You realize that the DoD has a huge amount of normal business work like logistics, project management, people management, benefits management, etc? Right?

Some of the more popular models (NIPRGPT, the various DREN models) are “soft banned” and DoD is in need of a unified solution. MSFT’s GCC HIGH and GovCloud implementations have been slow to materialize. But more to your point - everyone is using LLM’s to pick up the slack from layoffs. Im sitting in meetings and watching my gov customers generate documentation and proposals everyday. Everything the commercial world uses AI for the US gov is doing the same. Cant directly speak to targeting but you can bet your ass there are 100 different offensive projects trying to integrate AI into ISR work and the like.

Yeah, tons. SIGNT / HUMINT analysis. After action report summaries. war gaming to optimize deterrence. human machine teaming. LLM-in-the-loop for warfighters. rapid code gen in field deployments for units to spin up software solutions. The list is endless, imho.

I would guess it’s for mass surveillance. Even just the ability to extract names and entities from audio, video, and text on every piece of public media would be useful.

One AI per person ...

Sycophantic missiles would be desirable

AI explosives with personalities feature in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film)

ChatGPT, do you know where the General left his keys?

You will be surprise how much work at the DoD has nothing to do with weapons.

1. Secretary of Defense feels like bombing some place. Asks aide to write a report on, justification, logistics, and consequences.

2. Aide tells subordinate to write report.

3. Subordinate uses ChatGPT to write the 100-page report. Sends it to aide.

4. Aide uses ChatGPT to summarize report. Sends summary to SecDef.

5. SecDef accidentally posts summary on publicly-accessible social media page, then forwards to President.

6. Bombs go boom.

> “This contract, with a $200 million ceiling, will bring OpenAI’s industry-leading expertise to help the Defense Department identify and prototype how frontier AI can transform its administrative operations, from improving how service members and their families get health care, to streamlining how they look at program and acquisition data, to supporting proactive cyber defense,”

Translated - they'll hand out GPT access to a bunch of service members and administrators. Except the UI will have a big DoD logo and words like "SECURE" and "CLASSIFIED" will be displayed on it a few dozen times.

An on premise deployment ?

Automatically generated, native sounding, propaganda at scale - capable of interacting in real time. This was always the MIC money endgame for LLMs. This is also probably why they are enlisting tech execs from Meta, OpenAI, etc.

Easy PT plans

The epilogue.

Isn’t that the Department of Energy that does that, not DoD?

I don’t understand but that sounds funny

$10B run rate now so they can just plug the gap with $2B in ads!?! Hot DoD singles near you! Would you like me to generate an image of their stealth package ;) ?

My view is that it isn't really entirely about economics anymore at least on a traditional cost/benefit analysis basis. It is seen as a way to disrupt industries. Think of it more like war with arms race dynamics (winner takes all), or consolidation of power to capital over labor. Even if it is a net negative you need to play to stay in the game even if it disrupts your own revenue (e.g. Google) else lose entirely.

I suspect the capital class would throw good money after bad to make AI viable especially since a lot of the costs are fixed in nature (i.e. in training runs, not per query).

That's the rational response.

People are practically irrelevant infants at this point. We are about to repeat the Iraq war, point by point with universal agreement. The same people in charge are recycling the same propaganda, selling the same lies to in many cases quite literally the same people again and it's working, so I don't know why you are expecting anyone to ever "wake up".

On the way to benefit all humanity MS helped Sam back then, and now MS will get to wake up to the real Sam :)

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...

“OpenAI executives have considered accusing Microsoft, the company's major backer, of anticompetitive behavior in their partnership …

OpenAI's effort could involve seeking a federal regulatory review of the terms of its contract with Microsoft for potential violations of antitrust law, as well as a public campaign,…“

200 mil is chump change for them, if prototype turned to be good then good for them but if its not then they are not worry

Not all software is made public and used in workstations, especially not in military

Honestly, why do you think it is dumb?

I think it is pretty well established that LLMs can be a great time saver when used appropriately. Why wouldn’t you want that productivity gain at the government level?

Depending on your political views it may be good if it helps USA keeping its military edge over China and preventing China from invading Taiwan.

You don’t need AI to complain about FedRAMP