The Pentagon’s AI war machine
April 20, 2026
48 min
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758 of 775
April 20, 2026
The Pentagon’s AI war machine
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The Pentagon’s AI war machine
Summary
The Pentagon has spent years building AI tools to help identify targets, speed up battlefield decisions, and make war more “efficient.” What started as an effort to analyze drone footage has grown into something bigger and much more unsettling.
Sean talks with Bloomberg’s Katrina Manson about Project Maven, the Defense Department’s long-running push to bring AI into warfighting. They discuss how these systems actually work, what “human in the loop” really means, why autonomy is no longer some far-off sci-fi scenario, and what happens when the speed and scale of machine decision-making collide with the fog of war.
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling)
Guest: Katrina Manson (@KatrinaManson)
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