WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump released a directive Friday instructing the nation’s military and security agencies to rapidly expand their artificial intelligence capabilities while emphasizing the importance of safeguarding constitutional rights and ensuring human oversight of autonomous weapons.
The directive emerges during a period of heightened concern about AI’s role in American life, spanning from workplace displacement fears to its application in military target identification. While the Trump administration pushes to harness AI’s potential for defense purposes, military officials and Pentagon contractors have expressed caution and advocated for protective measures.
The presidential directive was distributed to key Cabinet members, including the defense secretary, homeland security secretary, attorney general, and national intelligence director.
The order mandates an updated policy on autonomous weapons to address AI’s rapidly advancing capabilities. It instructs the Department of Defense “to ensure the deliberate adoption of AI systems that respect the chain of command and operational authorities.”
The existing policy, established in 2023 during the Biden administration, requires such weapons to be designed “to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force,” as documented by the Congressional Research Service.
The new directive also prohibits using AI to “censor free speech, embed ideological bias, or conduct unlawful surveillance against the American people.”
“The use of AI by the national security enterprise must always be consistent with United States civil liberties and protections afforded by the Constitution and laws and regulations safeguarding the privacy of American citizens,” the directive states.
The Pentagon has already been expanding AI implementation in recent years. The technology assists in reducing target identification and engagement timeframes while supporting routine operations like equipment maintenance scheduling, supply chain management, and logistics coordination.
However, civil liberties protection and human control over autonomous weapons have generated increasing concern. These issues became central to a conflict that developed this year as the Pentagon attempts to utilize American technology companies to enhance military AI capabilities.
Anthropic requested contractual guarantees that the military would not employ its technology for fully autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated the company must permit any Pentagon uses deemed lawful.
Anthropic filed a lawsuit after Trump attempted to ban all federal agencies from using the company’s chatbot Claude, and Hegseth moved to classify the company as a supply chain risk, a designation designed to prevent foreign adversaries from compromising national security systems.
Military AI concerns intensified during Israel’s conflict with militants in Gaza and Lebanon, where American tech companies quietly supported Israeli target tracking efforts. The substantial civilian casualty count raised fears that these technologies contributed to innocent deaths.
Military leaders speaking at a special forces conference in Tampa, Florida, discussed AI benefits alongside the necessity for human safeguards.
Adm. Frank Bradley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, told conference participants that forces “have to be very careful about how we come to (AI’s) employment and its inspiration into the delivery of lethality.”
Bradley described envisioning a future where AI selects targets but emphasized that “we, as humans, have to have the confidence that … it’s going to deliver violence only where we intend it to be delivered.”
