Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., visited the Middle East this week on a Congressional Delegation trip, speaking with Gulf region leaders and visiting American facilities to assess damage done by the Iran war. Murphy was denied access to Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, which had suffered damage from drone strikes during the conflict.

“They are using every tool they can, including withholding information about damages, slow walking the pace of reports about casualties and denying us access to see the damage as part of a campaign of cover-up, so as to mask the true cost of the war,” Murphy told reporters on Thursday.

The “unprecedented” base denial prepared Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Defense Appropriations Committee, in the coming days to draft language that would explicitly require the Department of Defense to grant members of Congress access to military bases overseas under all circumstances if needed.

“I don’t have any illusions that that’s going to pass between now and the end of the year, but I think that’ll be a really important part of the discussion around an appropriations bill next year and the defense authorization bill,” he said during the press call.

Prior to his trip, Murphy requested access to the base through a letter and direct appeal to U.S. Central Command leadership. But he was denied access even as the Department of State supported his trip to the region, with the Defense Department saying it was due to previously imposed travel restrictions.

“Senator Murphy’s office was informed before his trip to the Middle East that he would not receive Department of War support to access Al Udeid Air Base, consistent with the Secretary of War’s directive on travel restrictions in the region ordered on March 3, 2026,” a senior Defense Department official told Military Times on Thursday.

“That decision was communicated in advance by the Office of the Secretary of War for Legislative Affairs,” the official continued. “The Department applies the Secretary’s guidance evenly.”

In early March, the State and Defense departments issued travel guidance, calling on Americans to depart areas in the region and updating its travel advisory to recommend against visiting certain countries, including Qatar.

“It is absolutely ordinary for members of Congress to travel to areas of conflict and get to talk directly to the military leaders and the soldiers that are involved in the conflict and see for ourselves the damage that has been done to our bases and equipment,” Murphy said, highlighting how during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars he was able to visit operating bases.

He argued that since Congress decides funding and authorization for war, it is necessary to see the consequences, but he was unable to visit Al Udeid or have a briefing on the war with American military officials while in the region.

On the same day the travel advisory was issued in March, the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was hit ​by two Iranians drones, resulting in building damage and a fire. Murphy said that the drones impacted multiple floors of the embassy and part of the space is now “uninhabitable” with permanent damage.

The U.S. previously announced in 2023 plans to build a new embassy compound in Riyadh, which Murphy attributes the lack of repairs to.

Even though no injuries or casualties were reported from the strike, Murphy said that if the attack happened during the day it would have killed many Americans.

“[Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth is determined to hide the cost and the consequences of this war from the American public, and it is absolutely outrageous that I and Republican senators are being denied the ability to see the damage for ourselves,” he said.

Now, Pentagon officials say that some of that AI is not part of the current revamp of the polygraph interview process, after Defense News asked for a response to concerns about the earlier statements and the slides.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon’s Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, or DCSA, which vets security clearance holders and applicants, said in an emailed statement that “active research and development” for the “Modernizing Polygraph” effort “does not incorporate generative super intelligence, also known as artificial intelligence,” that creates new content — such as emails, graphics or voiceovers.

Nor does the effort include “large language models,” meaning chatbots like ChatGPT and other programs trained on giant data sets to engage in human conversation, DCSA added.

And the research does not involve “facial action coding [of emotions], micro-expression analysis or vocal analyses,” the statement said. “While those technologies are not part of the effort,” DoD will “continue to monitor emerging scientific capabilities to evaluate their potential utility down the road.”

DCSA did not address other types of AI models that, according to the slides, researchers had been developing to scan spoken and written language for “deceptive speech” patterns.

Wednesday’s statement came after Defense News sought a response to criticisms from national security lawyers, scientists and AI auditors about AI’s ability to analyze deception — meaning not just to lie, but to do so knowingly and willfully.

They warned that AI-aided scanning of speech patterns, vocal stress or facial expressions to read minds lacks scientific backing, will compound errors and may violate civil liberties in a domain where few such rights exist.

Defense News chronicled their concerns and the Pentagon’s prior research and development of AI-aided lie-detection and emotion-estimation tools.

The recent DCSA statement, including the project name “Modernizing Polygraph,” contrasts with several earlier DoD statements, 2027 budget documents and DCSA slides that Defense News obtained through an open records request.

In July, a Pentagon official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the technology, explained the advantages of AI-driven sentiment and deception analysis.

“AI processes data in real time and enables standardized, objective data analysis,” the official told Defense News, via email. “AI-based analysis is a force multiplier for our human investigators, not a replacement.”

The official added, “The models are primarily trained on data from laboratory-controlled studies using volunteer participants.”

The DCSA slides, which include presentations from 2021 through 2025, show that the Air Force, DCSA and academic labs had been working on “sentiment analysis” AI models and “deceptive speech” AI-aided analysis since 2019, as part of a “Credibility Assessment Modernization” project.

In July, the DoD official described the AI models as part of a larger multi-year “transformation,” which the official referred to interchangeably as “Polygraph+” and Credibility Assessment Modernization.

Current budget materials price the Polygraph+/Polygraph Next project at $31 million, including costs for AI “scoring algorithms” and “decision aids,” thermal imaging tools to spot blood flow changes that can reflect stress and other non-contact sensors.

