More than 1 million unique users across the Pentagon are integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into their daily workflows, and the department plans to launch several new AI models “very, very soon,” a senior defense official said on Thursday.
Jacob Glassman, assistant secretary of war for science and technology foundations said that the Department of Defense (DOD) – rebranded the Department of War by the Trump administration – is moving rapidly to embed generative AI into routine operations as its workforce and mission demands evolve. He spoke at the GovCIO Media and Research Defense IT Summit in Arlington, Va.
“It’s now a part of the workflow of the workforce,” Glassman said of generative AI. “We’re already changing the culture, and we have not even remotely started really.”
“I think you’re just going to see [AI workflow integration] accelerate,” he added.
Glassman said that new AI models will be rolled out to the workforce in the near term, followed by plans to integrate agentic AI capabilities.
The DOD is preparing to roll out several new AI models to the workforce very soon, Glassman said, and after that the department plans to integrate agentic AI.
Glassman pointed to an AI-driven “patent holiday” as an early operational win tied to the department’s broader push to streamline its innovation ecosystem and prioritize critical technology areas.
Using commercial analytics tools, Glassman said that a small team identified the most commercially promising patents from thousands sitting dormant in government labs.
“So we did that patent holiday, I believe, five weeks ago. And again, these are things that were stuck in labs essentially, the industry, entrepreneurs, venture, private equity, have no idea about a lot of this stuff,” Glassman explained.
Through the patent holiday, the DOD offered no-fee commercial evaluation licenses (CEL) for a curated selection of patents A CEL is a two-year agreement that allows a licensee to assess the technical, market, and business potential of a patent, along with any scale-up challenges.?
“We already have two license periods, already within the last five weeks. We have about another 16 that are in active negotiation,” Glassman added.
Glassman did not provide specific timelines for the new AI model rollouts or details or how the forthcoming tools will be developed.