{"id":235345,"date":"2026-04-23T13:35:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T17:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/23\/autonomous-weapons-will-be-key-and-essential-part-of-warfare-joint-chiefs-chair-says\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T21:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T01:30:20","slug":"autonomous-weapons-will-be-key-and-essential-part-of-warfare-joint-chiefs-chair-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/23\/autonomous-weapons-will-be-key-and-essential-part-of-warfare-joint-chiefs-chair-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Autonomous weapons will be \u2018key and essential part\u2019 of warfare, Joint Chiefs chair says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Autonomous weapons will be \u2018key and essential part\u2019 of warfare, Joint Chiefs chair says<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.nextgov.com\/defense\/2026\/04\/autonomous-weapons-will-be-key-and-essential-part-warfare-joint-chiefs-chair-says\/413064\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-23 13:35:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.nextgov.com<\/a><\/p>\n

NASHVILLE \u2014 Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said Thursday that autonomous weapons are going to be a \u201ckey and essential part of everything we do\u201d when asked about how such tools would fit into the future of warfare.<\/p>\n

Speaking during a fireside chat at Vanderbilt University\u2019s Asness Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats, Caine said \u201cwe are doing a lot of thinking about this in the joint force right now\u201d on how autonomous tech would be applied to areas like drones and command-and-control operations.<\/p>\n

His remarks signal that the U.S. military is keen on crafting plans to further adopt artificial intelligence tools and other evolving technologies that would automate national security decisions made in the Defense Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably everybody in this room uses some flavor of a [large language model] every single day,\u201d he said, adding the same can\u2019t be said for staff in the halls of the Pentagon. \u201cSo,\u00a0we have to really normalize this and become early adopters.\u201d<\/p>\n

The remarks come as observers weigh tensions between the Pentagon and Anthropic, which recently unveiled a powerful frontier AI model, Mythos Preview, that was held back from public release over cybersecurity risks, paired with a new initiative to study its effects on global networks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Intelligence community units have expressed interest in Mythos, Nextgov\/FCW previously reported. The NSA, a component of the DOD, has been granted access to it, Axios reported Sunday.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Anthropic declined to ease restrictions against its tools being used for domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons for Pentagon use, triggering a \u201csupply chain risk\u201d designation from the Defense Department and a White House order that all federal agencies phase out their uses of Anthropic tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The company has legally challenged the move, and a federal judge issued a temporary injunction on the designation and ban in late March. The government has said it intends to appeal the…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Autonomous weapons will be \u2018key and essential part\u2019 of warfare, Joint Chiefs chair says https:\/\/www.nextgov.com\/defense\/2026\/04\/autonomous-weapons-will-be-key-and-essential-part-warfare-joint-chiefs-chair-says\/413064\/…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235346,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.nextgov.com\/media\/img\/cd\/2026\/04\/23\/IMG_6593\/open-graph.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[26,20,24,18],"class_list":["post-235345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cybersecurity","tag-large-language-model"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235345"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235347,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235345\/revisions\/235347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}