On Friday, DCSA declined to provide additional information, including the scope of the “Modernizing Polygraph” project and the decision not to include AI-based voice screening and facial expression analysis.

Trained on Twitter and Reddit

Over the summer, Farakh Zaman, a developmental leader at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, elaborated on the appeal of AI-aided deception analysis.

“By processing subtle physiological, vocal and linguistic cues, these developmental algorithms may help establish a more objective baseline for investigators and pinpoint specific areas requiring further human-led clarification,” he said by email in July.

Wednesday’s DCSA statement said that the Air Force is not involved in the “active” research and development phase.

One undated declassified DCSA slide describes the Air Force amassing “deception-related” text to create a “deep learning model,” an algorithm that analyzes hordes of data to find patterns. The Air Force trained an early model on text from websites including Twitter, Reddit and other vocabulary data sets such as WordNet, according to the slide.

“This baseline training helps the algorithms understand natural, modern linguistic patterns, slang and everyday vocabulary,” Zaman explained in July. He acknowledged the need for “further rigorous testing, validation and a clear transition path” before fielding a prototype.

A separate DCSA slide, dated May 2025, contains a flowchart that depicts an avatar — a computer-generated image of an interviewer — in front of a security clearance applicant. Next to the applicant, a camera and microphone feed audio, video and speech-to-text data from the interview into various large language models. The recording devices and algorithms interact to gauge the applicant’s emotional state, while a human investigator observes and keys in questions for the avatar to ask.

DCSA’s Wednesday statement said the university that drafted the chart is not involved in the current research and development stage.

According to another undated DCSA slide, DoD has set a goal for natural language processing technology to interpret an interviewee’s feelings with 75% accuracy.

In July, the Pentagon official said by email that a human investigator remains essential for “the contextual reasoning and emotional intelligence required in these sensitive interviews.”

‘I’ve caught AI lying to me’

Ahead of Wednesday’s statement, Mark Zaid, a national security attorney who reviewed the slides, warned that the danger of derailing a military officer’s career is too great for AI to misinform an investigator.

The polygraph device “is just registering the physiology of the person,” such as spikes in breathing rate, perspiration or blood pressure, he said. “Then a human examiner analyzes those reactions to render an opinion.”

Here, however, “AI would be taking the polygraph readings and rendering an opinion” to the human examiner, said Zaid, who has represented individuals on all sides of the polygraph table, from workers disputing revoked clearances to former government officials and polygraphers.

“Now, we’re starting to get into the movie Minority Report,” he said, referencing a 2002 Steven Spielberg film that depicts a government reliant on psychic children for tips to predict crimes and detain people accused of future crimes.

Zaid, whose own clearance was revoked temporarily after he represented a whistleblower pivotal in President Trump’s first impeachment, said, “That concerns me more than the polygraph,” if science does not back AI’s reliability.

So far, scientific studies do not.

Rather, decades of research have discredited theories, popularized by shows such as Lie to Me, that anyone — human or artificial — can recognize deception based on speech patterns, vocal stress or facial movements.

Another concern scientists and auditors have is bias: the Justice Department has warned that using emotion-recognition algorithms to measure worker competency can discriminate against high performers with intellectual or developmental disabilities, who algorithms do not always understand.

Also, “automation bias,” the tendency to take AI’s advice without question even when conflicting information exists, may further erode the polygraph system’s reliability, technologists warned.

“[T]here is simply no consensus that polygraph evidence is reliable,” the Supreme Court declared in a 1998 decision banning polygraph results and polygraphers’ opinions from military courts.

Zaid said he appreciates the attempt to retool polygraph testing but wants proof that the planned approach is in fact an improvement.

“Anytime we might be able to scientifically advance the ability to determine truth, with accuracy, would generally be a good thing,” he said. But “the first thing that jumps out at me with AI is how often it is wrong…I’ve caught AI lying to me.”

Greg Rinckey, a former Army Judge Advocate General Corps officer who now provides security clearance representation, said that today’s “technology is so outdated, where they’re using tubes around people’s chests and blood pressure and sweat, so, any way that you can get a more reliable test for security clearances, especially counterintelligence investigations [into leaks], is a step up.”

That said, he questioned, “What is the research saying on how accurate it is?”

At present, research suggests the odds of AI-aided speech, voice or face analysis pegging a lie are about 50:50.

AI is ‘assuming dishonesty’

“There are no – reliable – diagnostic cues for deception detection, and I have yet to see any evidence, whether it is with humans or with artificial intelligence, that goes against that trend,” said David Markowitz, a Michigan State University professor who studies AI’s ability to understand human communication.

For instance, “the leakage idea — that these microfacial expressions will leak out from our awareness, signaling veracity or deceit — there’s very little evidence to support that, unfortunately,” he said.

Markowitz expressed doubts about AI-based deception analyses that claim an accuracy rate of 75% because “that is not how accurately humans do it, and often these systems are a big reflection of how humans do it.”

For example, he pointed to a recent experiment in which he prompted a Google Gemini AI model to examine audio and video of mock interrogations of accused cheaters in a trivia game, all of whom claimed innocence and some of whom were lying. Prior studies had asked humans to observe the same interrogations. DoD has entered into agreements to run a secure version of Gemini on unclassified and classified networks.

