. The official did not address Dans’ role.

Reposting Russian Propaganda

Official visits to Russia have been exceedingly rare since the U.S. and its European allies froze ties with the country after it invaded Ukraine in 2022, yet at his appearance in Anchorage in April Dans announced that he was planning to go to Moscow “probably in the next month” to discuss research cooperation. The trip never happened; the State Department’s official guidance on Russia is “Do Not Travel for Any Reason.”

Asked about Dans’ push for reestablishing ties and travel plans, a State Department spokesperson referred questions to Dans.

His social media feed on X is filled with foreign news accounts, sometimes from outlets sympathetic to the Kremlin.

He reposted a story last October from Kazakh media on Putin’s warning that the U.S. would fracture relations with Russia if it supplied Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles.

In May, he wrote of his grandfather’s participation in the perilous Murmansk Run to supply the Soviet Union during World War II. “Happy Victory Day,” Dans wrote in Russian and English, reposting a video of Putin from Russian state media laying flowers at a soldiers’ memorial. The original poster of the video has been called a source of Russian propaganda by the Ukrainian government.

“Everyone obviously needs to be incredibly cautious when you’re reposting Russian information,” Conley said, because such posts could promote a narrative that is “against U.S. national interests.”

Posting “Happy Victory Day” in Russian may sound innocuous, but it is “a super-loaded thing to do right now,” she added. Putin has conjured Russia’s World War II victory when talking about Ukraine, even equating Ukrainians to Nazis in Germany.

The White House did not respond to questions about Dans’ Russia-related posts.

Under Putin, Russia has tied its future to the Arctic and the region’s natural resources, including liquefied natural gas. U.S. sanctions, which targeted the country’s energy sector, have set those efforts back — something that Russia has sought to reverse in ongoing talks with the Trump administration.

Dans has remarked on the developments on social meda, calling Dmitriev, the Russian who now serves as a key Putin negotiator with the Trump administration, “the Kremlin’s ace in the hole.”

“We’re older now and have some grey hair, but it’s neat to see who the Trump Administration is negotiating with,” Dans wrote of Dmitriev, who rose to head one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds before being sanctioned by the Biden Treasury Department in 2022 for his ties to Putin and work raising funds from the U.S.

Asked about Dans’ calls for cooperation, Kelly, the White House spokesperson, said: “President Trump and his entire administration are willing to work with anyone in order to advance American interests, including peace in the Russia-Ukraine War. This approach has helped the United States bring both sides of the conflict together for historic peace talks.”

Dans seemed to downplay any differences with the Trump administration over Russia in one recent appearance, where he told an audience that included State Department officials, Russian Embassy personnel and Greenlandic diplomats that “getting Russia-Ukraine war ended, I think, is a priority. Stopping the killing.”

But the following month, in July, Dans opened and closed his remarks at a conference in Aspen by calling Russia a “neighbor.” He again urged that the U.S. repair its relationship.

“We need to be able to communicate with the Russians,” he said. “We’ve got some very important things to clear up with them with Ukraine, absolutely, but we have to work towards peace in the Arctic.”

Kelly said there was “nothing controversial about Mr. Dans’ remarks calling for an end to years of bloodshed and expanded dialogue.”

Doris Burke, Lynn Dombek and Alex Mierjeski contributed research. Joel Jacobs contributed data reporting.

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NGA official takes top AI job at Cyber Command

Edward Graham — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 18:00:00 -0400

U.S. Cyber Command, the Pentagon’s combatant command responsible for planning and conducting military cyberspace operations, has a new artificial intelligence lead, a spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday.

“U.S. Cyber Command welcomes Rear Adm. Ronzelle Green as the Command’s new Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer and thanks Brig. Gen. Reid Novotny for his leadership and service,” a representative for the combatant command told Nextgov/FCW.

Green, who has worked at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency for roughly three years — most recently as its director of geospatial intelligence innovation and research — is Cyber Command’s second-ever AI head. Novotny was the first official tapped for the position last November and served in a dual role as CAIO and as cyber force generation lead for the Pentagon.

The Record first reported the news of Green’s new role.

In a LinkedIn post last year announcing his new position, Novotny said “part of my role is embracing AI because like anything new, it is not the technology but yet the culture that is difficult to change.”

Novotny further outlined his approach to adopting AI during an April conversation with Axios, saying that he was solely focused on providing Cyber Command’s personnel with the best AI capabilities, regardless of their origin.

"To survive anywhere, just in case our operators want an open-source, made-in-China model or something very boutique, we have to create the infrastructure and that ability to be agile — no politics,” he said at the time.

In addition to his prior work at NGA, Green also brings more than 30 years of IT experience in the private sector and within intelligence community agencies to his new role as Cyber Command’s CAIO. He previously served as the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency’s chief information officer from 2020 until 2022, and has held roles within the Pentagon and National Counterterrorism Center throughout his career. Green is also a senior officer with the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve.

Cyber Command is led by Gen. Joshua Rudd, who also serves as head of the National Security Agency in a dual-hatted leadership role. NSA and Cyber Command, however, have taken somewhat differing approaches in their adoption of and focus on AI.

Under Rudd’s watch, NSA is in the process of a major reorganization that would establish five mission centers focused on AI, China, cybersecurity, combat support and global intelligence. The planned creation of the AI-focused center comes after NSA officials have voiced support in recent months for the use of more AI tools to bolster the agency's cyber and intelligence analysis operations.

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‘It was time’ to admit US has weapons in orbit, Space Force’s new leader says

Thomas Novelly — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:58:40 -0400

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland—The advance of Chinese and Russian anti-satellite capabilities led the United States to admit it has weapons in space, the Space Force's top officer said on Tuesday, adding context to Monday’s bombshell revelation by the Air Force secretary.

Deterrence remains the Space Force’s goal, but the service will pursue it from a “position of strength,” Gen. Douglas Schiess said during a keynote address at the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference here.

On Monday, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink revealed the U.S. military has “on orbit, space-control weapons.” Schiess, who took over as chief of space operations less than two weeks ago, spoke to reporters after his keynote on Tuesday.

“We've talked about you know them being able to grapple a satellite and move it to a different orbit,” he said. “So, I think at this point, we are trying to say that we also need capabilities to not only defend the joint force from space-enabled attack, but defend our assets. And so, I think it was time that within the Department of War we talked about it, and it's time to talk about that we have the capabilities to make sure that we can do what the joint force needs.”

During his keynote, Schiess said the U.S. military relies on space assets for operations like the current war on Iran, that guardians are already prepared for orbital warfare, and that more money is needed for current and future operations.

“The Joint Force made it clear: without the Space Force's capabilities, the Joint Force could not and would not move forward,” Schiess said. “During Operation Epic Fury, our components, notably at U.S. Central Command and Space Command, with support from our components at European Command and Pacific Command, demonstrated that guardians are not supporting from the sidelines as a nice-to-have, but we are delivering space power directly into the fight as a need-to-have.”

Schiess highlighted one guardian in U.S. Central Command with the 42nd Electronic Warfare Detachment who “waged electromagnetic warfare against a determined adversary” during Operation Epic Fury.

“Even as alarm red sirens were blaring and incoming missiles targeted her site, she courageously held the line, protecting forces, denying adversary capability, and delivering space effects until her commander had to literally pull her from the console to safety,” Schiess said.

The CSO said the Space Force has been flexing its capabilities in outer space as well. He highlighted the service’s recent Victus Haze exercise, in which Rocket Lab quickly launched a space vehicle whose satellite chased after True Anomaly's spacecraft.

“This particular Victus Haze mission earlier this year demonstrated the ability to launch and respond to an on-demand, on-orbit threat in just 17 hours,” the general said. “Space Systems Command, our industry partners, and Combat Forces Command proved to the world that if an adversary targets the United States Space Force, we have the capability to deliver a swift response, and we are going to continue to work on getting faster and faster.”

Schiess said those current and future fights highlight the need for more resources.

“So, looking ahead, we must expand that advantage. We must build a sustained pipeline of guardian talent, equipped with the appropriate training and the kit and advanced capabilities, to ensure our joint force is fully powered by space expertise.” he said. “We must ensure today, tomorrow, and for as long as we have the pleasure to serve, that our joint force can execute because guardians are there, both at home and abroad, and in harm's way.”

Space Force has grown quickly since its founding in 2019, but this year, the Pentagon is asking Congress to allocate $71.3 billion for the service for the fiscal year that began more than two weeks ago. It would be the biggest single-year funding increase for a service branch, by percentage, since 1952, according to the Aerospace Corporation.

“Space is both a battlefield and the backbone of our joint force. We face determined and credible adversaries who are building and building counter-space systems at incredible speeds to target directly the United States state's space advantage,” Schiess said. “So that is why we don't just monitor the domain; we stand ready to defend it. So let me be crystal clear: today, Guardians operate on-orbit weapons that can defend the joint force against space-enabled attacks, and in the coming years, with the resources entrusted to us, by the way, we need your help, Congress-we will make disciplined and responsible choices about how we build and sustain our combat advantage, which means scaling our ability to respond to threats.”

It’s not clear whether Congress will grant the request. The White House wants $1.15 trillion through the normal defense-budget process and an additional $350 billion through reconciliation—a controversial and partisan budget maneuver never used for defense funding before last year. The Trump administration is pressing the GOP-led Congress to relent by proposing to use reconciliation to fund some major Space Force programs, such as the Air Moving Target Indicator and the space data network, and the vast majority of funds for the Golden Dome missile defense program.

In the meantime, 10 percent of the service’s programs are on hold because Congress hasn’t passed a fiscal 2027 defense spending bill, Schiess told reporters. The federal government is currently operating under a stopgap funding measure that will elapse on Dec. 11.

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Iran strikes exposed gaps in medical evacuation ops across Middle East: IG

Patrick Tucker — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 04:43:10 -0400

The military abandoned plans to use Army helicopters to evacuate wounded troops involved in the war with Iran, and instead resorted to slower ground-based evacuations, in part due to the threat of drone strikes, according to a Defense Department Office of the Inspector General report released Monday. The shift illustrates a problem medical officials had warned about for years.

At the start of the operation, the U.S. used Army helicopters in Kuwait and Iraq for medical evacuation, but then moved them due to concerns about Iranian drone and missile strikes.

“Most evacuations during [Operation Epic Fury] were ultimately conducted by ground,” according to the report. In addition to the drone threat, the United States had the additional hurdle of relying on host country hospitals for what’s called “advanced, hospital level care” for particularly severe injuries, since establishing such hospitals on U.S. bases would require a large and more targetable footprint.

