Pentagon Shifts Focus to 'Autonomous Killer Robots', Moving Away from AI Research

Senior Pentagon Official: New Plan Is to Invest in "Autonomous Killer Robots"

In a startling admission, a senior defense official is laying bare the Pentagon's accelerating interest in autonomous killer robots. Speaking to Defense One, which didn't print the official's name so that they could speak freely, that official said that the Pentagon is looking to move away from funding research on the topic and investing in actual AI-powered weaponry instead. "We're not going to be investing in 'artificial intelligence' because I don't know what that means," the official told the website. "We're going to invest in autonomous killer robots." "This administration cares about weapon systems and business systems," they added, "and not 'technologies.'" That kind of big talk is perfectly fine for policy wonk types, but when it comes to the dollars and cents, another official said that there's an incoming shift that offloads costs onto the private sector. "We're trying to change a business model from 'the government pays $100 million for research and [the company] builds a prototype' to more of 'us paying a couple million dollars and industry pays $98 million and then they build a prototype,'" the second Pentagon official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told Defense One. "As the [Department of Defense] looks ahead toward accelerating the delivery of the most lethal, advanced technologies and capabilities to our warfighters," they continued, "we are examining our current structure to best determine how to align our efforts to achieve maximum effect and efficiency." Translation: the DOD wants to streamline its acquisitions so it can get autonomous killer robots as fast as possible. While the military has quietly commissioned research and some ground testing with these so-called "lethal autonomous weapons" or LAWs, the Pentagon has been slow to fully embrace killer robots because, basically, they freak everyone out. According to the first official, this new acquisition process will be overseen by a new office they characterized as the "commercial-engineering version of [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]" that will siphon workers from other research and development departments within the Pentagon. Though the Trump administration is obviously opening the door for the DOD to do what it wants with killer robots, we have Joe Biden's administration to thank for paving the road to this decision. Back in 2023, the Pentagon updated its then-decade-old rule about LAWs as it raced to embrace artificial intelligence, and set up a chain of custody for the development and deployment that essentially just requires the signatures of increasingly senior officials. Notably, it did so in defiance of the United Nations' years-long push to ban LAWs outright. With our loyalty-obsessed president placing his cronies at the head of every federal agency, there's little doubt that the people hired for those senior roles will also be in lockstep with whatever decisions the higher-ups make. As such, we may well see the US military commissioning and deploying killer robots within the next four years.

Pentagon officials reveal in startling admission the push for 'autonomous killer robots'

TL;DR: Two Pentagon officials disclosed a shift from investing in AI to focusing on developing autonomous killer robots. The Pentagon is moving toward investing in autonomous killer robots and less in artificial intelligence, according to a senior Pentagon official who spoke to Defense One under anonymity. In a recent interview, the Pentagon official revealed the possibility of a shake-up of internal offices that will involve combining parts of several innovation-fostering offices to form a new office that focuses solely on purchasing cutting-edge products from companies. Notably, the official said the Pentagon is looking to spend less on research and more on tangible arms and gear, such as weapons systems and business systems. Additionally, an unnamed Pentagon official said there's currently work being done to shift the "business model" of the Pentagon from the government paying, for example, $100 million for the research and a company building a prototype to the Pentagon paying $2 million less and the company building the prototype. Essentially, the Pentagon wants to shift the research and development costs onto the private sector, or in this case, defense contractors. "This [Trump] administration cares about weapon systems and business systems and not 'technologies,'" the official said. "We're not going to be investing in 'artificial intelligence' because I don't know what that means. We're going to invest in autonomous killer robots."