Markowitz said that his study, “The [in]efficacy of AI personas in deception detection experiments,” found Gemini was just as inaccurate as humans, both faring no better than chance, when prompted to distinguish fraudsters from truth-tellers.

What’s more, compared to humans, AI was more likely to wrongly accuse a trivia player of lying.

Markowitz gave one possible reason for AI’s systemic distrust of trivia players: The AI “is assuming that someone must have done something wrong because why else would they be questioned,” he said. “Anytime that someone is in an interview setting where they might be accused of something, a large language model is assuming dishonesty.”

Supreme Court: The jury is the lie detector

The consequences of a machine, whether a heart monitor or a voice screener, potentially bungling a credibility assessment can last a year or longer, said Zaid, the national security lawyer.

When officers who have successfully passed exams without issue suddenly fail their latest polygraph test, DoD typically puts them “in a corner with a dunce cap on for a year before officials will re-administer another exam,” he said. “You can’t get promoted. You can’t get certain assignments. And you can’t go overseas, which, to case officers, is death careerwise.”

Further, civil courts routinely dismiss complaints when employees claim that inaccurate results cost them their clearances. Nearly 40 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the courts have no power over such national security matters.

Concerns about power imbalances and due process prompted the European Union to label AI-aided polygraph tools as “high risk” and place strict limits on law enforcement’s use of them.

Stateside, the Supreme Court, in forbidding polygraph evidence in military courts, noted that allowing it would meddle with the human’s role, or, as it were, the jury’s role, in determining credibility.

“A fundamental premise of our criminal trial system is that the jury is the lie detector,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the Court’s 1998 United States v. Scheffer decision.

Pointing to the court’s decision, Zaid said that he wants assurances of due process when staff undergo administrative proceedings to contest a revoked clearance resulting from misaligned algorithms. Comparing the situation to successful cases disputing speeding tickets caused by a miscalibrated street camera, Zaid questioned, “Would the person be provided the evidence? An understanding of the AI’s training?”

New biases

Pentagon officials have long stressed the desire for AI-based lie detection to help curb gender and cultural biases that human investigators may carry into an interview room.

At the same time, employers’ use of similar technology for pre-employment screening has faced allegations of other biases and system errors.

“Facial expression analysis is heaviest in terms of biases against individuals with disabilities,” said Jo Ann Oravec, a University of Wisconsin professor whose research focuses on AI, public policy and disability issues.

For instance, AI-powered video screening of job applicants tends to misinterpret the involuntary twitches or vocal outbursts of skilled people with certain disabilities — and thus pass over qualified applicants, said Oravec, author of the 2024 article “From Polygraphs to Truth Machines: Artificial Intelligence in Lie Detection.”

In response to concerns about such biases in July, the Pentagon official said via email that the credibility assessment modernization plan adheres to DoD’s AI Ethical Principles of “responsible, equitable and traceable” use of algorithms.

The Air Force’s Zaman, in his July email, said that his team’s work aligns with DoD’s Responsible Artificial Intelligence Guidelines.

Researchers “are actively engineering and testing these models” to account for “diverse, representative training data,” he stated. The testing covers “broad variations in speech, language and expression.”

Ryan Carrier, founder of ForHumanity, a global nonprofit that helps organizations audit AI systems, said that the Pentagon’s principles and guidelines are a skeleton of those that the European Union follows and that ForHumanity uses for inspections.

For example, the EU’s AI Act demands users of high-risk systems receive training to overcome a different kind of bias called “automation bias” — or the tendency to execute AI’s advice without questioning its accuracy. This bad habit can lead to incorrect data overriding correct decisions, Carrier said.

Also, multimodal systems, meaning AI systems that simultaneously parse audio (the subject’s voice), video (their facial movements) and text (interview transcriptions), tend to misalign data and results, yielding an irrelevant analysis, Carrier said.

The system “could be making determinations that a person is lying or trying to deceive me that are outside of the tool’s specifications,” he explained.

In response to concerns about multimodal systems in July, the Pentagon official had said, “Any automated output is treated strictly as auxiliary data for a highly trained, certified polygraph examiner.”

Similarly, Zaman, at the time, said that investigators who use AI-aided deception-detection systems are “trained to contextualize the tool’s findings, preventing automated outputs from dictating an outcome.”

To safeguard against mismatched data or results, the Air Force keeps a documented history of each piece of data’s origin and modifications and brings in independent white-hat hackers to try producing false correlations, he added.

“We recognize that multimodal AI systems present unique technical challenges, and mitigating these risks by hardening our systems is central to our engineering and testing protocols,” Zaman said.

Reason for suspicion?

In August, when the Pentagon administered a raft of polygraph exams to probe leaks alleging the Iran conflict is depleting U.S. arsenals, some observers suspected the endgame was not to find the leakers, but to crack down on disloyalty.

Critics of the planned system said that AI-based deception analysis may be best suited to achieve the same purpose.

“If it’s purely an intimidation technique, it may not be utterly useless from the point of view of large bureaucracies,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.

The expectations for AI-powered trustworthiness testing resemble the hope that U.S. national security officials held out for the polygraph about 100 years ago, other lawyers said.