The move follows warnings from medical officials that future conflicts would be more dangerous for U.S. troops, as adversaries develop more advanced weapons—particularly drones. A 2022 Army University Press article by Lt. Col. Matthew Marsh and Capt. Ryan Hampton eerily forecasts the situation described in the inspector general report: “Medical personnel will experience intermittent air and ground evacuation with medical logistics constraints,” it reads.

Just as new technology has allowed some adversaries to become more dangerous and inflict higher casualties, other pressures led to cutbacks in medical evacuation capability, particularly in the Middle East. A July 2025 Pulse of Army Medicine article by Sgt. Maj. Sandra Johnson describes how, across U.S. Central Command, “Due to competing requirements, many of these bases only have one medic on post and no medical provider. A medic may have to care for a patient for several hours until they arrive at a local national hospital.”

She noted specifically the problem of “no Medical Evacuation (MEDEVAC) by flight or ground capability, or only ground Casualty Evacuation (CASEVAC) options,” across CENTCOM.

An April U.S. Naval Institute report explains: “Drone warfare [in Ukraine] has disrupted casualty movement from the point of injury throughout the combat casualty continuum of care.”

The IG report acknowledges that CENTCOM officials worked to rapidly develop new plans and strategies when faced with Iranian drone capabilities, moving troops and materiel.. “During OEF, USCENTCOM shifted personnel, assets, and storage facilities as locations came under Iranian and proxy attacks,” it reads.

The report carries a strong recommendation: To find and fix “the gaps in [Department of Defense counter-drone] interoperability, and the corrective actions needed to standardize” those capabilities.

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US military has ‘on-orbit’ space weapons, Air Force Secretary reveals

Thomas Novelly — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 10:58:11 -0400

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Air Force Secretary Troy Meink acknowledged that the U.S. has space weapons, a public revelation that some experts said could accelerate an arms race in orbit.

“Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist,” Mink said during his Monday morning speech at the Air, Space, Cyber conference here. “This is why the United States now has, on orbit, space-control weapons, capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversaries.”

Top service officials have typically been cagey when asked about U.S. space weapons, often citing national-security concerns. It also marks a major change in rhetoric. John Raymond, the service’s first chief of space operations, proclaimed in 2022 that “our primary purpose is to deter war.”

Defense experts were shocked by Meink’s admission on Monday morning, and said it will likely push the U.S. military’s main adversaries in space to acknowledge their capabilities, too.

“Well, that's huge, because I don't think any US government official has ever said that before,” said Victoria Samson, the Secure World Foundation's chief director of space security and stability. “The US also now has to accept the Chinese and Russians doing/saying the same. I don't think that this is going to be in the interest of US national security.”

Meink did not provide additional details on what type of on-orbit weapons the U.S. possesses.

Kinetic weapons, such as missiles, can create debris by destroying a target. Numerous top military officials have warned against using such weapons.

“Our commitment to responsible space operations is fundamental to our mission assurance and our role as stewards of the space environment,” Maj. Gen. Chris Povak, deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office, said earlier this year.

Samson said that narrows her guess about what Meink was talking about.

“I'm going to guess what he's talking about is not a kinetic space-control weapon due to multiple comments government officials have said about avoiding debris causing counter space,” she said. “So I'm going to go with my first guess: space-based jammers, electronic warfare.”

Meink also made several other space-related announcements in his speech. The Air Force secretary said prototypes for the space-based Airborne Moving Target Indicator satellite constellation will be launched this month.

Meink also said that space-based interceptors, the cornerstone technology of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense system, are now “flight ready.”

Last month, Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, Golden Dome’s direct-reporting program manager, warned that the missile defense project would be in dire straits if Congress can’t prioritize additional funding for the effort. The four-star general also said that initial development on space-based interceptors is underway and that the service has executed two “phenomenally successful” tests.

“All of the providers that are part of the competition are progressing exceptionally well,” Guetlein told reporters at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium.

“As everybody knows, there have been many who are developing capabilities to take those away from us, to threaten those things,” Meink said. “So, it is critically important that we maintain our dominance not only in the air but in space, and so that we've had to take steps to make sure that when we're threatened, we can take care of that.”

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Lockheed’s Skunk Works plans to build four more of its multirole combat drones

Thomas Novelly — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Skunk Works, Lockheed Martin’s secretive research arm, plans to build four more of its experimental, multipurpose drones as the firm attempts to sell its futuristic platform to the U.S. military.

Last year, Skunk Works unveiled Vectis—a concept for a group 5 drone that’s capable of a wide range of missions. Now, on the first day of the Air & Space Force Association’s defense conference near Washington, D.C., company officials announced they’re making significant progress on the prototype and are already planning to expand the fleet for more tests.

“We are moving forward with a plan to build an additional four vehicles, bringing a total of five to include the original prototype,” said Ron Fehlen, Skunk Works’ vice president and general manager. “Development work on those additional aircraft is already underway, and we'll have more specifics to share soon.”

Company officials shared new images of the Skunk Works combat drone with reporters ahead of this week’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference. Vectis will be roughly 34 feet long and have a 38-foot wingspan, and will feature a submerged engine inlet and a tail-less body to reduce drag and mission flexibility,” Fehlen said. While Lockheed was eager to talk about the aircraft’s design, the Skunk Works vice president was tight-lipped about who the specific customer for the new aircraft could be, and didn’t provide details on the weapons loadout, propulsion system, or estimated cost of the platform. The Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy are all aiming to field collaborative combat aircraft.

“From an affordability standpoint, which we're always looking at, and, of course, are targeting to be the CCA competitive price. So we're very cognizant of it and make trades associated with that, Fehlen said. “It's obviously, I think, focused more on the CCA side of the house, and obviously the price points that are highly relevant in that regime.”

Fehlen said the company remains on track to fly Vectis by “the end of 2027.” He said Skunk Works feels confident in that timeline, due in part, to the use of digital designs and “minimal tooling determinant assembly”—which the Skunk Works vice president likened to ready-to-assemble furniture with pre-drilled holes.

“It's a technique that really enables an increased level of affordability and speed through really reducing the amount of touch labor required and increasing the first pass yield,” Fehlen said. “We've seen in many cases an 80 percent reduction in labor hours to build up the aircraft itself.”

While Fehlen wouldn’t specify one specific U.S. program or customer Vectis is geared toward, he did say it could work with any of Lockheed Martin’s fighter jets, which are also flown by other nation’s militaries.

“I'll point to the fact that we have a long history in crewed tactical systems that, you know, Vectus is going to need to integrate with, in addition to other fighter aircraft that are produced around the world,” Fehlen said. “So, from our perspective, this is in line with our heritage and what we're producing today and delivering to the field. It has incredible capability, and now we're going to be able to add this to it.”

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Cold comfort

Peter W. Singer and August Cole — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 15:50:17 -0400

The arrival of new weapons has often been followed closely by their use against civilian populations for strategic effects. Submarines, bombers, rockets; The Lusitania, Dresden, London. This 20th-century history portends that the emerging capabilities of the 21st century—cyber attacks, information warfare—will be similarly used against civilian targets. The challenge will be all the greater as extreme weather becomes more common. This month’s Fictional Intelligence narrative, set in the late 2030s, explores how adversaries could exploit the combination to raise existential questions about political, military, and societal resiliency.

An empty bar is a terrible thing to waste.

Tomec took in the Loui Bar at Steigenberger Icon Wiltcher’s grand hotel in Brussels and set himself in a plush leather club chair. The young sergeant in Poland’s JW FORMOZA naval commando unit was a large man, meaning he found most chairs uncomfortable. And he enjoyed his quiet, now more than ever. It was half an hour before a driver would pick him up, but he wanted to be sure not to miss them.

His military service had taken him to three continents, but he had never been to NATO’s headquarters, let alone imagined he would go for an awards ceremony, albeit a discreet one held after hours. He assumed it was a hushed matter due to the sensitivity of his wartime missions. The war had been officially over for four months, but a great deal of it remained clouded. With so much disinformation and outright damage to computer systems and cloud networks, people were still trying to piece together what had happened.

Tomec took a sip from his highball glass, careful not to get the cocktail’s muddled basil on his chin. He pulled out a paperback novel he had picked up at the airport, no longer trusting his old digital book reader after all the hacks. But as he tried to lose himself in the story, he found his solitude disturbed by a man and a woman entering the bar.

The woman was taller than Tomec’s nearly two meters; her black suit contrasted with her short platinum-and-purple-streaked hair. The man, shorter and bald, wore a loose-fitting gray suit, a white shirt, and a squadron tie in maroon polyester.

Tomac’s hearing wasn’t as good as it had been before the war, so it was hard to make out what they were saying on the other side of the room. But it was just loud enough to break the silence he had so welcomed. Then they collected their drinks, looked around at him, and walked over. The pair seemed entirely comfortable, which put him on edge. He put his book down, ran a hand through his thick brown hair, and started to stand.

The woman motioned for him to sit and did so herself, in a plush chair that faced his.

“You have good taste,” she said, in what Tomac took for a Dutch accent. “The bartender said we’re having what you’re having.”

“Gin Basil Smash,” Tomec said.

“Exactly. Less bevvy, more salad,” said the man, who spoke with a carefully neutral British accent. He was bald and significantly shorter than the woman. He wore a loose-fitting gray suit, a white shirt, and a polyester maroon squadron tie.

“I’m Aniek, and this is Wing Commander James Crick, 617 Squadron RAF,” the woman said. “You’re Sgt. Tomec Majka, Polish Navy special forces? We’re going with you to the awards ceremony.”

She pulled out her phone and showed Tomec a message from the staff officer who was coordinating the ceremony and reception.

“Bona fides,” said the man, offering a white-toothed grin. “Call me Jim.”

The bartender brought their drinks over and set them down on the low table between them, carefully placing a coaster with the hotel’s “W” logo oriented vertically in front of each.

“And this is Aniek Rasmussen of the Dutch Joint Sigint Cyber Unit, the real star of the show,” James said, toasting her with his glass.

“Not so much,” said Aniek. “I sat at my desk during the entire war.”

James and Aniek each took a sip. Tomec leaned back in his chair.

“Delicious,” James said. “How quickly we can take for granted something like a bunch of fresh basil and proper tonic water.” Tomec thought he sounded like a BBC announcer from the last world war.

“What kind of aircraft do you fly?” Tomec asked.

“F-35Bs,” James said. “Always thought when we went to war, I’d be doing close-air support or battling other 5th-gen fighters. Instead, they had us sucking up electronic emissions to track those sub-swarm motherships. That’s why I’m here. Led a few of those missions, made it back. Seemed to be enough.” He took a longer sip. “How about you?”

