military – CGW's Blog

Is the world safer with an AI-powered American military?

Does technology advanced by the American military make the world a better place? Or a worse one?

The last century has made those complicated questions. It’s difficult to interpret American involvement in the 20th century’s first two world wars as resulting in anything but a freer, safer, happier world. The track record has been murkier since.

The ascendant uses of artificial intelligence has awakened the debate. Whether the “neo-prime” military contractors like Palantir give the world’s most powerful democracy an edge to maintain that freer world, or fuels a morally vacant oligarchy, is a hot debate in American culture. At the heart is the US-China rivalry. It’s important then to understand the origins of the American military embracing AI.

That’s the focus of British journalist Katrina Manson’s 2026 book Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare.

She tells of the tale of Drew Cukor, who more than almost anyone dragged a hardware-focused Pentagon toward the data-science and autonomy that was sprouting out of Silicon Valley. When he began his leadership before 9/11, intelligence was viewed to military leaders as secondary, “like a flower in the room.” That has changed.

Below I share my notes for future use.

Would the coup d’etat of the future originate with an IT leader rather than a military one?

Governing is messy, so there has been no shortage of attempts by one party to overthrow the other through history. Among the most recent, high-profile coups came in Egypt where, as is almost always the case, the military led the overthrow — at some level.

This summer, as the Egyptian revolution has taken place, government leaders from China and the United States held their first talks on cybersecurity, spurred by reports that the second largest economy was snooping on the first.

It got me thinking: when will be the first coup led by a technology leader? There’s no doubt that military force will become increasingly controlled by technology. I wonder if that work will ever grow outside of a military or, if not, will there come a time when a military-based technology leader leverages control over systems, security and other digital processes using that power to take over control. It can’t be too far removed.

What a news story on a boy who wore the most underwear means

I can only pray that this video isn’t the last remnant of our culture thousands of years from now.

A 1:32 news piece on a 10-year-old boy who puts on 215 pairs of underwear to break a world record. Two shots of parents expressing their praise and then an afterthought at the end: a paralyzed marine.