Polygraph devices “were seen as this magic-miracle-machine when they first came out,” and, over time, the government learned that when seemingly making deductions, the tools were “actually just flagging correlating factors, like heart rate and physiological factors that can indicate lying, but aren’t actually reflective of it,” said Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Security and Surveillance Project.

He added, “Thinking that AI sentiment analysis tools are actually making an assessment or engaged in reasoning — that’s not what those machines are actually able to do.”

The five-year contract, which includes two additional option years, the Navy said, is meant to provide a steady and reliable supply of the SM-6, a missile that can carry out both offensive strikes and missile defense missions.

The SM-6 award is the latest in a series of large munitions contracts the Pentagon has pursued this year to pressure contractors into ramping up output. It follows a $20.7 billion provisional multiyear deal for Raytheon’s AMRAAM air-to-air missiles in late September and a $58.6 billion Patriot interceptor deal awarded to Lockheed Martin in July.

The production agreements are designed to entice contractors to move faster while surging production. They are part of a broader push by the Trump administration to prioritize weapons production over shareholder returns.

Industry executives have warned that Congress has not yet appropriated funding for the deals, meaning contractors may be unable to invest at scale in components and facilities until lawmakers act.

RTX has said it has invested heavily to keep up with rising demand. It has expanded its skilled workforce, strengthened partnerships across the defense industrial base and automated production, with the aim of significantly increasing output for near- and long-term needs.

Raytheon says the SM-6 is the only combat-proven weapon that can perform anti-air warfare, anti-surface warfare and ballistic missile defense. It has been fired from a range of Navy ships as well as from land-based launchers.

The 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington came in a lawsuit by Anthropic challenging its March designation by the Pentagon as a national security supply chain risk, which the startup says has cost it billions of dollars in lost business and damaged its reputation ahead of a highly anticipated initial public offering.

The court’s majority said it was reasonable for the Pentagon to designate Anthropic after it refused to allow its products to be used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance. It rejected Anthropic’s claim that the Pentagon had retaliated against it for its views on AI safety and ethics.

Siding with Hegseth’s argument that Anthropic’s safety restrictions could compromise military operations, the majority said, “The Secretary raises the deeply sobering prospect of overly constrained AI models shutting down unexpectedly and thus causing important military operations to fail,” in an opinion by Judge Gregory Katsas.

San Francisco-based Anthropic said in a statement Friday that it respectfully disagrees with the decision but remains confident in its position and is considering its options, including review of the three-judge panel’s decision by the full appeals court.

The White House and the Department of Defense did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

A federal judge in San Francisco last month struck down a parallel designation under a different law, finding the administration had unlawfully retaliated against Anthropic for its views on AI safety. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco also blocked Trump’s government-wide ban on Anthropic and Hegseth’s order barring military contractors from doing any business with the startup.

Hegseth designated Anthropic as a risk under two different laws after Anthropic refused to remove guardrails against its technology being used for autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance.

The unprecedented move came after months of negotiations ended in failure and public recriminations by Hegseth and Trump, who accused Anthropic of endangering American lives with ideological posturing.

Anthropic denied that characterization and said AI is not yet reliable enough to be safely used in autonomous weapons. The company also said it opposes domestic surveillance as a violation of fundamental rights.

The president cited national security concerns for the move, echoing the rationale offered for the roughly $400 million ballroom complex being built on the site of the White House’s former East Wing, which was demolished to make way for the project. He did not identify any specific threats.

The projects are part of Trump’s ambitious effort to reshape Washington, including a push to add his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The plans have drawn criticism from preservationists and others who argue they could alter or diminish historic landmarks.

In a social media post, Trump said that at the “strong request” of the military he had agreed to turn the 250-foot (76-meter) arch “into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.”

The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Federal Aviation Administration said last week that the arch would not pose a hazard to aircraft but would be required to have an “eternal flame” on top, clearing an aviation hurdle for the arch, which Trump proposed to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Aviation experts have raised safety concerns given its proximity to Reagan Washington National Airport, while veterans have sued to block the arch, arguing it would destroy the historic sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

The concern, critics say, is not limited to weapons that can select and engage targets on their own.

At the hearing, titled “Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain: Implications for Human Rights,” witnesses told members of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission that AI can influence human decisions leading to a strike while leaving the individual formally responsible for the final call.

“The approval button alone does not demonstrate the control,” Anna Mysyshyn, a Ukrainian AI-governance researcher, told lawmakers.

The issue comes as the Pentagon pushes to use AI to accelerate military decision-making. The Pentagon’s 2023 AI adoption strategy identified “fast, precise and resilient kill chains” as a desired outcome, while its 2026 AI strategy calls for becoming an “AI-first” warfighting force by redesigning military workflows and operational concepts around current AI capabilities.

Mysyshyn questioned whether a person supervising multiple AI-enabled systems can recognize an incorrect recommendation and intervene fast enough before harm occurs. She cited Ukraine as an example of AI compressing decisions from hours to minutes.

In many scenarios, a human making the final decision does not necessarily have enough information, time or the ability to challenge the system’s recommendation, she said.