Tomec sighed. Sometimes what appeared simple was far more complicated to say. He was being decorated for defending the fiber-optic cable taps that ran through the Baltic Sea. A microsecond advantage in transmission time had produced a vital edge for NATO’s artificial intelligence-driven campaign. Some of the war’s most important battles had been fought hand-to-hand in the icy waters above glass threads carrying petabytes of data across the bottom of the sea. Gdzie diabeł mówi dobranoc, he thought, the place where the devil says goodnight.

“Badly paid undersea fiber-optic cable technician,” Tomec said.

Aniek laughed softly and started fiddling with her phone.

“How about you, Major?” Tomec asked.

“Cyber defense,” said Aniek. “Civilian infrastructure, mostly.”

“You remember the heat disaster last summer?” said James.

“Of course. We joked that seafloor was only cool place,” said Tomec.

“Yes, we should have wargamed not just what climate change would do to our weather, but how an enemy would take advantage of it. A cyberattack taking advantage of a heat wave. Diabolical,” said James. “Not just the power grid, but the aircon systems for care homes and hospitals and schools, let alone our MoD and government facilities.”

Tomec thought back to a video call with his parents that August. It was 41 degrees Celsius in Krakow. They had been panting and red-faced like they were running for their lives, and yet they were just sitting in their small apartment’s living room, gasping out wishes that he would stay safe.

Aniek put her phone down and leaned forward. “It was more than just hacking, like all good operations,” she said. “We were subjected to an info-op campaign during the heat wave. They wanted to cause societal unrest, if not collapse.”

“People get angry at everyone when it’s too hot,” said James, fishing an ice cube from his glass.

“What did you do?” Tomec asked.

“We had lots of meetings,” said Aniek.

Tomec looked at her dubiously, as if she was also trying to keep her operation secret.

“Really, we did,” she said, with a smile. “We coordinated with private-sector companies and public institutions and allied intelligence agencies and hacker collectives. We shared data on everything. Absolutely everything, from incoming threats to best practices. We sent teams of experts to work on-site at targeted networks.

“That was our advantage in the end. The enemy had to keep their operations behind the veil, while we could pool all our information, ideas, and resources—as long as we broke down the bureaucratic and organizational culture barriers. And there is nothing like a good crisis to force that.”

“Well, however boring you want to paint what you did, if the attack had gone on a few more days, I’m pretty certain the alliance would have collapsed,” said James. “A toast, then, to the real hero of the war.”

Tomec nodded in agreement and lifted his glass in salute.

Aniek smiled in thanks, evidently embarrassed at the praise.

The Polish sergeant took a sip, rattling the ice in his glass, savoring the cool drink. It was true what James had said about how quickly we could take things for granted. Even something as simple as ice in a glass.

“Another round?” he said. “I think we have time.”

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Russia is weaponizing US-built AI to make killer drones, cyberattack bots, and fake news

Patrick Tucker — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 18:53:22 -0400

Kremlin-backed actors used Anthropic’s Claude AI to program autonomous lethal drones, improve hacking and influence operations, and avoid detection, the company said Thursday.

The report from the U.S.-based AI company is only the latest warning from firms, think tanks, and others that Russia, China, Iran and others are using made-in-America tools to attack targets around the world.

Anthropic reports that a Russian “freelance” group known as GTG-27005 used Claude to build an AI model small enough to work on single-board computers but powerful enough to enable a drone to “select targets (including a ‘person’ target class) and issue detonation commands without a human in the loop.” The group also used Claude to create software to allow autonomous drones to communicate with one another to improve targeting, Anthropic’s report says. While the Russian group had not yet deployed the model to the field, they were “using real hardware-in-loop testing within their sessions,” according to the report. The company banned the group, incorporated the findings of the investigation into its safeguards, and shared details with industry groups.

Anthropic also said it had spotted Chinese and Yemeni groups trying to use Claude to design conventional weapons, efforts that Anthropic said it disrupted.

The report also detailed how foreign groups were using Claude in elaborate data theft and disinformation campaigns. It said its tools had been used to dig up information about targets, find vulnerabilities in their online accounts, create malware to bypass security and steal data, cover their tracks, and spread disinformation.

“We’ve seen groups of actors use Claude to build networks of fake social media profiles and entire news sites,” the report said.

The campaigns bear the hallmarks of Russian influence campaigns, such as the use of fake news sites and journalist profiles to spread lies about NATO activity in the Baltics. But the U.S.-built AI tools helped streamline the process, boosting the amount of disinformation and creating fake reporters that were much more believable to local audiences. Russian-linked groups “automated much of their operations from development, infrastructure acquisition, phishing, persistence through command and control, to data exfiltration,” the report said. The group even used AI to forge documents from the Central African Republic Gendarmerie and Ministry of Defense.

Another group, GTG-84005, used AI to steal census and public information that allowed its agents to tailor their messaging campaigns to specific audiences in Malaysia, where the Turkish group “laundered Russian and Chinese state media as independent reporting.”

Thursday’s Anthropic report comes two weeks after rival frontier lab OpenAI revealed that Russian actors used ChatGPT to create a fake “expert community”—the “International Burke Institute”—to push talking points to international audiences.

While Anthropic and OpenAI were able to disrupt the schemes they discovered, such operations are likely to continue as Russia uses AI to “scale production of content that aligns with Kremlin narratives,” according to an August report from the Institute for the Study of War, or ISW.

Russia is also using young people’s curiosity about AI to grow the number of humans spreading Russian disinformation, offering young people around the world “AI media internships and training” through university donations and related programs.

Where is the US pushback?

A recent article from New America notes that AI is giving authoritarian regimes a powerful new tool to distort global understanding of geopolitical events.

“Authoritarian regimes are early adopters in using AI to bend the arc of reality in their favor,” write Daniel Kimmage, the former acting coordinator and principal deputy coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, and Darjan Vujica.

It’s the kind of thing the U.S government used to establish and run organizations to push back on, they note. But such efforts have been undermined or brought to a halt under the second Trump administration. Less than a month after taking office, Attorney General Pam Bondi dissolved the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, the unit dedicated to investigating foreign disinformation and influence campaigns. Two months later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio shuttered the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference hub, known as R/Fimi.

And: “The 2025 White House AI Action Plan calls explicitly for removing any references to misinformation,” note Kimmage and Vujica.

At least when it’s made by foreigners.

“The Trump administration has enthusiastically embraced AI-generated imagery in politically divisive posts,” they write.

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‘Digital employees’ are coming to the Defense Logistics Agency

Frank Konkel — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:32:02 -0400

The Defense Logistics Agency is piloting AI agents that work autonomously—bots that its CIO calls “digital employees.”

“This is a new frontier for everyone,” DLA chief information officer Adarryl Roberts told reporters at DLA’s Industry Collider Day on Sept. 9 in Alexandria, Va.

The move builds on DLA’s increasing use of robotic process automation, or RPA, and the generative AI tools available to its 25,000 or so military and civilian personnel. In 2025, bots saved DLA an estimated 300,000 hours of work—some working around the clock to help the combat support agency get everything from food and fuel to medical supplies and clothing where it needs to go.

“We have approximately 185 to 190 bots that are running. I’d say about 90% to 95% of those are unattended bots,” Roberts said. “So, we really cracked the nut to have those unattended. Now, we’re moving from the bots to, ‘How can we have agentic agents working across [the department], based upon our data? So, we’re early in that journey.”

Military-specific versions of ChatGPT and Grok recently joined Gemini on the platform that gives defense workers access to generative-AI tools for information that is sensitive but unclassified. DLA gets its workers up to speed on these tools through “GenAI 101 training,” Roberts said.

“I would look at generative AI as the concept of making the workforce and agency—from an operating model—comfortable with the results you’ll get with AI,” he said. Tools like Gemini and ChatGPT “allow the workforce to interact with AI, see the results, trust the results, and get comfortable.”

“That’s required, because as you move to a more agentic AI, those agents are working 24/7 behind the scenes, and so there has to be a level—a cultural level—of trust in those outcomes,” he said. “Now, we’re shifting to what I would call strategic implementation in terms of those agentic agents to get us better results.”

Roberts said introducing digital employees will require new management strategies. Humans will be working alongside—and often overseeing—digital agents, creating an assortment of new management challenges.

“I think we like to call it, ‘How are we managing our digital employees?” Roberts posited. “Because that’s what they really are, and how do you manage them in conjunction with your human employees?” How do you train a workforce to where everyone is essentially working as a supervisor because of the employment of AI with humans? Do you terminate an agent because of the performance?”

“So, it's a very complex universe, from an employee-cultural perspective, in terms of how you deploy and manage those agents,” Roberts said.

It might sound like science fiction, but the rapid evolution of AI—and DLA’s gradual adoption of it—creates questions around governance, rules, security, and the performance of AI agents and even human employees.

Many of these questions fall to DLA’s AI Center of Excellence, founded in 2024 to ensure the safe, secure, and responsible integration of AI across the agency. The center oversees DLA’s use of AI and performs other functions, like ensuring agents are being trained properly. DLA has implemented a zero-trust cybersecurity framework that Roberts called “foundational” to high-level agentic work.

Currently, the agency is establishing “persona-based access” that will dictate AI agents’ account permissions based on their job descriptions. For example, a procurement specialist at DLA may require access to certain data domains, like procurement and financial data, so a digital agent performing the same procurement specialist duties should have permission to access only those same data domains.

“These AI agents should have a persona, just like a person,” Roberts said.

DLA is also working to clean up its datasets.

“How do we create a single source of truth for DLA and our stakeholders in terms of our data, making sure it’s a gold standard, meaning we remove the duplicity, errors, etc…so the data is in a usable state, not just for analytics and AI, but as we look toward future system sustainability,” Roberts said.

‘AI is the new gunpowder’

DLA accelerated its use of AI during the 32-month tenure of Director Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly, who will retire on Oct. 2. Simerly will be replaced by a familiar face at DLA, Air Force Lt. Gen. David Sanford, who spent the past two years as director of Logistics Operations and commander, Joint Regional Combat Support.

Speaking at the Sept. 9 event, Simerly said technology allows DLA to be predictive and proactive in solving problems, and he views AI as the key ingredient to solving them at scale.

“I believe when it comes to military logistics, AI is the new gunpowder,” he told reporters. “And we don’t think it’s just an explosive, destructive capability, although we know it can be. It can also be very productive.”

Simerly’s philosophy at DLA has been “to move at pace with the commercial world,” adopting and adapting capabilities rapidly, establish the proper network and infrastructure to access and manage agency data suitably, “and then allow interoperability between the services and with industry to allow us to truly operate end-to-end supply chain operations that are optimized.”

