“The military buildup in China is the biggest military buildup in world history. And so, there is a real urgency on our side to ensure that we are ahead, but we stay ahead.” This stark assessment by Emil Michael, the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, set the tone for a discussion that centered on the rapid, necessary transformation of the U.S. Department of War (DoW) into a technology-first organization. Speaking with hosts Sarah Guo and Elad Gil on the No Priors podcast, Michael, a veteran of Silicon Valley’s high-velocity culture, outlined the institutional and technological shifts underway, focusing heavily on leveraging commercial AI to maintain a strategic edge over global adversaries.
Michael’s current role, which includes oversight of DARPA, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), and the newly formed Chief AI Office (CAIO), reflects a deliberate move by the DoW to unify and prioritize technological development, separating research and engineering from traditional acquisition and logistics. This consolidation is crucial, especially given the staggering scale of the DoW’s technological investment, which totals over $150 billion annually. The core mandate is clear: inject speed and commercial innovation into a system historically burdened by bureaucratic inertia, ensuring that cutting-edge capabilities are developed and deployed rapidly.
A central element of this push is the rollout of GenAI.mil, an internal AI platform powered by Google’s Gemini and Grok. Michael noted that the system, which operates on secured, classified, and unclassified networks, achieved over one million unique users within its first 30 days. This swift adoption underscores the inherent demand for modern tools within the DoW workforce. Michael emphasized that the goal is not to build foundational models—leaving that capital-intensive work to the private sector—but to rapidly adapt and apply existing commercial models to the DoW’s unique use cases. This includes enhancing enterprise efficiencies, fusing disparate intelligence streams for better analysis, and improving warfighting simulations and planning.
The conversation quickly shifted to the specific “critical technology areas” the DoW is focusing on, which Michael has streamlined from 14 down to six actionable priorities. Beyond applied AI, two hardware-centric priorities stood out: scaled hypersonics and scaled directed energy. These areas represent the new frontier of warfare where the U.S. must innovate quickly. Hypersonic missiles, capable of traveling at Mach 5 or faster, present a unique and immediate threat. The strategy is to shift production toward systems that are "much more producible, much less exquisite, much cheaper, more mass," a philosophy also being applied to directed energy solutions like high-powered microwaves and lasers, which offer a cost-effective countermeasure against the proliferation of autonomous drones.
This strategic shift toward autonomous, distributed systems—often referred to as "robots as the new frontline"—is directly informed by observations from conflicts like the Russia-Ukraine war. Michael projected that within 5 to 10 years, 20 to 30 percent of the defense budget could be allocated to these autonomous systems, which, despite representing a massive investment, offer greater firepower and reduced human casualty risk compared to legacy platforms like aircraft carriers. This pivot requires not just technological development but a fundamental change in acquisition philosophy, moving away from slow, prescriptive 300-page Request for Proposal (RFP) documents toward a problem-solving approach. The DoW is now asking companies, "Here's our problem. We're trying to achieve this. Why don't you come back to us with a solution?"
Michael’s experience transitioning from the high-speed environment of Uber to the deliberate pace of the Pentagon was highlighted as a key factor in driving this change. He stressed the importance of attracting "fixer-builder" talent from the private sector, instituting programs like the U.S. Tech Force to bring in young engineers and entrepreneurs for two-year stints. The message to the startup community is unequivocal: the DoW is "more open for business than ever before." This includes utilizing mechanisms like the Office of Strategic Capital, which holds $200 billion in lending authority, to inject capital into companies operating in critical, high-fragility supply chain areas—such as rare earth minerals—to reduce dependency on foreign adversaries. This capital injection is designed to bridge the "valley of death" between prototype development and scaled production, a historically difficult hurdle for defense tech startups. The goal is to cultivate a defense industrial base that is robust, competitive, and domestically self-sufficient, ensuring that the necessary technologies are available at scale and speed.