The Defense Department’s 2023 directive on autonomy in weapon systems requires autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.

Wednesday’s testimony focused on a broader question: whether that judgment remains meaningful if AI is influencing targeting faster than a human can authenticate.

Amanda Klasing, national director of government relations and advocacy at Amnesty International USA, warned that AI can compress the military “kill chain” in ways that make it difficult to determine whether meaningful human discernment actually occurred before a strike.

Joseph Chapa, a former military officer and scholar of military ethics, argued that the debate should not focus solely on how autonomous a system is. He urged policymakers to consider whether an AI system relies on statistical inference, what happens when it fails in a particular operational environment and whether its decisions can be audited afterward.

Statistical AI systems can fail differently from traditional software, Chapa said, including producing substantially different outputs from relatively small changes in inputs. More complex systems can also make it difficult to reconstruct how a particular recommendation was produced after the fact.

He called for greater AI education across the military, including specialized training for personnel working with targeting and intelligence systems.

Witnesses on Wednesday also pointed to a larger accountability problem: determining what happens when an AI-assisted decision results in civilian harm.

The Defense Department established its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan in 2022, including a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence intended to serve as a hub for analysis and training. Federal law requires the Pentagon to operate the center.

But a Defense Department inspector general review released in May assessed the department’s implementation of the civilian-harm framework and found problems including the loss or reassignment of personnel, the end of funding for a civilian-harm data-management platform and the failure of a senior steering committee to continue meeting.

That matters in the case of AI because, as Klasing noted, the military currently has limited ability to determine whether AI may contribute to improper targeting of civilians.

On the first day of the U.S.-Iran war, a Tomahawk cruise missile struck Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, southern Iran. At least 168 people were killed — more than 100 of them under the age of 12, according to UN and Iranian officials.

The school building sat fewer than 100 yards from a long-time Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval installation and was previously located within the IRGC compound perimeter until a wall appeared between 2013 and 2016, according to an analysis of satellite imagery by Amnesty International.

By the time the U.S. and Israel launched their first strikes on Feb. 28, the school had been established several years prior. It was active on social media and had its own website, a Reuters investigation found.

More than 120 House Democrats sent a letter to the Pentagon on March 12, demanding clarity on whether artificial intelligence, “including the use of the Maven Smart System, [was] used to identify the Shajareh Tayyebeh school as a target.”

U.S. military investigators in the wake of the incident stated that the strike was likely carried out by U.S. forces. The Pentagon, however, has still not released its investigative findings.

Klasing proposed adding information about AI involvement to the Pentagon’s annual civilian-casualty reports required under Section 1057 of the National Defense Authorization Act. The existing reporting requirement calls for information about civilian casualty mitigation efforts and investigations, but does not specifically require the department to identify whether AI contributed to an incident.

Steve Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Pentagon should collect data from military operations and conduct after-action reviews to determine whether AI-assisted systems accurately identified intended targets and whether errors contributed to civilian casualties.

“A bigger question is to what extent is the Pentagon collecting data and verifying the target accuracy of all these 1000s of strikes?” Feldstein said.

Feldstein also cautioned against treating AI itself as the source of every potential problem. AI can be used to help verify intelligence, detect changes in imagery and prioritize defensive responses to threats such as drones and ballistic missiles.

But if a human-influenced system is built around assumptions that certain demographic traits make someone a lawful target, Mysyshyn said, AI would not correct that underlying premise.

Feldstein similarly pointed to the rules humans establish before an AI system is used. If commanders determine that a particular level of civilian harm is acceptable in pursuit of a military objective, he said, the machine is operating within a human-defined framework.

The challenge is particularly acute when systems operate faster than people can meaningfully assess recommendations.

The commission opened Wednesday’s hearing with an example from Iraq. In 2004, Army squad leader Nick Ellison encountered two young men firing a machine gun from a car during a census patrol in Kirkuk.

Ellison made eye contact with one of the men, saw panic and ordered his soldiers to hold fire. The men turned out to be brothers of a newly married groom, and the gunfire was celebratory.

Mysyshyn said testing should examine bias, reliability, civilian protection, realistic time pressure, whether operators can interrupt systems and whether decisions can be traced throughout an AI system’s lifecycle.

Chapa said some AI systems may be difficult to audit after the fact, while Deborah Brown of Human Rights Watch said information about military AI use has often emerged through investigative reporting and whistleblowers rather than government disclosures.

The growing challenge, according to witnesses, is no longer making a machine pull a trigger, but whether the human who approves the trigger pull has enough time, information and authority to make a meaningful choice before disaster.

Military Times reporter Katie Livingstone contributed to this report.

Semaglutide is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat Type 2 diabetes and chronic weight management, but not alcohol use disorder.

VA researchers are studying whether the GLP-1 receptor agonist may affect parts of the brain involved in reward, potentially offering a new treatment option for veterans with moderate or severe alcohol use disorder if proven safe and effective.

The department cautioned veterans not to self-medicate or replace evidence-based alcohol use disorder treatments with GLP-1 medications without first consulting a health care provider.

The study, known as the Cessation or Reduction of Alcohol Consumption in Veterans (CRAVE) trial, will enroll more than 600 veterans ages 18 to 80 at 18 VA medical centers nationwide.

