In brief
- GenAI.mil goes live with Gemini for Government as the Pentagon expands AI across the force.
- Google’s system gives 3 million personnel secure, IL5-level generative tools for unclassified work.
- The launch follows rising defense investment, new AI testing rules, and plans for autonomous systems.
The U.S. War Department on Tuesday launched GenAI.mil, a new platform that brings Google’s Gemini for Government into U.S. military use for the first time.
The move came as the Pentagon accelerated plans to deploy AI across its military, sharpening the U.S. race with China for next-generation defense technology.
The launch followed the administration’s July AI Action Plan, which directed federal agencies to accelerate the adoption of advanced AI systems.
Officials said AI tools were already installed on desktops inside the Pentagon and at military installations worldwide, forming the base for what the department called an “AI-first” workforce.
“The future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled AI,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in a video statement on X. “As technologies advance, so do our adversaries. But here at the War Department, we are not sitting idly by.”
By receiving IL5 authorization, which allows Gemini to handle sensitive but unclassified Defense Department data, Google said the deployment will give more than 3 million civilian and military personnel access to the same advanced AI tools businesses use to streamline administrative work and improve productivity.
“This is a significant step in accelerating AI adoption across the public sector–all hosted within Google’s secure and reliable systems,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement.
The U.S. military has invested heavily in applying artificial intelligence to future battlefields, including a 2025 budget request of $1.8 billion for AI and machine-learning projects, along with partnerships that give defense agencies faster access to commercial frontier models.
The Department of War did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment, and Google declined to elaborate beyond public statements.
The DOW’s use of Gemini comes at a time when AI companies, including Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, and Google, have shifted positions on allowing the military to use their AI models.
In February, Google removed language from its ‘AI at Google’ principles that said Gemini would not be deployed to pursue “Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.”
Watchdog groups warn that the federal government is adopting AI too quickly. On Monday, the Center for Democracy and Technology said agencies are deploying general-purpose models without enough testing or oversight, risking errors, wasted spending, and public harm.
“By hastily deploying AI tools at-scale without sufficient testing, oversight, and support, the Trump Administration not only risks creating significant confusion for federal agencies, but potentially opens the floodgates to a host of failed AI projects that may undermine agency goals, waste taxpayer dollars, harm the public, and further cement vendor lock-in,” Senior Policy Analyst Quinn Anex-Ries wrote.
Google said that military data won’t be used to train its public models and that the system is meant to streamline tasks like onboarding, contracting, and policy analysis, with room to add more models as the department expands its AI use.
“Building on the great work of Under Secretary Emil Michael and his team, we will continue to aggressively field the world’s best technology to make our fighting force more lethal than ever before, and all of it is American-made,” Hegseth said. “The possibilities with AI are endless.”
Generally Intelligent Newsletter
A weekly AI journey narrated by Gen, a generative AI model.
