The Pentagon announced agreements with seven leading tech companies, including Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI, SpaceX, and NVIDIA-backed startup Reflection, to deploy their AI on both Impact Level 6 (IL6) secret networks and the most highly classified IL7 systems. The announcement frames the move as accelerating the military's transformation toward an "AI-first fighting force" with improved situational awareness and decision-making.

The approvals extend Secretary Hegseth's push to integrate commercial AI into defense operations, building on the December rollout of the unclassified GenAI.mil platform available to all Pentagon personnel. The announcement did not specify when the AI models would be available on classified networks or how much, if anything, the companies are being paid.

Anthropic is conspicuously absent from the list, despite its Claude AI having previously been used on classified networks through Palantir's Maven Smart System. The Trump administration has attempted to ban Anthropic from government work this year, resulting in active litigation, though the NSA is separately reported to be using Anthropic's not-yet-public Mythos model for its cyber warfare capabilities.

James Baker, who directed the Defense Department's Office of Net Assessment (ONA), often called the "Pentagon's think tank," from 2015 to 2025, has joined Anthropic as "strategist-in-residence" to lead analysis of how AI is reshaping U.S. institutions and strategic competition with China. The Trump administration shuttered ONA in 2025 before restoring a reduced version of it later that year.

Baker characterized the challenge of adapting to AI as a multi-decade "civilizational" problem, citing particular concern about recursive self-improvement in AI systems. He described the stakes as the "long-term viability of present institutions in war and in peace" and said the U.S. has a "tight time window to adapt."

The hire arrives as Anthropic navigates a contentious relationship with the Defense Department, having faced an attempted ban from government contracts earlier this year. Meanwhile, senators including Elissa Slotkin have argued the Pentagon should be using Anthropic's Mythos model to identify cybersecurity gaps, underscoring the company's continued strategic relevance despite its exclusion from Thursday's classified AI approvals.

The White House has nominated Lt. Gen. Doug Schiess, currently the Space Force's deputy chief of operations, to succeed Gen. Chance Saltzman as the third-ever Chief of Space Operations. Schiess brings both bureaucratic experience managing the service's policy and operational experience from his prior role leading Space Forces-Space and the Combined Joint Space Force Component at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.

Schiess inherits a significantly larger organization than his predecessor faced. Under Saltzman, the Space Force's annual appropriation grew from $17.4 billion in FY22 to a $71.2 billion FY27 budget request, with end strength proposed to rise from roughly 10,657 active Guardians today to 13,200.

Saltzman's tenure established "space superiority" as a central joint force requirement, championed both offensive and defensive orbital operations, and published the Space Force's first Space Warfighting Framework last April. Schiess will inherit that doctrinal foundation, along with the substantial resources now lined up to fund it.

The U.S. Navy awarded a contract worth up to $99.7 million to San Francisco-based AI company Domino Data Lab to speed up mine detection in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian mines continue to threaten one of the world's most critical oil shipping lanes following Operation Epic Fury. Even with a fragile ceasefire in place, clearing the strait could take months.

The contract expands Domino's role in Project AMMO (Accelerated Machine Learning for Maritime Operations), a Navy program to make underwater mine detection faster, more accurate, and less dependent on human analysts. Domino's platform integrates data from multiple sensor types and allows rapid updates to the AI models that guide the Navy's unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). Before the company's involvement, retraining those models to recognize a new mine type could take up to six months; Domino says it has reduced that cycle to days.

The speed advantage is operationally direct: Domino's chief operating officer said AI models trained on Russian Baltic Sea mines, for example, could be adapted to detect Iranian Strait of Hormuz mine variants within a week under the new system, rather than a year.

Defense Secretary Hegseth told the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) that only $26 billion of the approximately $152 billion in defense reconciliation funding has been placed on contract, 10 months after Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill. SASC Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker attributed the delayed start to the Office of Management and Budget's late transfer of spending authority to the Pentagon.

Senators from both parties pushed back on the administration's strategy of routing priorities such as Golden Dome, Arleigh Burke destroyers, and munitions stockpiles through reconciliation rather than the standard appropriations process, with Sen. Angus King calling that portion of the defense budget "essentially a slush fund" with limited congressional oversight.

The Pentagon is separately weighing a supplemental spending request to cover the approximately $25 billion cost of the war in Iran, with the comptroller noting that most of that figure reflects munitions expended and that military construction costs remain difficult to estimate until the U.S. determines its future basing posture in the Middle East.

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