The 2023 NDAA Reflects DOD’s Maturation in Unleashing AI, Experts Say

Authorizing almost $858 billion in spending, the latest National Defense Authorization Act spans 4,408 pages and, in a keyword search, makes at least 135 explicit references to AI. Experts say, broadly, those inclusions reflect the government’s position in a complex, still-unfolding scheme to responsibly and quickly adopt and operationalize the technology.

“Looking through the legislation, I read many times ‘accelerate the adoption,’” Alexandra Seymour, a former Defense Department official now serving as an associate fellow for the Center for New American Security’s Technology and National Security Program, told DefenseScoop. In her view, NDAAs of the recent past largely focused on and included “a lot more about the ethical considerations, the workforce challenges, some of the just broader structuring and how the U.S. government should approach artificial intelligence across the board.”

But Seymour said this 2023 bill seems to place a sharper concentration on “bringing things together and focusing on how we can actually start using the technology that we’ve invested in.”

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