The Case for Caution: Why the U.S. Military Shouldn’t Organize Around AI… Yet

The U.S. military should exercise caution before fundamentally reorganizing its structure and doctrine around artificial intelligence. History provides cautionary tales, such as the Pentomic Army of the 1950s and the Future Combat Systems of the 2000s, where the Pentagon made costly changes based on technologies that failed to live up to their hype. While AI has revolutionary potential, its current models exhibit brittleness and lack the proven reliability needed for wartime conditions. A revolutionary redesign requires a level of confidence that does not yet exist among defense leaders. The current "slow and steady" approach, while perhaps born of bureaucracy, wisely saves the Pentagon from its own enthusiasm for a technological future that is not yet a reality.