Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced a plan that aims to advance Pentagon technology using artificial intelligence.
Joining Elon Musk at the SpaceX facility in Brownsville, Texas, Hegseth revealed his plan to “supercharge innovation at the War Department for the era ahead.”
“Today is about how we supercharge innovation at the War Department for the era ahead. Innovation is happening at a pace we can’t even foresee, and we need the entire enterprise, our enterprise, to embrace the urgency required for this moment. Since the end of the Cold War, the defense industrial base in our country has consolidated. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for new creators of technical innovations to win business in our department,” he said.
“The result is a risk-averse culture that prevents us from providing our warfighters with the best resources that America has to offer. That ends today. Simply put, the United States must win the strategic competition for 21st-century technological supremacy, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, quantum hypersonics and long-range drones. If you talk to Elon Musk long enough, he will tell you how important hypersonics and long-range drones are. And he’s 100% correct. Space capabilities, directed energy and biotechnology are the new areas of global competition,” the secretary continued.
Hegseth says that the “AI acceleration strategy” will help the United States establish itself as a leader of military AI during President Donald Trump’s term.
“This strategy will unleash experimentation, eliminate bureaucratic barriers, focus on investments and demonstrate the execution approach needed to ensure we lead in military AI and that it grows more dominant into the future,” he noted. “In short, we will win this race by becoming an AI-first warfighting force across all domains, from the back offices of the Pentagon to the tactical edge on the front lines.”
He explained that the “catalyst for this acceleration will be seven pace-setting projects focused on mission threads across warfighting, intelligence and enterprise missions, each with a single, accountable leader, aggressive timelines and measurable outcomes.”
“For too long, we organized our ecosystem around stages in silos, labs over here, so-called rapid units over there, commercial outreach in a different building or on another coast altogether, and warfare fighters somewhere at the end, almost an afterthought. The result is duplication, drift and confusion.”
He also announced that GrokAI, X’s artificial intelligence, will join Google’s generative AI in the Pentagon’s network.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok will join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network. pic.twitter.com/zG0gKPAVkf
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 13, 2026
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Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.
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