Participants with moderate or severe alcohol use disorder will receive weekly injections of either semaglutide or a placebo for 24 weeks, followed by a safety evaluation. Researchers will measure changes in alcohol consumption, overall health and quality of life.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have increasingly studied whether GLP-1 medications, originally developed for diabetes and later approved for obesity, could also help treat substance use disorders.

VA cited an analysis published in March that found patients taking GLP-1 medications experienced lower rates of alcohol use disorder and other substance use disorders than similar patients taking other diabetes medications.

The department said larger, controlled clinical trials are needed to determine whether semaglutide is safe and effective for treating alcohol use disorder.

In an official statement, VA Secretary Doug Collins said, “By exploring emerging treatment options like the use of a GLP-1 for AUD, we aim to expand the tools available to help Veterans take control of their health and recovery.”

Recruitment began July 28. Veterans interested in participating can contact their local VA medical center or search for the trial on ClinicalTrials.gov.

“The trends are moving in the right direction,” Jerry McGinn, who co-authored the study for the Center for Strategic and International Analysis think tank, told Defense News.

However, the study — described as a progress report on reforms to the defense manufacturing and acquisition system — still found numerous problems with ramping up and sustaining wartime production.

For example, “according to several measures — manufacturing lead times, critical munitions and materials stockpiles, and supply chain security — the U.S. industrial base has a long way to go to achieve resilience,” warned the analysis by CSIS’s Center for the Industrial Base.

CSIS did find measurable improvements since November 2025, when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth vowed to “transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing.”

Hegseth also promised to “inspire American industry to become a wartime industrial base that focuses on speed and volume.”

Most striking is the number of new companies in the defense field.

“Roughly 10,000 new firms have entered the market in the past two years and nontraditional companies received over $120 billion in contract obligations in FY 2025, adding competition and innovation to the sector,” CSIS noted. “Munitions contract obligations have risen 330 percent since FY 2010. Spurred by this increased demand and depleted inventories, the Pentagon is signing multiyear agreements with munitions producers and suppliers on a historic scale.”

The military is also responding to depleted stockpiles of expensive guided weapons that have been rapidly consumed by the Iran and Ukraine wars.

The Pentagon’s 2027 budget request for munitions allocated 49% to low-cost munitions — defined as costing less than $600,000 apiece — rising to 70% by 2031.

The U.S. is also strengthening its defense supply chain, such as “multiyear procurement agreements, direct-to-supplier investments, and leaner acquisition pathways,” as well as investing in defense companies such as L3Harris Missile Solutions, according to CSIS.

However, while this signals government commitment to defense production, it “also complicates competitive dynamics within the industry as new entrants and established suppliers alike seek to meet rapidly growing demand for munitions at scale.”

Also notable is federal investment in rare earths, which has seen production soar from 95 tons in 2022, to 8,900 tons in 2025. Nonetheless, “the erosion of domestic rare earth manufacturing capacity and the rise of Chinese control took decades to unfold, however, and it will take several years of enduring effort for the United States and its allies to build, scale, and sustain the production capacity of these key defense inputs.”

Exports of U.S. arms, or cooperative multinational projects such as the F-35 fighter, have also become a pillar of America’s defense industry. Foreign Military Sales, or FMS, have more than tripled, from less than $20 billion in 2015 to more than $80 billion in 2025.

The Trump administration wants to take this further with the “America First Arms Transfer Strategy,” launched in February 2026.

“The United States will use foreign purchases and capital to support domestic reindustrialization, expand production capacity, and improve the resilience of the United States defense industrial base,” the White House executive order declared.

Ultimately, the federal government can control defense production through the products it demands, the prices it is willing to pay, and the incentives it offers.

“It’s a monopsony,” McGinn said. “Government sets the market. Government can regulate the market. So, if the government wants different outcomes, it changes how it buys.”

At the center of the debate are proposed changes affecting conditions such as sleep apnea and tinnitus, a funding mechanism that supporters and critics interpret very differently, and competing versions of the Major Richard Star Act.

The legislation would combine roughly 60 veterans bills into a single package affecting veterans, surviving families, caregivers and medically retired service members. It includes caregiver reforms, survivor benefits, mental health initiatives, community care improvements and the original 2023 version of the long-sought Major Richard Star Act.

Nearly every major veterans service organization supports those priorities. Their disagreement, meanwhile, stems from how Congress proposes to pay for them.

This fight didn’t develop overnight. Instead, it began at the convergence of three separate efforts: VA’s yearslong modernization of its disability rating schedule, Congress’ search for an offset to finance a large veterans package and different conclusions about whether projected savings from a pending rule-making change should remain available for veterans programs.

The result is one of the most significant policy disagreements among major veterans organizations in recent years.

Modernization effort years in the making

Long before veterans organizations began publicly battling over the omnibus, VA was already working through a comprehensive overhaul of the Veterans Affairs Schedule for Rating Disabilities, the regulations used to evaluate service-connected disabilities and determine monthly compensation.

The modernization effort began after the Government Accountability Office designated VA’s disability compensation program as “high risk” because portions of the rating schedule had not kept pace with advances in medicine and clinical practice.

