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Hegseth orders an 'AI-first' military and 'any lawful use' terms for AI contracts

PolicyDefenceFrontierGovernmentUSConfirmed

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's AI strategy memo (released 9 January, unveiled publicly 12 January at SpaceX in Texas) sets seven pace-setting projects, including Swarm Forge, Agent Network for battle management and GenAI.mil. It seeks access to new frontier model versions within 30 days of public release, wants models free of 'ideological tuning', and directs that standard 'any lawful use' language go into every AI services contract within 180 days.

Why it matters

Vendors selling AI to the US military can no longer rely on their own usage policies to limit military applications, which set up the clash with Anthropic weeks later.

SourceU.S. Department of WarCoverage: Defense OneCoverage: Inside Government Contracts (Covington) Checked against the primary source. Independently fact-checked on 7 Oct 2026.
Department of WarChief Digital and AI OfficexAIGoogle

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The Pentagon, the labs and the limits on useStop 3 of 8Project Meridian and the race to govern military AIStop 4 of 10Who supplies the AI-first military?Stop 5 of 9

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Threads by topic: Military AI Government buying AI agents Frontier models