Anchoring Intelligence: Ground Truth in an Age of Synthetic Deception

The U.S. military's AI-enabled platforms are increasingly focused on kinetic targeting while neglecting the human terrain where conflicts occur. This vulnerability is being exploited by adversaries like China, who use agentic AI to flood the digital information environment with sophisticated synthetic content and deception at an unprecedented scale. To counter this, a dual approach is necessary: deploying U.S. AI to detect and counter these attacks, and more critically, anchoring intelligence in human-sourced "ground truth." Without a reliable understanding of the real-world context, AI-driven military operations risk becoming tactically impressive but strategically disastrous.