A legacy of change

Simerly said changes at his agency were spurred by the war in Ukraine, which expanded in February 2022, and even during the seven-month-old war on Iran launched by President Donald Trump.

“I think probably the greatest change that I've seen in the agency is a willingness to change within the agency. This recognition that we have to respond to the changing environment, that we have to respond to the changing technology, and that we've got a responsibility to change as rapidly as we can, so we can continue to be relevant and offer support to the warfighters,” he said. “I would say that we were built to change from the very beginning. We've had to accelerate that change cycle in the last few years, and I've seen the willingness and the readiness of the agency to take that challenge on and to operationalize our transformation planning into tangible outcomes.”

The contested logistics in Ukraine captured his attention because they were so different from previous U.S. military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, where DLA delivered food and fuel to forward operating bases “really without great resistance.”

“That would never take place in a place like Ukraine, in the way that they’re operating, the way they have to disperse, the way that the lines of communications are contested and where everything has to be done in a certain way,” Simerly said.

“What sort of sparked some of the transformation energy was very much awareness of what was taking place and being illustrated on that battlefield in Ukraine about the things that we no longer could rely upon, like the air and domain dominance that we possessed in previous fights that is now no longer valid or in place.”

Simerly said similar conditions pertain in the U.S. war on Iran.

“There's no question that we're learning the same lessons now in Operation Epic Fury with Iran and their ability to target a broader array of things with precision that puts much more at risk, and you know certainly we're learning a lot about the execution of alternate supply chains, alternate supply means, and the necessity of being able to operate with precision,” he said.

Simerly expressed pride in his DLA team.

“I think about throughout my career the winning teams that I've been privileged to be part of, and that's what I'm proud of here,” he said. “The winning team that I'm part of now, that will continue on the mission after I leave.”

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25 years after 9/11, spy agencies face old lessons and new threats

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 11:00:00 -0400

As Air Force One returned to Washington, D.C., on the night of Sept. 11, 2001, Michael Morell looked out a window and saw an F-16 off the aircraft’s wingtip. Beyond it, the Pentagon was smoldering.

Morell, then-President George W. Bush’s intelligence briefer, had spent the day answering the president’s questions and relaying intelligence as the country tried to understand the attacks that had hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York City. A quarter-century later, that view from the window remains one of his most vivid memories.

At the National Security Agency, Rick Ledgett recalled colleagues weeping in the hallways as the agency shifted into crisis mode. Within a month, it had transferred 3,000 analysts to counterterrorism work, he said.

“Personally, it was shattering,” Ledgett, who later served as NSA deputy director, told Nextgov/FCW in an email, adding that he “saw people step up and perform in ways they hadn’t before.”

The response to the worst terrorist attack in modern history would transform the government they served. The efforts involved reorganizing intelligence agencies, expanding surveillance powers and drawing spies deeper into a global campaign to capture or kill suspected terrorists. It also produced longstanding debates over torture policies, targeted killings, mass surveillance, prolonged wars, and disputes over presidential power that became inseparable from efforts made to keep Americans safe from another catastrophe.

Twenty-five years later, former officials describe a country better prepared to disrupt terrorist organizations, but facing a broader mix of threats from foreign governments, hackers, and extremists able to reach Americans online.

“I think we’re much safer than we were on September 10, 2001, from the threat of terrorism,” Morell, who later served as CIA deputy director and acting director, told Nextgov/FCW in an interview. But threats from nation-states like China or Russia, he said, are the most significant the country has faced since the Cold War.

The 9/11 Commission — chartered by Congress and the White House in late 2002 to present a full accounting of the attacks and response — described in its final report failures spanning imagination, policy, capabilities and management. Agencies held pieces of information that did not come together, and domestic defenses were not effectively mobilized despite mounting warnings about al Qaeda.

Just over a month before the attacks, Morell briefed Bush on a landmark intelligence report titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US” that flagged “patterns of suspicious activity in this country” consistent with preparations for hijackings and other attacks. He told Nextgov/FCW it outlined al Qaeda’s intent to attack the country but did not specifically identify when, where or how a specific plot would unfold.

Getting agencies to work together

The transformation that followed 9/11 sought to make cooperation a standing responsibility. Congress created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in late 2004, establishing a lead unit responsible for integrating intelligence across agencies that collect data from human informants, satellite imagery, intercepted phone calls and other clandestine sources. The Department of Homeland Security was also stood up in late 2002 to drive domestic defense efforts.

The expansion also deepened agencies’ reliance on contractors. After years of workforce drawdowns following the Cold War, the federal government turned to private companies to meet demands for intelligence collection, analysis and technology support, according to a 2015 report from the Congressional Research Service. Today, they play a ubiquitous, outsized role in America’s national security missions.

Lauren Goldman, a former official in ODNI’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center and National Intelligence Council, recalled a major shift in the basic expectations that governed intelligence-sharing across government and the private sector.

“The burden became on why you shouldn’t share versus why you should share,” she said. That culture has permeated many categories of today’s national security landscape, especially cybersecurity.

ODNI sought to help ensure information reached people who needed it, including officials who might otherwise have been left outside an agency’s reporting channels, Goldman said. Because the office does not collect intelligence itself, it can assess reporting without the same institutional or cultural attachment to a particular collection method, she added.

James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence for more than six years under the Obama administration, said that coordination requires a “full-time champion.” Under pre-9/11 arrangements, the CIA director also headed the intelligence community, but agency demands often consumed the attention needed for that broader role, he said.

Clapper said the DNI position was created to coordinate intelligence agencies but was not given full authority over them. Entities like the State Department or the Pentagon, for instance, retained control of their own intelligence shops. Still, the DNI could influence their priorities through oversight of intelligence funding and a direct advisory role to the president, he said.

“I do think there’s a need for an overall champion of collaboration and integration,” Clapper told Nextgov/FCW. His remarks come as the Trump administration has sought to shrink ODNI’s workforce and consolidate its functions, on grounds that the office has become bloated and duplicates work performed elsewhere in the intelligence community.

Ledgett credited ODNI with promoting cooperation, as well as running the National Counterterrorism Center and other hubs. But he said it had struggled to take power from individual agencies, particularly the CIA, and secure the president’s attention.

Morell said the CIA knew al Qaeda wanted to attack the United States but failed to uncover the 9/11 plot. He blamed that failure largely on a shortage of resources to gather intelligence, rather than agencies failing to share what they knew. That view differs in emphasis from the commission’s account, which identified missed opportunities to share or act on information.

Clapper said mistaken assessments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs also reshaped how spy agencies worked. The Bush administration cited those assessments in making its case for its 2003 invasion. Clapper, who had involvement in a key flawed assessment of Iraq’s WMDs, said the failure pushed agencies to scrutinize their sources and challenge assumptions more rigorously. U.S. analysts, in particular, had relied heavily on an Iraqi informant whose claims came through German intelligence, without direct access to question him.

The limits of intelligence powers

Global surveillance became one of the defining disputes of the post-9/11 era. The NSA’s bulk collection of domestic telephone records, exposed in Edward Snowden’s 2013 disclosures, drew scrutiny over both its intrusions into Americans’ lives and its value as a counterterrorism tool.

In 2014, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board recommended ending that collection program, and a federal appeals court ruled in 2015 that it exceeded what Congress had authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. But other surveillance programs exposed by Snowden — including those operating under the contentious Section 702 authority — have remained central to U.S. intelligence-gathering.

Ledgett, who led the NSA’s assessment of the damage from Snowden’s disclosures, defended the post-9/11 surveillance effort as “legal and authorized,” though he noted the intelligence community could have done better at public relations.

The incident forever changed how lawmakers and journalists examine spy agencies’ collection activities and whether Americans’ privacy is adequately protected. Contemporary mass surveillance debates have taken on new forms, including spy agencies’ purchases of sensitive data from commercial brokers and police use of artificial intelligence-powered tools to search vast networks of information about people’s movements and activities.

The CIA’s detention, interrogation and torture practices produced another reckoning. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 investigation concluded that the agency’s coercive interrogation techniques were ineffective in obtaining intelligence or cooperation and that the CIA impeded oversight and misrepresented aspects of the program.

Morell, who has previously disputed the Senate report’s conclusions, argued that responsibility also belonged to the president and other authorizing officials, and he rejected the idea that the agencies had acted entirely on their own.

Asked whether the country went too far in its broader response in the War on Terror, Morell said that “as a nation, we overreacted,” pointing mainly to the Iraq War and the length of the war in Afghanistan.

Intelligence agencies also helped identify and track suspected terrorists for controversial targeted killings, including those carried out through U.S. drone strikes. The debate reached American citizenship itself when the government targeted Anwar al-Awlaki, an American and al Qaeda operative, in a lethal strike. Defending the action in 2013, then-President Barack Obama argued that citizenship could not shield an operative plotting attacks when capture was not feasible.

Today, drones have become a battlefield mainstay in Russia’s war against Ukraine, and Western militaries are studying how to build, deploy and counter them. Weapons that drew scrutiny for their role in U.S. counterterrorism operations are now also held up as examples of military innovation, with NATO learning directly from Ukrainian drone operators. But questions about whom they kill and how they are used persist, as the United Nations documents their growing toll on civilians.

The fight over intelligence powers also became increasingly partisan. President Donald Trump’s disputes with intelligence officials over Russia’s interference in the 2016 election helped fuel his accusations that agencies were being used against him. A bipartisan Senate investigation upheld the intelligence community’s finding that Moscow sought to help him win. But allegations of political “weaponization” became a recurring theme in Trump’s criticism of intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

A changing threat landscape

Intelligence agencies now face a wider range of threats, including foreign hackers with access to fast-evolving AI tools.

Morell said the United States learned how to degrade terrorist organizations by denying them safe havens where they could train, raise money and prepare attacks. But the growing reach of digital networks has created other ways to threaten the U.S. without physically entering it.

Goldman pointed to critical infrastructure, where connected systems can allow the effects of an intrusion to spread beyond a single building or city, as a target of such threats. Hardening airports and other physical targets has value, she said, but does not eliminate vulnerabilities created by that cyber interconnectedness.

State-backed hacking illustrates the stakes. About six years ago, Russian cyber operatives compromised SolarWinds software as part of an espionage campaign that infiltrated multiple federal agencies and some 100 private companies. China-linked Salt Typhoon hackers later penetrated major telecommunications networks, targeting senior officials’ communications and accessing systems used for court-authorized wiretaps. And another Chinese campaign, Volt Typhoon, embedded hackers in American critical infrastructure, with U.S. officials warning that the access could enable disruption during a future conflict.