In 2009, VA began systematically reviewing all 15 body systems. The proposed revisions published in April 2022 represented the latest phase of that effort, including changes affecting mental health, respiratory and auditory conditions, among them sleep apnea and tinnitus.

Public comments closed years ago, but the remaining rule-makings were still moving through the regulatory process when VA appeared before Congress at the beginning of this year.

During a Jan. 14 hearing before the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs, Nina Tann, executive director of VA’s Compensation Service, testified that the department anticipated publishing the remaining four body systems in three final rule-makings around the summer of 2026, followed by implementation and an effective date.

In prepared testimony submitted to the committee, she wrote that VA expected to complete the remaining rule-makings by the end of fiscal 2026, concluding what she described as the first holistic modernization of the rating schedule since 1945.

Those statements became part of the factual backdrop as lawmakers worked to assemble one of the largest veterans legislative packages in years.

Finding the money

The Taking Care of America’s Veterans Act did not begin as a single proposal. Instead, lawmakers combined dozens of bipartisan measures that had already advanced independently through Congress.

Together, they would expand or improve programs affecting caregivers, survivors, veterans’ healthcare, military retirement and disability compensation.

Like most large authorization bills, expanding benefits required lawmakers to identify spending reductions elsewhere. Supporters of the legislation pointed to VA’s pending disability rating revisions.

Candace Wheeler, national legislative director for the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, said TAPS understood from conversations with VA and the department’s January congressional testimony that the remaining rule-making was expected to proceed during fiscal 2026.

According to Wheeler, TAPS views the projected savings differently than critics of the legislation. Rather than reducing existing disability compensation, Wheeler said Congress is attempting to retain projected federal savings associated with a rule VA had already proposed and testified it expected to complete.

Otherwise, she said, those savings would leave veterans programs altogether. She described it as “the right color of money.”

Wheeler also acknowledged why many organizations remain uncomfortable with the proposal.

“We understand organizations and people that are concerned about taking from veterans to pay for veterans,” she said. “We have long said the same thing. But in this particular legislation, it is because of a rule that was already put forward.”

That distinction helps explain why TAPS, the Military Officers Association of America, the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and several other organizations endorsed the omnibus despite opposing similar funding approaches in other circumstances.

Coming to a different conclusion

Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars have not opposed most of the legislation itself. Instead, both organizations argue Congress should identify another way to finance the package, rather than rely on projected savings associated with disability compensation changes.

Their position reflects a broader philosophy about the purpose of VA disability compensation.

In testimony submitted to Congress earlier this year, DAV argued disability compensation recognizes the lasting functional loss associated with service-connected injuries and illnesses and does not serve only as wage replacement for unemployable veterans.

The organization described the disability compensation framework as fundamentally sound and cautioned against proposals that could weaken its underlying purpose.

VFW’s January testimony addressed the modernization effort from a different perspective but acknowledged that the remaining respiratory, auditory and mental health revisions were still progressing through rule-making.

The organization noted that public comment periods had concluded, rule-making remained underway and full completion was projected for fiscal 2026. It also told lawmakers that VFW had repeatedly requested updates from VA and had consistently been told the remaining regulations were still under review.

Those statements do not suggest agreement over the proposed funding mechanism, but they do show that the organizations broadly understood the modernization effort was continuing while reaching different conclusions about whether Congress should treat projected savings from that unfinished process as available to finance new veterans legislation.

The dispute goes public

The philosophical divide soon moved beyond policy papers and congressional testimony.

Veterans of Foreign Wars launched a public campaign urging veterans to contact lawmakers and oppose the funding provision. Disabled American Veterans issued statements arguing Congress should remove the offset and finance the legislation another way. Both organizations emphasized that they supported many of the bill’s underlying provisions but opposed using projected disability compensation savings to pay for them.

The dispute escalated on July 1 when House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., publicly criticized a VFW advocacy cartoon promoting the campaign.

In a statement, Bost called the organization’s messaging “inflammatory, fear-mongering, and dangerous political rhetoric” and urged VFW to remove the image.

Another development the same day received far less attention.

Bost and Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., sent a formal letter to VA Secretary Doug Collins requesting that the department examine whether VFW’s conduct remained consistent with the requirements governing VA-accredited veterans service organizations under 38 C.F.R. §§ 14.628 and 14.629.

They also asked VA to review the organization’s commercial licensing arrangement under 38 C.F.R. § 14.628(f) in connection with merchandise featuring the disputed cartoon.

The lawmakers did not direct VA to revoke VFW’s accreditation or recommend a specific outcome. Instead, they asked the department to review whether the organization’s actions complied with existing regulations.

VFW General Counsel John Muckelbauer told Military Times the organization first learned of the letter from congressional staff after it had been sent and said neither lawmaker contacted the organization beforehand.

He said VFW remains confident its advocacy complies with VA accreditation standards and argued that speaking forcefully before Congress is central to the organization’s mission.

“Reasonable people can disagree about legislation,” Muckelbauer said. “What should never be in question is the right and responsibility of veterans service organizations to advocate independently for the veterans they represent.”

Because the matter raises legal issues, Muckelbauer said VFW has responded “through the appropriate legal channels” and declined to discuss those communications publicly.

