By now, we've all seen the unsettling videos of artificial intelligence being
used to impersonate celebrities and politicians.
But now the Pentagon is using AI to grapple with the ever growing
defense budget and the restrictions that come along with it.
According to a new Intercept report by Ken Klippenstein,
thanks to its bloat and political rambling wrangling,
the annual Department of Defense budget legislation includes hundreds
of revisions and limitations telling the Pentagon what it can and cannot do.
To make sense of all those provisions,
the Pentagon created an AI program, codenamed GAMECHANGER.
So the Defense Intelligence Agency claims that if you were to read through
all of the Defense Department's policies,
it would be the equivalent of reading War and Peace over 100 times.
And that book is just shy of 1,300 pages.
So GAMECHANGER, that AI technology was created to help Department of
Defense officials more easily navigate that massive glut of policies.
Sadly, the Pentagon definitely needs the help.
Julia Glendhill, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight Center for
Defense Information, put it well when she said that the fact that
the Pentagon developed an AI program to navigate its own policies
should be a stark wake-up call for lawmakers who throw more money at
the department than it even asks for nearly every year.
It's surprising, though, the DOD couldn't adequately account for
61% of its $3.5 trillion in assets in the most recent audit.
And despite the Pentagon's extremely irresponsible spending,
Congress keeps on approving bloated military budgets.
Here's a graph showing how the US military budget has increased from 1976 to 2019.
In 1976, it was just $315 billion, but
by 2019, it had more than doubled to 716 billion.
At the moment, the proposed military budget for 2024 is $826 billion.
We're quickly approaching a trillion dollars a year for the defense budget,
just let that sink in for a minute.
Now that's subject to change, though,
thanks to the Republicans feud in the House of Representatives.
So here's another graph that compares US defense spending in
2022 to the next ten highest spenders.
And as you can see, those countries spent 849 billion when
you just basically put them all together.
But the United States had them all beat with $877 billion.
And here's the best part, we the American taxpayers,
are the ones stuck footing the bill.
The Institute for Policy Studies National Priorities Project found that on average,
American taxpayers contributed $1,087 to Pentagon contractors,
compared with just $270 for K through 12 education.
The top military contractor, Lockheed Martin, received $106 from
the average taxpayer, while just $6 went to funding renewable energy.
And according to analysis,
the average 2022 US taxpayer paid $74 for nuclear weapons and
just $43 for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gave $298 to the top five military contractors and
just $19 for mental health and substance abuse.
That's why it's so
infuriating that the Pentagon needs a dedicated AI to sort out its finances.
All we really know about the money is that much of it is going straight
to defense contractors who legally bribe the very politicians who keep raising
the defense budget through their annual appropriations bills.
It's a vicious cycle that siphons money from all of us and
makes a handful of defense contractors even richer.