Terrorist groups have also found new ways to spread propaganda and reach potential recruits online. The Digital Citizens Alliance and cybersecurity firm risk3sixty recently examined 25 piracy-based internet television services and identified terrorist-linked broadcasters on 17 of them. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar satellite television station appeared on all 17, according to their analysis.

Some terrorism-prevention measures have also lapsed. A Sept. 8 Government Accountability Office report found that the 2023 expiration of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program ended continuous screening of roughly 500,000 people for possible terrorist ties. The program covered about 3,200 high-risk chemical facilities, whose owners cannot independently access federal terrorist watchlist information.

As officials who lived through 9/11 reflect on their time in government, they want the next generation to remember how warnings were missed and what it took to get agencies working together.

Goldman said analysts need to keep questioning their conclusions, examining blind spots and sharing information, despite the demands of daily work. Clapper emphasized the difficulty of persuading policymakers to act on a danger the public has not yet experienced.

Ledgett expressed confidence in those who will take their place.

“Everyone eventually retires, and organizations continue,” he said. “The next generation steps up and delivers when needed.”

The U.S. is skilled at responding once a crisis arrives, but has struggled to prepare before it does, Morell said.

“Becoming a nation, a White House, a Congress, an American people that is proactive in preventing things — preventing bad things — is much better than only being reactive to them,” he said.

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The Pentagon is using polygraphs to hunt leakers, but the tests are more theater than fact

Brian O'Neill, The Conversation — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 19:41:12 -0400

In August, government investigators subjected roughly 50 military officers and civilian employees on the Joint Staff to polygraph tests as part of an inquiry into press leaks about the Iran war and depleted U.S. munitions, according to The New York Times. The newspaper described the scope of the investigation as unprecedented in the modern military.

This is not the first time the Trump administration has used polygraphs in this way; in 2025, it directed that a wave of tests be administered across the executive branch to expose minor leaks.

As someone who has taken roughly a dozen polygraphs during my 27-year career with the CIA, I am wary of how the process is understood – and of the certainty its use can appear to convey.

Polygraphs carry an ominous, almost mythological reputation among Americans. The more familiar and unofficial term – lie detector tests – likely fuels that perception. Television crime dramas have done their part, too, often portraying the device as an oracle for uncovering the truth when conventional methods fail.

In those portrayals, the polygraph is not merely a tool – it’s a window into the soul.

Among those entering government service, especially in national security, the greater anxiety is not the background check but passing the polygraph. My advice is always the same: Don’t lie. It’s the best – and perhaps only – guidance for a process that most assessments have concluded is a more subjective interpretation than empirical science.

Why the polygraph persists

Polygraphs are “pseudo-scientific” in that they measure physiological responses such as heart rate, blood pressure and perspiration. The assumption is that liars betray themselves through spikes in those signals. But this presumes a kind of psychological transparency that simply doesn’t hold up. A person might sweat and tremble simply from fear, anger or frustration – not deceit.

There also are no specific physiological reactions associated with lying. The National Academy of Sciences in 2003, and the American Psychological Association in a 2004 review, concluded that the polygraph rests more on theater than fact. A 2019 assessment reached the same conclusion.

Accordingly, polygraph results are not generally admissible in U.S. courts. Only a handful of states – such as Georgia, Arizona and California – permit their use even under limited conditions. And they typically require that both parties agree to admission and a judge to approve it. Unconditional admissibility remains the exception, not the rule.

And yet, inside many national security agencies, polygraphs remain central to the clearance process – a fact I observed firsthand during my time overseeing personnel vetting and analytic hiring within the intelligence community.

While not treated as conclusive, polygraph results often serve as a filter. A candidate’s visible discomfort – or the examiner’s subjective judgment that a response seems evasive – can stall or end the hiring process. For instance, I know that government agencies have halted clearances after an examiner flagged elevated reactions to questions about past drug use or foreign contacts, even when no disqualifying behavior was ultimately documented.

The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover headquarters building in Washington in 2016. AP Photo/Cliff Owen

In some cases, an examiner’s suggestion that a chart shows an anomaly has led otherwise strong applicants to volunteer details they hadn’t planned to share – such as minor security infractions, undeclared relationships, or casual drug use from decades earlier – that, while not disqualifying on their own, reshape how their trustworthiness is perceived.

The polygraph’s power lies in creating the conditions under which deception is confessed.

A predictable pattern

No administration has been immune to the impulse to investigate leaks. The reflex is bipartisan and familiar: An embarrassing disclosure appears in the press – contradicting official statements or exposing internal dissent – and the White House vows to identify and punish the source. Polygraphs are often part of this ritual.

During his first term, Trump intensified efforts to expose internal dissent and media leaks. Department guidelines were revised to make it easier for agencies to obtain journalists’ phone and email records, and polygraphs were reportedly used to pressure officials suspected of talking to the press. That trend has continued – and, since 2025, escalated.

Policies at the Pentagon now restrict unescorted press access, revoke office space for major outlets and favor ideologically aligned networks. The line between legitimate leak prevention and the surveillance or sidelining of critical press coverage has grown increasingly blurred.

At agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, polygraphs reportedly have been used frequently – and more punitively – to identify internal dissenters. Even “cold cases,” such as the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs opinion ahead of its overturning of Roe v. Wade, were reopened, despite prior investigations yielding no definitive source.

Government reaction varies

Not all leaks are treated the same. Disclosures that align with official narratives or offer strategic advantage may be quietly tolerated, even if unauthorized. Others, especially those that embarrass senior officials or reveal dysfunction, are more likely to prompt formal investigation.

In 2003, for example, the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity – widely seen as retaliation for her husband’s criticism of the Iraq War – triggered a federal investigation. The disclosure embarrassed senior officials, led to White House aide Scooter Libby’s conviction for perjury, later commuted, and drew intense political scrutiny.

Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, rides in the backseat of a limousine on Oct. 27, 2005, in McLean, Va. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Leaks involving classified material draw the sharpest response when they challenge presidential authority or expose internal disputes. That was the case in 2010 with Chelsea Manning, whose disclosure of diplomatic cables and battlefield reports embarrassed senior officials and sparked global backlash. Government reaction often depends less on what was disclosed than on who disclosed it – and to what effect.

A narrow set of disclosures, such as those involving espionage or operational compromise, elicit broad consensus as grounds for prosecution. But most leaks fall outside that category. Most investigations fade quietly. The public rarely learns what became of them. Occasionally, there is a vague resignation, but direct accountability is rare.

What the future holds

The Pentagon polygraph campaign is not likely to eliminate leaks to the press. But it may have a chilling effect that discourages internal candor while diverting investigative energy away from core security priorities.

Even if such campaigns succeed in reducing unauthorized disclosures, they may come at the cost of institutional resilience. Historically, aggressive internal enforcement has been associated with declining morale and reduced information flow – factors that can hinder adaptation to complex threats.

Some researchers have suggested that artificial intelligence may eventually offer reliable tools for detecting deception but caution that the technology is nowhere near operational readiness.

For now, institutions will have to contend with the tools they have – imperfect, imprecise and more performative than predictive.

This is an updated version of a story that was first published on July 9, 2025.

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US absent as western powers meet on wartime protections for civilians

Megan Rose and Hannah Allam, ProPublica — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 19:36:52 -0400

Three years ago, the Defense Department led an ambitious international effort to better protect civilians during combat, a movement built on the bloody lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Pentagon created a network with European partners, driving the creation of shared standards. Civilian harm experts described the moment as a “unique opportunity” for American leadership by example.

Today, those efforts continue — without the United States, after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismantled the civilian protection mission.

And Thursday, no U.S. delegation will be in the room when the international forum the U.S. cofounded meets at NATO headquarters in Belgium.

The country’s absence from the International Contact Group on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response summit reinforces the abandonment of a mission the Pentagon had encouraged partners to embrace, said current and former officials. Most spoke to ProPublica on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from President Donald Trump’s administration.

They called the step back “humiliating” and “dangerous,” pointing to reports of rising civilian casualties in Iran following strikes on schools and homes.

“There will be a day when people who care about mitigating civilian harm can come back and say, ‘OK, are we ready to solve this problem?’” said Jenny McAvoy, a former Defense Department official who helped shape the U.S. civilian protection program. “But there are already enormous consequences of abandoning this work.”

The Pentagon declined to comment about the lack of U.S. participation in the Brussels talks. A spokesperson previously told ProPublica that the Defense Department factors civilian protections into all phases of operational planning and “remains committed to fulfilling its civilian harm mitigation and response responsibilities.”

The Pentagon adopted the civilian harm mitigation and response mission in 2022 after years of bloodshed in the post-9/11 “forever wars.” Known as CHMR and pronounced “chimmer,” the framework called for a specialized center to collect strike data and for advisers embedded with regional commands to help mitigate the risk to noncombatants.

Not long after, the U.S. teamed up with the Netherlands to coordinate efforts internationally. The two countries had been frequent partners in recent military campaigns, including the fight against the Islamic State group, and were both coming to terms with high-profile civilian casualty incidents. For the United States, years of harm in Iraq and Afghanistan had drawn international outrage and pledges from commanders to better collect data and learn from deadly mistakes.

The Dutch were still addressing the fallout from a 2015 operation in Iraq in which air strikes targeting a car-bomb factory ignited a nearby munitions depot, setting off an enormous explosion that killed at least 70 civilians and wounded hundreds. Dutch responsibility wasn’t revealed until 2019, causing a national scandal and accusations of a cover-up.

In 2023, the U.S. and the Netherlands formed the loose coalition on CHMR. Participants described a small, informal group that has met half a dozen times since 2023 to share best practices and hear briefings on civilian casualty trends.

Advocacy groups said it had taken years to get the U.S. military to think of civilian casualties as more than “collateral damage,” showing commanders how the deaths of innocents were anathema to their morals and strategically harmful to their missions. The eventual adoption of CHMR guidelines by American defense officials helped their counterparts abroad make the case for programs in their own countries.

“By the U.S. putting itself out there and saying, ‘We learned, we can do better,’ it gives permission and makes it OK for other governments to similarly acknowledge, ‘Yeah, we can do better too,’” said McAvoy.

As participants gather this week in Brussels to discuss how to continue strengthening CHMR, however, the early momentum from the U.S. side has evaporated.

Hegseth, who derides rules of engagement as “woke,” gutted the CHMR program over the objections of the nation’s top commanders, ProPublica reported last month. Staff plunged from nearly 200 to about two dozen.

Days before the latest summit in Brussels, the United States wasn’t listed as a participant and there was no sign anyone from the Defense Department would attend. Current and former officials predicted either a no-show or, at most, a single delegate from one of the commands showing up.

