Brian Miller
There is a moment in almost every AI adoption effort where the room gives itself away. A leader asks, “What platform should we buy?” Someone answers with a vendor name. Another person says, “We need an enterprise foundation.” A slide appears with the phrase “AI transformation.” Heads nod. A contract strategy starts to form.
Near the end of the meeting, someone asks the question that should have been first: “What problems are we actually trying to solve?” By then, the decision energy has moved. The capability is already being acquired. The use cases will be figured out later.
This is not a villainous plot. It is a reflex, the capabilities-first acquisition reflex. It is the single biggest obstacle to AI adoption in defense, and why top-down urgency doesn’t reliably translate into bottom-up adoption. The timing matters. Secretary Hegseth recently told the Department of War to become AI-first, push capabilities into operators’ hands in days, and measure success by usage and mission impact, not PowerPoint. That kind of demand signal raises the pressure, but it doesn’t remove the capabilities-first reflex that turns pressure into misguided procurement.
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