The Pentagon Is Going All-In on AI. Humans Must Remain in Command.

When I graduated from West Point in 1973, the Army was still largely an analog profession. We navigated with map and compass, estimated enemy strength through reconnaissance and human judgment, and prepared operations orders on paper. If the intelligence proved wrong or the plan failed, everyone knew who bore responsibility. The commander did.

More than half a century later, nearly everything surrounding that commander has changed. Today’s battlespace is saturated with sensors, satellites, drones, cyber systems, and digital networks. Artificial intelligence now reaches past the weapons commanders employ into how they read the battlefield, build plans, and make decisions.

The Pentagon’s January 2026 Artificial Intelligence Strategy directs the department to become an “AI-first” warfighting force “from front to back.” Its flagship projects include AI agents for battle management and decision support “from campaign planning to kill chain execution.” The strategy predicts that AI-enabled warfare “will re-define the character of military affairs over the next decade.”

More than 100,000 personnel now use the Maven Smart System, an AI platform, up from about 50,000 in January, according to James Mazol, deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. Maven fuses disparate systems, data streams and intelligence into a single operational picture and sharply shortens the time needed to find and strike targets. During the first 24 hours of the war with Iran, U.S. forces used it to help strike more than 1,000 targets, roughly 10 times what was possible before Maven.

Generative AI reaches even further. In June, Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael reported that 1.5 million personnel were using GenAI.mil, the department’s generative-AI platform. This month, a new department instruction took effect governing AI-assisted software development as the Pentagon adapts to what officials call “software-defined warfare.”

These developments promise real advantages. Every commander wants better intelligence. AI can sift more information than any human staff could absorb and spot patterns people miss, all at extraordinary speed. That speed also compresses the traditional cycle of intelligence, planning, decision, and action on which military command has long depended.

As a retired Army infantry officer and former Pentagon strategist, I understand the attraction. America should exploit technology that makes our forces more effective and better informed.

Yet the Pentagon’s embrace of AI raises a question as important as whether the technology works: When machines shape what commanders know, what options they consider and how quickly they must decide, how do we ensure the commander remains truly in command? That question goes to the heart of the profession of arms.

Throughout my military career, intelligence officers, operations officers, logisticians, and other specialists advised commanders. Their expertise was indispensable, but their recommendations did not relieve commanders of responsibility. Advice informed judgment; it did not replace it. Artificial intelligence belongs in the same subordinate position.

The real danger lies in gradual dependence. As AI systems prove more capable and reliable, leaders will trust them more. Confidence can become dependence, and dependence can become deference. A commander may remain formally responsible while accepting an AI-generated picture of reality he no longer bothers to challenge.

The Pentagon recognized this problem before the current AI boom. In February 2020, the department adopted ethical principles requiring its personnel to “exercise appropriate levels of judgment and care while remaining responsible for the development, deployment and use of AI capabilities.” The Defense Innovation Board study behind those principles drew an essential distinction: AI systems are tools with neither legal nor moral agency. That principle grows weightier as the technology improves.

AI does not abolish the fog of war. An algorithm may identify a pattern without understanding motive. A model may calculate probabilities without possessing wisdom, and neither bears responsibility for the consequences. Speed can improve military effectiveness, but speed cannot transform uncertain information into truth.

Here the Christian Just War tradition speaks directly. For centuries, it has required leaders to ask whether force serves a just cause and legitimate purposes, and whether its use is necessary and proportionate. AI can assist in analyzing those questions. It cannot bear moral responsibility for answering them. Nor can an algorithm judge when tactical advantage carries unacceptable strategic or moral risk, a grave matter when escalation could draw in nuclear powers.

For Christians, the distinction runs deeper. Scripture declares, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27, ESV). Machines bear no such image. However sophisticated AI becomes, it possesses no soul, conscience, or moral agency. It cannot accept guilt or stand accountable before God for a decision that takes human life. That burden remains human.

Solomon offered fitting counsel for an age of machine-generated recommendations: “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17, ESV). A machine states its case first, instantly and backed by oceans of data. The commander must examine it before acting.

That duty extends beyond the commander. Congress must do more than fund the military’s AI competition with China. It must also ensure the Pentagon can verify that these systems work as intended and remain under human control.

In June, the Government Accountability Office reported that staffing reductions diminished the Pentagon’s independent operational-testing capacity. Remaining personnel were assigned more programs than they could handle or programs outside their expertise. They told GAO that the resulting loss of expertise increases the risk of weapons reaching warfighters with undocumented operational shortfalls.

GAO found another weakness specific to AI. Reviewing AI purchases at four agencies, including Defense, investigators found that none required officials to systematically collect lessons learned. The Defense Department agreed to fix that gap.

Lawmakers should use those findings to demand that consequential AI recommendations remain traceable and challengeable, that commanders understand the uncertainties behind them, and that military doctrine preserve genuine human judgment even as decision times shrink.

The Pentagon already requires autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems to be designed so commanders and operators can exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force. The same directive requires realistic testing and compliance with the law of war. But AI now reaches beyond weapons into planning, intelligence, and command, where the directive does not apply. Doctrine must spell out which judgments belong to humans alone, or technology will quietly set practice before commanders and lawmakers decide its limits.

The Army I entered more than 50 years ago bears little technological resemblance to the force taking shape today. Yet technology has not changed the fundamental burden of command.

America should lead in military AI. Our decisive advantage, however, will rest less on algorithms than on leaders willing to question the machine, exercise moral judgment, and accept responsibility for what follows.

The Pentagon is rapidly learning how to put artificial intelligence into war. It must be equally determined never to take human responsibility out of it.

AUTHOR

Robert Maginnis

Robert Maginnis is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, senior fellow for National Security at Family Research Council, and the author of 15 books. His latest, “The Final Algorithm,” was released in July 2026.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

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