To experts, the message was clear: The era of U.S. leadership on civilian protection was over.

Foreign ambassadors and heads of diplomatic missions visit Resalat Square in Tehran, Iran, on April 20, 2026, where photos of civilians killed in recent U.S.-Israeli strikes are displayed. Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images

“The U.S. stopped participating in this group last year and people assumed that meant the group would die,” said McAvoy. “But the group continued to exist and to meet — without the U.S. — under the leadership of the U.K. and the Netherlands.”

The two-day summit opens with a broad discussion of CHMR, such as how it applies in coalitions or in operations at sea, that includes advocacy groups and academics, a draft agenda reviewed by ProPublica shows. Day 2 is a closed-door session for more intimate talks among senior representatives of member states. The meeting wraps with a “looking ahead” panel.

Past attendees included Austria, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Norway. The nations represent a wide variation in approaches and needs when it comes to CHMR, participants said.

The U.K., for example, doesn’t have a formal framework for civilian harm mitigation and response, and advocates have spent years pushing the British Ministry of Defense to adopt policies similar to those of the United States. Though humanitarian groups generally regarded the American CHMR enterprise as nascent and imperfect, the overall framework provided a worthy standard, said Mae Thompson of the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights, a London-based advocacy group.

Advocates have framed the Pentagon’s rollback as an opportunity for the U.K. to step into a leadership role, Thompson said, and they’ve been encouraged by a recent internal report by the defense ministry that calls for formalization of a program in Britain, including systems to track civilian harm, investigate, and make amends and offer post-harm response.

NATO boasts a civilian protection policy that predates the American model, but the organization is now incorporating elements of the U.S. approach, said Andrew Hyde, who studies U.S.-European relations at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan foreign policy think tank.

Hyde said international talks are important for sorting out how CHMR applies in joint operations when the United States, NATO and European nations all have different interpretations of harm mitigation. The diminished U.S. role, he said, means NATO and other partners must step up on coordination.

The shift in leadership could end up shielding civilian protection work from the whims of whichever U.S. administration is in power and leading to more enduring reforms, Hyde said.

“NATO has continued to push forward without U.S. support or participation, keeping up the momentum and ready for U.S. re-engagement,” Hyde said.

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‘We have to throw technology at the cyber problem,’ Pentagon CIO says

Edward Graham — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:00:00 -0400

The Pentagon is shifting its cybersecurity posture to rely more on new capabilities to maintain its digital defenses rather than just bolstering its operational manpower, the department’s IT head said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, D.C., Department of Defense Chief Information Officer Kirsten Davies said, “We can't continue to throw people at the cyber problem; we have to throw technology at the cyber problem.”

Given DOD’s vast size, she said managing cybersecurity means the department has to look at using “everything from automation to machine learning to actually AI,” since the threat environment and range of new and outdated IT systems across its operations presents “a complex Rubik's cube of problems.”

Davies said DOD's thousands of networks include civilian and military components, so “this technology must be ready and available, and it must operate even when it's disconnected.”

Because one small IT problem can ripple across the Pentagon, Davies said it’s also important to “think about leveraging the fantastically skilled people that we have in a much more effective way.”

“As we embrace AI and leverage massive, massive quantities of agentic AI, how do we do that in a way that's supportive of our workforce and provides innovation across that?” she said.

Davies said the department is working to hire employees who know how to use new and emerging tech capabilities, with DOD prioritizing relevant job candidates’ abilities over their educational backgrounds. When it comes to using AI, she said, this means focusing more on applicants who are skilled at prompt engineering — developing instructions for the models to output accurate information.

“Why are we leveraging people for things that technology can do now? Like, let's really build skills and talent that know how to leverage technology very effectively,” Davies said. This mindset has already led to the department working to attract a new crop of cyber professionals.

DOD began accepting applications in July for a new Cyber Registered Apprenticeship Program to bring more cybersecurity talent into the agency, with a particular focus on prioritizing skills-based hiring. The department ultimately closed its first listing four days early after receiving more than 15,000 applications, although DOD has said it plans to open additional rounds of opportunities.

In a previous interview with Nextgov/FCW, Davies said her office was working to transition away from operating as a backend policy shop to taking more of an active role in DOD’s overall mission. She reiterated that mindset on Wednesday, saying that “reform is a big thing for us.”

Davies said this includes reforming the way DOD acquires new products, systems and weaponry. The first step in this process, she noted, was identifying policies and mandates that the department could whittle down or cut entirely — something that equated to more than 60% of relevant DOD guidance.

Now, the department is in the process of carrying out part two of the initiative, which entails looking at the actual process that companies have to go through when it comes to approving new capabilities.

Davies said this process could take anywhere from six to 18 months, but noted that the department just tested out a platform that took that standard timeline “and shortened it to 17 seconds.” She said, however, that the speed of the tested platform is just one component of what the Pentagon must evaluate when it comes to transforming its acquisition strategy.

“That doesn't address what some of the root things are that I still want to address, which is, ‘Are we asking the right questions? Are we demanding the right documentation from software companies?’ Is the output of a 17-second process actually reducing risk?’” she said.

One major step that Davies’ office has taken is its decision to suspend the second-phase requirements for third-party assessments under the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program. The mandatory security framework for defense contractors was stopped in July for a 60-day review by a CMMC Reform Task Force. That assessment period is set to end on Friday.

Davies said the task force has received more than 1,100 responses to a request for information about CMMC’s next steps.

“We wanted to hear more from the defense industrial base on what was important for meaningful, dynamic cybersecurity," she added.

Davies’ remarks came the same day that Washington Technology reported that DOD is moving beyond a suspension of CMMC’s phase two requirements and is effectively implementing a binding regulation that would codify the pause.

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Top Air and Space Force leaders will gather amid unresolved Iran war, budget uncertainty

Thomas Novelly — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 15:37:50 -0400

Just three days after top military leaders left the Air and Space Force Association’s February conference in Colorado, the U.S. and Israel struck Iran, commencing Operation Epic Fury. Now, more than six months later, service officials are scheduled to gather again outside Washington D.C. to pitch their top budget priorities as the unresolved war wages on.

The Air and Space Force Association's Air, Space & Cyber conference next week comes as the services chug along on major acquisitions programs amid funding uncertainty on Capitol Hill. Those initiatives include fielding Collaborative Combat Aircraft, developing the Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, accelerating production on the B-21 bomber and showing progress on the future F-47 fighter jet, and demonstrating key components of the Golden Dome missile defense system. In addition to announcing updates on those programs, military and defense industry leaders will discuss the ongoing conflict.

While top service leaders are sure to focus on the Iran war strategy, one defense analyst said there are still a lot of unanswered questions on modernizing the forces for future conflicts.

“I'm expecting we will hear quite a bit about the war in Iran and lessons learned from the war,” said Kelly Greico, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center. “But I think the really big question for me, that I'm more interested in, is, what are actually the modernization priorities of this leadership team? Last time we heard a lot about readiness, but less emphasis, I would say, frankly, on what the priorities were about where the Air Force is heading in terms of how it's preparing for the future fight.”

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine is scheduled to address this year’s conference, as partisan gridlock has imperiled top service programs programs and funding priorities—including F-35 procurement, crucial munitions, and the military-wide Golden Dome missile defense program. On Wednesday, NDIA Emerging Technologies Conference, Caine pushed for fully funding the administration's 13-figure proposal.

“What we need is $1.5 trillion, the configuration of that budget, that's a political decision for policy makers,” Caine said. “But we support that and need that capital to make sure that the deals that the department are negotiating with the wide range of not only NDIA members but broader industry members is essential for us to keep going.”

Caine’s pitch comes after lawmakers scaled back the administration’s $350 billion in requested reconciliation funds to just $60 billion to support Iran war operations. In April, Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, the Air Force’s top uniformed leader, told lawmakers the service would need supplemental funding to replace aircraft lost during Operation Epic Fury.

After dozens of MQ-9 Reaper drones were destroyed in the fight with Iran, the service is likely to make some announcements about its plans to develop and buy a replacement under its Massed Modular Aircraft program, known as MMA. Service officials during a Pentagon roundtable last week teased that Air Force Secretary Troy Meink would have updates on the effort.

“I would expect at AFA that he'll probably have some comments on what he is envisioning for the MMA, where he wants to go in terms of numbers and timeline and stuff like that, but he absolutely has made it clear to us that his expectation is we need to bring it to the left,” Lt. Gen. Christopher J. Niemi, the Air Force’s chief modernization officer, told reporters.

Guetlein, the Golden Dome director, is also scheduled to speak at the conference..

Last month, the four-star Space Force general warned that the sprawling, military-wide missile defense project was in peril. About 97 percent of the program’s $17.5 billion request this year was based on reconciliation funding. He is scheduled to appear on a panel titled “Defending the Homeland: Making Golden Dome a Reality” alongside Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, the head of U.S. Northern Command.

Amid the budget uncertainty, Greico said it’s a tall order for the Air and Space Force to accomplish all its goals.

“The Air and Space Forces, together, their budget is, to me, is not sustainable,” Greico said. “Fundamentally, it doesn't make sense how they can do everything that they want to do.”

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Defense Business Brief: AI manufacturing; Skilled trades; Arms transfer oversight

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 02:31:22 -0400

Could AI- and robot-made missile components and airframes be the future of aerospace manufacturing? That’s the bet, Machina Labs CEO Edward Mehr said.

The Los Angeles-based company plans to break ground on its third manufacturing facility this year, Mehr told Defense One at the Space and Missile Defense Conference last month.

That facility, which hasn’t been named yet, is expected to be up to 250,000 square feet—more than double the size of Machina Labs’ two existing facilities.

The company builds large metal structures like airframes and drone bodies using AI and robotics with less specialized tooling and equipment.

“If you think about traditional metal structure manufacturers in defense, they have to go build a very custom factory for every product they want to deploy. There [are] facilitization costs that go for each product and then there's a lead time associated with that. For us, the same factory that makes, let's say, [Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile] fuel tanks, can switch and make UAV airframes.”

Last year, Machina Labs raised $124 million in a Series C round, much of which will be used for that third facility: “This year—and next—is about focus, about scale,” he said.

The company, which has Toyota, Nvidia, and Lockheed Martin as investors, plans to significantly increase production of its manufacturing system, RoboCraftsman.

“Today, we manufacture five of these manufacturing systems a year. We're ramping that up,” he said.

Several of those systems are slated to outfit Machina Labs’ upcoming facility, which will produce cruise missile products. The company has not yet announced where it will be located.

“As long as you have a ground that can hold the system, they can be shipped to it, they open up, you connect them to power, and within the same day, they self-calibrate and start manufacturing,” Mehr said.

