Emil Michael: Iran, Anthropic and the Future of AI at the Pentagon
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We're faced with the biggest military buildup in history. We're trending toward artificial general intelligence, a substrate, a layer, something that'll touch everything. But we're way behind in AI at the department.
You are a CTO for the Department of War. How do you take stock of where those priorities are?
When I took the role, we had 14 critical priority areas. We got them down to six, and they were the places where I thought we had the greatest opportunity for change and for growth and impact.
There has been an incredibly public discussion about commercial AI models being used in the Pentagon. What has changed in this latest discussion?
I had a holy cow moment because there were things well beyond what you've been hearing in the press in the last couple of weeks.
When Emile Michael was confirmed as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, he took inventory. What he found was a department with 14 critical technology priorities, most unchanged for nearly a decade, written in a language so vague, no one could act on them. He cut the list to six. Applied AI went to the top. Within ninety days, 1,200,000 of the department's 3,000,000 personnel had used some form of AI. When he started, that number was 80,000. The more urgent problem was what he found inside existing AI models baked into the most sensitive commands in the US military under ter
All right. Thank you for being with us. I know every week is very busy for you, but it feels like this past week has probably been the most publicly busy for you. So thanks for joining us.
My pleasure. Good to be here.
Look, we're going to talk about anthropic AI and defense, but I think we want to talk first a little bit about you, how you got into this seat. This is not your first tour of duty in government. You have decided to be a public servant before and for a long time. For half this room that comes from the technology side, they know you as an incredibly accomplished Silicon Valley executive, highly sought after, very successful. Let's start with what pulled you into public service? How did it start? Why do it? And why take on this role now?
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