Caleb Withers, Jay Kim and Ethan Chiu
The pace of progress in frontier artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities shows no sign of slowing.1 Frontier models offer transformative potential for national security—from analyzing intelligence data at unprecedented speed and scale to supporting cyber operations and military planning.2 The United States is not alone in recognizing this potential. Beijing views AI as central to modern conflict and as an opportunity to disrupt U.S. military superiority; as Chinese large language models (LLMs) have grown increasingly capable, the People’s Liberation Army has been looking to integrate them across its command and intelligence infrastructure.3
Recent U.S. policy reflects an appropriate urgency. The Department of Defense’s AI Acceleration Strategy, released in January 2026, targets an “‘AI-first’ warfighting force across all components,” accepting that “the risks of not moving fast enough outweigh the risks of imperfect alignment.”4 But even with risk tolerance befitting this urgency, the importance of AI alignment—ensuring that AI systems pursue intended objectives—will only grow.5 Indeed, the confrontation in early 2026 between the department and Anthropic stemmed in part from divergent views about how to address model reliability and alignment challenges in the military domain.6
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