Under Secretary of War Emil Michael said the Department of War has moved artificial intelligence from a limited internal tool to a widely available platform now used by roughly 1.7 million people across the department.
Speaking during a Breitbart News policy event, Michael described the rollout as part of the department’s AI acceleration strategy, which he said was designed to put AI tools directly into the hands of personnel for business, intelligence and military uses.
From limited access to mass adoption
Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle asked Michael about the department’s AI strategy, which the source says was rolled out in January, and where implementation stands now.
Michael said consumer AI adoption had moved quickly, but the department had lagged behind. According to Michael, fewer than 70,000 people out of a workforce of about 3.5 million had access to AI for basic business functions before the expansion.
“It turns out it just wasn’t accessible,” Michael said, adding that many personnel were using AI in their personal lives but not for work.
Michael said the department began making AI available on desktops and phones for enterprise tasks, intelligence work and warfighting applications. He described the department as “the biggest bureaucracy in the world” and said officials saw broad uses for the technology.
“And in the last six months, eight months, we’ve gotten 1.7 million people using it, which is a big difference in that amount of time,” Michael said.
Officials want AI deeper in intelligence and conflict planning
Michael said the first step was simply giving personnel access and allowing them to begin using AI in their jobs. The next phase, he said, is training people to use it for more specialized national security purposes.
That includes “fighting conflicts” and synthesizing intelligence in real time, Michael said, so the country is safer and U.S. forces are “more successful in battle.”
GenAI.mil becomes the department’s AI gateway
Boyle also asked Michael about GenAI.mil, the department’s platform for accessing artificial intelligence tools.
Michael described GenAI.mil as the central place where Department of War personnel can use AI models inside department systems, including systems that must account for classified information.
He said the platform currently includes Google Gemini and is expected to add Grok from SpaceX and ChatGPT from OpenAI. Michael said users will be able to choose models based on the work they are doing.
“It’s just our way of accessing these frontier AI models,” Michael said.
