Four Things the Pentagon Needs to Do to Advance Its AI The view from NSCAI’s executive director. “We can still defend America and our allies without widespread AI adoption today,” wrote the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in its recent report, “but in the future, we will almost certainly lose without it.” To this end, there are four areas we need to move faster on. First, the Pentagon needs to get its technical backbone in place. The DoD must have a modern digital infrastructure that supports ubiquitous development and delivery of AI capabilities department-wide, from headquarters to the front lines. This infrastructure should function as a common platform that provides networked, on-demand access to scalable storage and compute, enables the sharing of data, software, and capabilities through hardened application programming interfaces with proper access controls, and equips researchers and developers with the tools and data models they need to drive new AI capabilities. NSCAI calls for a federated approach to achieve this vision by knitting together ongoing efforts across the Department, such as the JAIC’s Joint Common Foundation and the Air Force's Platform One, into an extensible common digital fabric that supports development, production, and integration of AI solutions.