Welcome

You’ve reached the Defense Business Brief, where we dig into what the Pentagon buys, who they’re buying from, and why. Send along your tips, feedback, and song recommendations to lwilliams@defenseone.com. Check out the Defense Business Brief archive here, and tell your friends to subscribe!

Help needed: Natsec’s skilled trade crisis. For more than a generation, the rhetoric and overall advice for young adults mulling their future was to go to college, get a four-year degree, maybe learn to code, and land an office job—or at least one that is secure and not too dangerous. But that societal rhetoric may have helped fuel a dearth of skilled trade and craft workers, lawmakers and government officials argued during a pre-Labor Day hearing.

“We assume that critical manufacturing inputs such as minerals, sub tier suppliers, [and] skilled labor will always be available. This assumption is false,” Rep. Ken Calvert, who chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, said during opening remarks for a Sept. 4 field hearing on the industrial base. “According to the American Welding Society, approximately 20 percent of the welding force are approaching retirement and in 2025 they estimated the need for 320,000 new welders by 2029. These estimates are prior to the data center boom, which relies heavily on welders and fabrication.”
The Pentagon’s head of industrial base policy Michael Cadenazzi echoed those sentiments in written testimony:
- “Decades of government policy and societal pressure have driven millions of talented young Americans towards degrees which haven’t delivered the benefits they were promised and have left defense manufacturers with few skilled workers waiting in the wings. There are as many as 400,000 unfilled skilled trades jobs in the DIB today, and that number could grow to 2.5 million by 2030.”
Cadenazzi also highlighted the Pentagon’s award of a $10 million grant to BuildFreedom.us, which aims to bolster the skilled workforce by linking jobseekers with scholarships, apprenticeship programs, and “AI-proof jobs”.
- “We’ve now rolled out Build Freedom in three states, with plans to expand the program nationwide. This national awareness will drive individuals to our new Buildfreedom.US website, a one-stop shop where their interest can be converted into scholarships, training, credentials, and job opportunities,” he said of the effort, which was launched in partnership with the National Labor Exchange, Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” reality TV fame, and his mikeroweWORKS Foundation.
- That $10 million grant will pay for more than 9,000 scholarships, Cadenazzi said.

Improving oversight of mishandled defense articles abroad. When the U.S. provides security assistance, the State Department is in charge of investigating incidents in which U.S. allies and partners fail to properly secure or transfer defense articles—from weapons to components or technical data. But the department's “investigations, documentation and reporting on potential violations were inconsistent,” the Government Accountability Office wrote in a letter that was publicly released on Sept. 8.

The watchdog agency made those concerns, which appeared in a 2025 report, a “high priority” issue for the State Department.
“We recommended [the State Department] document the status and findings of its investigations and develop guidance for determining when to report an incident to Congress. Doing so could inform congressional oversight of future assistance,” the letter states.

Making moves + other news

The Army picked Boeing and Anduril for its Integrated Fires Protection Capability (IFPC) Increment 2 Second Interceptor.
Allen Control Systems is beefing up its manufacturing capacity with a new 191,000 square-foot manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. The facility will churn out the company’s signature robotic turret.
Kongsberg selected Echodyne to provide radars for its counter-UAS system.
Former NGA Director Frank Whitworth is now president of Satellogic, a geospatial data company. Whitworth will lead the company’s operations and direct strategy for its defense and intelligence products.
The Navy and MARTAC demonstrated refueling of autonomous vessels at sea.
Ex-Pentagon weapons buyer Ellen Lord joined Chariot Defense’s advisory board with two former Army generals, James Rainey, who led Army Futures Command, and Samuel Peterson, the Army’s former buyer for combat support and sustainment portfolio. Defense investor Stephen Rodriguez also joined the board.

A final stray thought: BuildFreedom.us rings very similar to BuildSubmarines.com. Coincidence? Perhaps.

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AI-powered biowarfare is coming; the Army lays plans to ‘fight through’ it

Patrick Tucker — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:12:01 -0400

FORT BELVOIR, Va.— AI is “dramatically lowering the barrier” to creating biological weapons, according to the Army’s updated biodefense strategy—even as it gives commanders and troops a better picture of how biological threats, both natural and manmade, will shape future battlefields, service officials say.

The new strategy aims to prepare the Army to “deploy, fight, and win decisively in a bio-contested environment” by 2035, via new training, advanced early warning, and hardened equipment. But its leaders and bio-threat experts are already working to overhaul how the service thinks about and responds to biological threats. AI will be central to this new era of biodefense, whether advising in the disposition of forces or countering enemy attempts to sow confusion and panic about outbreaks, according to officials who spoke to reporters Tuesday.

The era of AI bioweapons

In 2023, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told U.S. lawmakers that AI could “widen the range of actors with the technical capability to conduct a large-scale biological attack,” a scenario he said could come to pass within “two to three years.”

The scenario is drawing nearer. This week, a new paper out of Stanford described how feeding genetic data into high-performance AI models could lead to a new kind of virus that can infect bacteria, showing it’s ability to breakthrough the immunity barriers of other organisms.

This has alarmed RAND molecular biologist Steph Guerra, who wrote, “As AI capabilities advance, viral bioweapons could become much easier to design and produce and could cause even more harm than the weapons used in the past.”

But AI also play a role in defending societies and militaries from such weapons. “We know that everything is changing faster now and so part of the key to the strategy is making sure that we're adaptable,” Alison Tamasi, the chief of the survivability and effects division at the Army’s Nuclear and CWMD Agency, said Tuesday.

Just as detecting a needle in a haystack is harder than making needles, using AI to detect biological threats on the battlefield is more complicated and human-centered task than feeding data into a model. That’s one reason why the updated Army biodefense strategy is so important, the researchers said.

One key element is new, portable genetic-sequencing kits. No bigger than a computer printer, the kits can analyze genetic samples on a laptop computer not connected to the cloud. That might sound like the sort of thing you could encounter in a doctor's office. But a cheek swab that a doctor might take in a relatively clean conditions is very different from samples contaminated with dust, air, fiber, or animal tissue. And getting analysis in the field in a day or so beats waiting weeks for a sample transported back to the States.

The Army hopes the kits, which can classify a sample as a known biothreat or a new one, will help forge strategies when new ones arise.

You can’t stop biology. You can plan for it.

AI isn’t the only factor increasing risks of future biological threats. New viruses occur naturally and spread more quickly today as a function of globalization. But the military’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic “exposed shortfalls in Army biodefense capabilities,” according to the new strategy.

A 2023 study found that COVID-19, which thrust the military into new civilian support roles and imposed new guidelines on forces around the world, undermined team cohesion, military readiness, and of course, mental and physical health.

The new strategy emphasizes better planning for operating during a pandemic, manmade or not. Demonstrating this capability might just deter an adversary from attempting to launch a bioattack as part of a larger campaign, officials said.

“The challenge is going to be how we do this [sample collection, analysis] in the crisis phase, or worse, in the conflict phase,” said Col. Dennis Ruffolo, deputy director for force health protection at the Office of the Surgeon General and Army Medical Command. “That's really what this is going to get after is is is making sure all Army leaders understand that we have to learn ways to fight through the biothreats.”

Here, too, AI will play a key role, said Ruffolo, in helping commanders better understand the biothreats they face, or even will face, in as much detail as possible.

That sort of understanding, enabled not just by new AI models but also humans collecting samples, monitoring environments, and performing analysis, will better prepare the Army for those contingencies. That adaptation means getting more soldiers to understand that bio-threat monitoring is a new priority, ensuring they are capable of biological threat monitoring, and providing them with the equipment and training to do so.

“I have operators below me who do not have doctorates or [are] not microbiologists, I have E-4 specialists who are able to operate that technology with protocols that I have written, and they can do that unsupervised.” said Army microbiologist Amina Zeidan, with the 44th Medical Brigade.

The strategy makes those sorts of efforts a core priority across training, equipping, facilities, policy, and so forth.

“Historically, the Army treated biodefense as a specialized problem,” reads the strategy. “Victory in future conflicts requires an Army that treats biodefense not as a secondary concern, but as a core warfighting imperative. This strategy provides the roadmap.”

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Maven is becoming the Pentagon’s everything app

John Croxton — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:24:57 -0400

The Pentagon is finding ever more uses for the AI-powered command-and-control system called Maven Smart System, including logistics, force readiness, supply chain and budgeting data, the Defense Department’s AI chief said Tuesday.

Maven, which is used by all U.S. combatant commands for intelligence and operations data analysis, drew attention in the early days of President Donald Trump’s war with Iran by facilitating strikes on thousands of targets in lightning-quick succession.

But the war also revealed DOD’s need for a better way to plan operations against a 90-day picture of its munitions inventory, Cameron Stanley, chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, said at the Billington CyberSecurity Summit in Washington, D.C.

Already, MSS has replaced “six, eight, ten” different IT systems that U.S. military personnel previously used to analyze data, said Stanley, adding that the goal was to build a “golden thread” of data from sensors, to aggregation and visualization, to decision-making and acting based on those decisions.

While MSS started as a tool to bridge intelligence and operations efforts, the department is working to include readiness and disposition of forces, supply chain and budgetary considerations, modeling and simulation to improve decision-making processes—what Stanley called a “horizontal integration” of directorates’ data functions.

Stanley also pointed to GenAI.mil, the Pentagon’s main portal for AI tools, which recently added tools from OpenAI and xAI in addition to Google’s Gemini. It’s deploying “real, no-kidding frontier AI algorithms, and the full user experience, inside of a government environment,” he said.

The organizations that have been most successful are integrating AI in new ways and changing how they operate, versus simply automating existing processes, Stanley added. Whereas commanders used to wait hours for new satellite imagery, they now see images complete with target detection in minutes, requiring a rethink of military decision-making processes.

“Basically, we need to make better decisions faster with data,” Stanley said. “Everything seems confusing until you break it down to making better decisions faster.”

He also discussed procurement timelines, noting that recent use of other transaction authorities and marketplaces had shortened the time vendor selection took “from months to single-digit days,” compared to traditional requests for information and proposals at DOD. He recommended vendors use Tradewinds, DOD’s digital marketplace, saying it “satisfies the competitive requirement” with a five-minute video, “way better than writing a bunch of RFIs and RFPs.”

The department is also exploring AI pilot programs for drafting and concluding contracts, as well as legal advice, though humans would remain in the process. Stanley said that “90%” of the language used in other transaction agreements or Federal Acquisition Regulation-based contracts was standard, and AI could often be used to make straightforward updates as needed.

