Pentagon creates new digital and artificial intelligence office

The U.S. Defense Department is creating a new position to oversee its digital and artificial intelligence activities, with the hope the office will be able to drive faster progress in those areas and meet threats posed by China, according to a senior defense official. The new chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, or CDAO, will directly report to the deputy defense secretary and oversee the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the Defense Digital Service and the DoD's chief data officer, according to a memo released Dec. 8. Today, those offices directly report to the deputy defense secretary, something the senior defense official said has led to disjointedness. "We've created the CDO, the JAIC and DDS each operating independently and as if the other ones don't exist," said the officer, who briefed media Dec. 8 on the condition of anonymity. "That causes two kinds of inefficiencies. One, it means we don't have the kind of integration across their lines of effort that we could really maximize the impact of the things that any one organization is doing. Two, it means we don't take advantage of when there are overlaps in what they're doing, or underlaps in what they are doing to drive the right kind of prioritization in these spaces."