A task force focused on soldier lethality is adding new initiatives to its portfolio, including a lighter Javelin missile, identifying how artificial intelligence can help squads, and looking into robot dogs as infantry battle buddies. The Close Combat Lethality Task Force, established in 2018 under then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, pushed for the Next Generation Squad Weapon, a 6.8mm intermediate-caliber replacement for the M4 for close combat troops, which was selected this year and begins fielding to troops in 2023. It also lobbied for additional funding and prioritization for the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, a $22 billion program for a mixed-reality goggle aimed to put fighter pilot situational awareness tools in the view of squad-level soldiers. On the human side, the task force supported efforts to revitalize infantry and close-combat training, increase unit cohesion by keeping infantry troops in the field longer, and reduce training tasks not related to combat. But the task force has mostly remained in the shadows and sought a home since Mattis left office in 2019.

Amazon wants Donald Trump to submit to questioning over the tech company's losing bid for a $10bn military contract. The Pentagon awarded the cloud computing project to Microsoft in October. Amazon later sued, arguing that Trump's interference and bias against the company harmed Amazon's chances. Amazon was considered an early frontrunner for a project that Pentagon officials have described as critical to advancing the US military's technological advantage over adversaries. The project, known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or Jedi, will store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the US military to improve communications with soldiers on the battlefield and use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities.

The Chinese have a very public, very-deep, extremely well-funded commitment to AI. Air Force General VeraLinn Jamieson says it plainly: "We estimate the total spending on artificial intelligence systems in China in 2017 was $12 billion. We also estimate that it will grow to at least $70 billion by 2020." According to the Obama White House Report in 2016, China publishes more journal articles on deep learning than the US and has increased its number of AI patents by 200%. China is determined to be the world leader in AI by 2030.

The Chinese have a very public, very-deep, extremely well-funded commitment to AI. Air Force General VeraLinn Jamieson says it plainly: "We estimate the total spending on artificial intelligence systems in China in 2017 was $12 billion. We also estimate that it will grow to at least $70 billion by 2020." According to the Obama White House Report in 2016, China publishes more journal articles on deep learning than the US and has increased its number of AI patents by 200%. China is determined to be the world leader in AI by 2030.

One day in 1992, Lawrence Mattis opened up his mail to find an unsolicited screenplay from two unknown writers. It was a dark, nasty, almost defiantly uncommercial tale of cannibalism and class warfare--the type of story that few execs in Hollywood would want to tell. Yet it was exactly the kind of movie Mattis was looking for. Only a few years earlier, Mattis, in his late twenties, had abandoned a promising legal career to start a talent company, Circle of Confusion, with the aim of discovering new writers to represent. He'd set up shop in New York City, despite being told repeatedly that his best hope for finding talent was to be in Los Angeles. Before that strange script showed up, Mattis was starting to wonder if those naysayers had been right. "I'd only sold a few options that paid about five hundred dollars each," Mattis says. "I was starting to think about going back to law. Then I get this letter from these two kids, saying'Could you please read our script?'" The screenplay, titled Carnivore, was a horror tale set in a soup kitchen, where the bodies of the rich are used to feed the poor. "It was funny, it was visceral, and it made it clear that whoever wrote it really knew movies," Mattis says. Its writers were Lilly and Lana Wachowski, two self-described "schmoes from Chicago" who, in later years, would be referred to by many colleagues and admirers simply as "the Wachowskis." By the time they contacted Mattis, the Wachowskis had been collaborating for years, having spent their childhood creating radio plays, comic books, and their own role-playing game. They'd been raised in a middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side by their mother, a nurse and artist, and their father, a businessman. Growing up, their parents had encouraged them to discover art, especially film.

As artificial intelligence mature, the Defense Department wants to make sure it is deploying the technology effectively and ethically. To ensure this, the department is looking to one of its public liaisons: the Defense Innovation Board. During its quarterly public meeting on Oct. 10, the advisory board--made of up representatives from the defense industry and academia that works directly with the Defense Department--discussed the latest advances in AI and moved to formalize a review of how the military can and should use the technology. The work began in July when Defense Secretary James Mattis asked the board to begin work on a set of AI principles the department can follow as it develops this nascent technology and begins to deploy it in the Pentagon and on the battlefield. "It is abundantly clear from the discussions thus far, the department's experts on AI already have a deep appreciation, even a healthy skepticism for the limitations of AI, as well as its promise," said Joshua Marcuse, the board's executive director and adviser to the Defense Department's chief management officer, reading what would become the board's official description of its review work.

It's the chilling plot line to every science fiction movie about robots in the future: Once they start thinking for themselves, humanity is doomed. Think of the HAL 9000 in "2001: A Space Odyssey," or the replicants in "Blade Runner," or the hosts in "Westworld." These days the Pentagon is doing a lot of thinking about the nascent scientific field of artificial intelligence, also known as "machine learning," developing computer algorithms that will allow cars to drive themselves, robots to perform surgery, and even weapons to kill autonomously. The race to master artificial intelligence is the No. 1 priority of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the tiny organization with just over 200 workers that was instrumental in developing stealth technology, high precision weapons, and the Internet. "In reality, over about the last 50 years, DARPA and its research partners have led the way to establishing the field of artificial intelligence. We are not new to this game," said DARPA Director Steven Walker at the agency's 60th anniversary symposium in September.

The US is planning to create The Space Force, a new branch of the US military, by 2020, Vice President Mike Pence announced on Thursday. It would become the US military's sixth branch, following the Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corps. "America will always seek peace in space, as on the Earth. But history proves that peace only comes through strength, and in the realm of outer space, the United States Space Force will be that strength in the years ahead," Pence said in an address to the Pentagon. As we continue to carry American leadership in space, so also will we carry America's commitment to freedom into this new frontier.

If policymaking is never easy, and military policymaking is very difficult, it stands to reason that space military policymaking is basically impossible. Yet today, in a speech at the Pentagon, Vice President Mike Pence announced the formation of a sixth branch of the US armed services: a SPACE FORCE! But can that really happen? Well, let's proceed with the go/no-go. "The time has come to establish the United States Space Force," Pence said in his speech, asking for $8 billion to build out the idea.

LONDON – For many U.S. allies, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis is the last of the Trump administration's so-called grown-ups in the room. So at Asia's main annual security forum he got a warm reception for his firm defense of the rules-based order the U.S. helped to build after World War II. Increasingly, though, Mattis' reassurance is not enough. The U.S. -- as much as China -- is seen as a threat to that system, undermining the very solutions the retired Marine Corps general offered to counter Beijing's rule breaking in the South China Sea. On Sunday, tiny Singapore, one of the United States' most like-minded partners in the region, drew a direct equivalence between the U.S. and China.