He noted that interim authority to test and authority to operate on department networks were “one of those clear bottlenecks that are really really hard to get around,” and that AI pilot programs were being trialed to speed approval times.

While the full timeline from a broad agency announcement to authority to operate right now “could be 18 months,” his office is “progressively looking at every single piece of that schedule.”

The department was historically “standoffish” about software delivery models like software as a service and platform as a service, but “meeting the industry where they are” would allow the Pentagon to invest in and integrate commercial offerings more readily, Stanley said. He said that DOD would adopt commercial AI models, use its own data to customize them for its own use cases, and build its own bespoke capabilities as necessary.

Instead of owning the software, “I'll pay a license for that, so you don't have to worry about development. We can just iterate inside of that license period,” he said. The department is “a commercial-first organization.”

Allies often “are aligned” but “don’t have the resources … the experience … the scale that we do,” Stanley said. DOD is actively working with partners including the Five Eyes (the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and “a few” NATO and Asian allies to understand their needs and help them avoid making mistakes DOD has already made, he noted.

Stanley added that “AI in everything” would happen naturally, regardless of DOD’s actions. The department would need to digitize older processes and integrate AI into all decision-making to adapt. “The way we've always done it is not the least risky option. The way we've always done it is the most risky course of action,” he said.

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NSA wants AI to help analysts sift vast data troves

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 22:20:00 -0400

The National Security Agency is leaning into artificial intelligence tools to process the mass volumes of data it collects, allowing analysts to sort through tasks and find anomalies faster, a top official said Tuesday.

“I think right now we’re looking at how to use an AI where we could triage so much more,” David Imbordino, the head of the agency’s cybersecurity directorate, said on a panel with officials from the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, D.C.

The agency ingests vast amounts of data every day, including intercepted foreign communications and electronic signals from radar and weapons systems. Imbordino’s directorate, in particular, focuses on both intelligence collection and cyberdefense.

“Volume has always been a problem,” he said, but AI has raised the prospect of getting “to the nuggets” faster than before. In the near future, analysts will likely use AI tools to look at disparate pieces of information and evaluate them “much more quickly” than current methods that can take days or weeks, Imbordino added.

His remarks highlight one of many ways the nation’s cyber and intelligence agencies are putting AI to work and show the omnipresent role such systems will play in day-to-day work in spy offices.

NSA has also taken a leading role in the Trump administration’s AI policy efforts as increasingly powerful tools promise to help defenders find and fix software flaws while giving hackers new ways to break into networks. Late last month, NSA deputy director Tim Kosiba said that the agency wants access to a wide range of models and is engaging heavily with frontier AI companies.

The agency is helping to implement a sweeping June executive order directing national security agencies to create classified tests for determining when AI systems have developed sufficiently advanced hacking capabilities to warrant additional scrutiny. The order calls, in part, for a voluntary arrangement through which developers can give the federal government access to qualifying models for as many as 30 days before releasing them to other trusted partners.

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CIA cyber intelligence helped US forces capture Maduro, deputy director says

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 22:10:00 -0400

CIA cyber operatives provided intelligence that helped U.S. forces locate and capture deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro within four minutes of landing on the ground in January this year, agency Deputy Director Michael Ellis said Tuesday.

Ellis credited the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence with building what he called a “flawless intelligence picture” for Operation Absolute Resolve, the U.S. operation that seized Maduro.

“If you look at [Absolute Resolve], you know that operation was only made possible by a flawless intelligence picture, and that flawless intelligence picture was built on cyber operations enabled by our CCI team,” Ellis said, speaking at the Billington Cybersecurity Conference in Washington, D.C. Without that intelligence, he said, the agency could not have helped U.S. forces locate and apprehend Maduro as quickly as they did.

The remarks offer a more detailed public picture of how CIA cyber prowess helped U.S. forces locate and capture Maduro, expanding on earlier accounts from officials that acknowledged support without explaining the agency’s entire contribution.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine previously acknowledged Cyber Command’s participation in the efforts and credited the CIA, National Security Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency with supporting the Venezuela mission. He described months of intelligence collection on Maduro’s movements and daily routines, but did not directly identify the CIA cyber role Ellis outlined.

During the capture mission, multiple intelligence agencies established crisis action teams to support Special Operations Command and Southern Command. A U.S. official familiar with the operation previously said the NSA provided geolocation support and monitored communications and signals that could reveal troop movements or plans to activate radar.

Ellis discussed the operation in explaining the CIA’s recent decision to elevate CCI to a mission center, a change he said gave their cyber operators greater priority and helped align resources around intelligence needs.

The change has helped the agency “bring cyber operations to bear to solve these tough intelligence problems,” Ellis said. He did not specifically identify the systems targeted or explain how the cyber operations revealed Maduro’s location.

The CIA primarily executes and coordinates human intelligence gathering overseas, often done undercover. Officers recruit and manage foreign assets to clandestinely gather intelligence on areas like economics and terrorism threats. Much of that work has often involved the use of technology, including computer intrusions.

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China is trying to steal US AI models' secrets, intel agencies warn

Alexandra Kelley — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 22:00:00 -0400

China is trying to glean the secrets of U.S. artificial-intelligence models by using simpler AI models to query more advanced American ones, national-security and intelligence agencies warned on Tuesday.

In a joint advisory, the National Security Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation said that Chinese companies DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun and Z.AI used “aggressive, malicious, and targeted distillation” tactics to extract billions of tokens from the exchanges within U.S. frontier AI models since 2024, likely with Chinese government awareness.

Distillation is used to reduce the time and money needed to create a new model.

“China-based AI companies route distillation requests through multiple pathways to gain unauthorized access, consequently violating U.S. AI companies’ terms of use,” the advisory said. “These pathways include native application programming interfaces (APIs), remote cloud providers, and third-party aggregators that automatically obfuscate user metadata to avoid detection.”

It said the distillation campaigns targeted variants of Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and SpaceXAI’s Grok.

“China-based AI companies deliberately distribute operations across multiple providers, platforms, and pathways to avoid single-point detection,” the advisory said. “They also attempt to distill the best capabilities and proprietary features of each U.S. frontier model to train their China-based AI models. This represents systematic extraction of proprietary functionalities and capabilities threatening U.S. technological leadership.”

The agencies recommended three steps for U.S. AI developers: implement comprehensive detection and mitigation, deploy targeted response changes, and establish cross-organization intelligence sharing.

White House Office of Science and Technology Director Michael Kratsios in July said Chinese distillation efforts — specifically ones by Moonshot AI — have sought to steal proprietary functions from Anthropic’s advanced Fable model. Anthropic made the same accusations in February.

Advocacy groups have also requested the White House take stronger action to keep Chinese companies from importing advanced semiconductor chips.

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USAF speed up Reaper replacement after heavy losses in Iran

Thomas Novelly — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:15:30 -0400

The loss of dozens of MQ-9 Reapers to Iranian air defenses is speeding up the U.S. Air Force effort to replace its venerable strike-and-sensor remotely piloted aircraft with something cheaper yet better, service leaders say.

“As we get to the end of the MQ-9 life, there was some early talk of where do we want to go afterwards, and candidly, as a result of some of the losses that we've experienced in combat operations, that discussion sort of got accelerated,” said Lt. Gen. Christopher J. Niemi, the Air Force’s chief modernization officer, at a Thursday roundtable with reporters.

The service has lost at least 45 MQ-9s during Donald Trump’s war on Iran, roughly one-quarter of its fleet, the Washington Post reported in August. It’s not clear just how much that fleet cost, but an Air Force fact sheet puts the unit cost of one MQ-9 variant at $51 million in 2011 dollars—or nearly $82 million today.

Niemi said the service wants to buy at least 180 MQ-9 replacements, dubbed Massed Modular Aircraft, or MMA, and at a much cheaper price point. He said the price of one MMA should be about half of the $20 million Collaborative Combat Aircraft, whose first production contracts were awarded in June, four months ahead of schedule.

But those rough price goals—$20 million for a CCA, $10 million for an MMA—are for bare airframes, not the pricey sensors and systems that enable the drones to do their jobs.

As a service spokesperson put it later, the numbers “do not refer to total missionized costs.”

Niemi said this reflects lessons from past and ongoing wars.

“What we're seeing, in part based on our assessment of the threats around the world, and in part based on our real-world experience, is that you're going to lose more military hardware in future conflicts than you have historically, and that's what's driving us to this sort of fundamental principle that we need things that are easier to produce, cheaper to buy, and that we can afford to lose more of them,” he said. “Right now, we don't have a whole lot of that, so we're sort of trying to move the needle by bringing on things like MMA, so we have more options for the warfighter in the future.”

For that $10 million price tag, the service also wants an increased payload of 2,800 pounds and an unfueled combat radius of 2,300 nautical miles and 8,000 nautical miles for a one-way mission, according to a July Defense Innovation Unit solicitation. General Atomics, the Reaper’s manufacturer, has a souped-up version of the MQ-9, the SkyGuardian, which boasts a larger wingspan, range, and endurance. But top service officials don’t seem as likely to bet on it.

“One of the options that would be considered would be something like an MQ-9B, which is basically an updated and improved MQ-9A, but there are some reasons that we don't think that's the direction that we want to go as an Air Force,” Niemi said. “The main reason is, and and we're seeing this in our experience in the Middle East and as we look at threats around the world, that you need to have a portfolio of assets that's more attritable than the ones we've historically had.”

General Atomics spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley defended the Reaper’s service record and pointed out that the Air Force’s top uniformed leader has praised the aircraft’s use during Operation Epic Fury. He also said the company has worked with the Air Force “to hit cost targets for three decades” and that it would continue with other programs.

“The MQ-9’s unique combination of endurance, payload, range, sensors, weapons, connectivity, adaptability and reliability is precisely what enables mission effects that others struggle to replicate,” Brinkley said. “Today’s Reaper isn’t the same Reaper that rolled out 25 years ago. It’s been enhanced and upgraded many, many times. It’s also been called the MVP of Epic Fury, for good reason. We can debate many things, but at least we all agree that it’s a special aircraft that gets the job done.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee is backing the platform in its version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act by placing limits on how many can be retired and calls for more to be purchased by 2028.

General Atomics has also reportedly teased a new MMA offering with a 10,000-nautical-mile ferry range and claims that it can carry four Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles. Brinkely, while still defending the Reaper, also boosted its next-generation aircraft.

“Our new Wildfire aircraft addresses all of the concerns posed by the MMA solicitation. We can deliver years earlier and maintain the same high quality,” Brinkley said. “You can have everything that makes Reaper special, plus more, at a price that doesn’t break the bank. Reaper is special. Wildfire is special, too.”

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