The Major Richard Star Act change-up

As debate over the funding mechanism intensified, another significant change inside the omnibus attracted comparatively little attention.

For years, the Major Richard Star Act has sought to restore concurrent receipt for combat-injured veterans who were medically retired before completing 20 years of military service. Under current law, many lose a portion of their earned military retirement because they also receive VA disability compensation.

The original 2023 version of the legislation focused on approximately 54,000 combat-injured medically retired veterans. In 2025, lawmakers introduced a broader standalone proposal that would have expanded eligibility to roughly 255,000 medically retired veterans beyond the original combat-related population, totaling more than 300,000 medically retired veterans.

Congressional Budget Office estimates reflected a substantially higher projected cost associated with that expansion, inflating the price tag from $10 billion to $78 billion over 10 years.

The version incorporated into the Taking Care of America’s Veterans Act does not include that broader eligibility. Instead, it mirrors the earlier combat-related framework, limiting eligibility to approximately 54,000 combat-injured medically retired veterans, not all Chapter 61 medically retired veterans.

Restoring concurrent receipt can return hundreds or even thousands of dollars each month to retirees whose military careers ended because of combat-related injuries.

Wheeler said confusion between the two versions has complicated public discussion of the legislation.

“If you add in all of [the additional 255,000 medically retired veterans], then yes, it would balloon the cost,” she said. “But that is not what is currently moving forward in TCAVA.”

Wheeler noted that coalition members intentionally focused on the narrower proposal because expanding eligibility further “would make it very hard to pass,” explaining why the version of the Richard Star Act included in the omnibus differs significantly from the broader standalone proposal introduced by Congress last year.

VA’s current position

While Congress debated the legislation, VA publicly described the status of the underlying rule-making differently than it had during the January hearing.

Asked by Military Times about the 2022 proposed disability ratings revisions, Quinn Slaven, VA press secretary, said “no changes are planned or imminent.”

Slaven added that after receiving significant public comment back in February, the proposal “would need to undergo significant changes prior to being finalized.”

Military Times asked VA whether the department’s expected timeline has changed since Nina Tann testified in January that VA anticipated completing the remaining rule-makings by the end of fiscal 2026. As of publication, the department had not responded to that specific inquiry.

Veterans organizations interpreted the significance of that timeline differently as Congress assembled the omnibus legislation.

Congress has not yet decided whether to advance the legislation in its current form. VA has not finalized the 2022 disability ratings proposal, nor has it been withdrawn.

Until both questions are resolved, the debate that has divided the veterans community is likely to continue.

In written testimony submitted for the Jan. 14 hearing, VFW stated that disability compensation exists because America made a promise, and they should honor the contract.

“Several proposed changes have been delayed multiple times,” VFW wrote, “leaving veterans and stakeholders uncertain about timing and the potential effects of the proposed changes.”

With the VSOs supportive of TCAVA understanding that these rule-making changes to VA disability will be final by Oct. 1, Candace Wheeler cautions, “That money will go back to the Treasury if it isn’t used.”

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Bost of Illinois and Rep. Jack Bergman of Michigan, wrote Collins July 1 saying the VFW’s use of the cartoon raised questions regarding the organization’s “fitness to represent claimants before the department.”

They asked Collins to review whether the VFW’s accreditation was consistent with serving as a veteran service organization, examine whether the VFW’s licensing of imagery to vendors for commercial sales was appropriate and look into commercial arrangements the VFW has made with businesses such as Grunt Style, which sells t-shirts emblazoned with the editorial cartoon.

The cartoon, which depicts suited “bureaucrats” — presumably the VA — and the “media” pointing rifles at two veterans with the subtext “punishing veterans,” “removing benefits” and “‘waste and fraud,’ was developed last year in response to a series of articles in the Washington Post on disability claims fraud but has resurfaced following the VFW’s opposition to legislation sponsored by Bost that would reduce future benefits for veterans afflicted with tinnitus and sleep apnea.

Bost has taken issue with what he said is the violent nature of the cartoon.

On Wednesday, he accused the VFW of inciting political violence with the imagery and called on VFW to remove the cartoon from social media, stop the sale of shirts and affirm its “commitment to fact-based advocacy.”

“Every organization has the right to advocate for or against pending legislation in Congress. That right, however, carries a corresponding responsibility to do so in a manner that promotes informed civic debate rather than imagery that can reasonably be interpreted as glorifying or normalizing political violence,” Bost and Bergman wrote.

The letter was first reported by Liz Hartman, a former Marine and veterans advocate, on her All Due Respect Substack column.

The VFW opposes a portion of the proposed Take Care of America’s Veterans Act that would increase benefits for thousands of veterans but cover its cost by instituting changes to the disability ratings requirements for sleep apnea and tinnitus for veterans moving forward.

The VA accredits numerous veterans service organizations such as the VFW, the American Legion, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America to help veterans file disability claims.

By law, only individuals and organizations accredited by the VA can file an initial benefits claim on a veteran’s behalf, and they are not allowed to charge them for work related to filing a claim. Once a claim is denied, veterans may hire attorneys or companies to appeal the decision.

The VFW employs thousands of veteran service officers to provide this service.

In the past decade, a number of private, for-profit companies have stepped in to assist veterans with the claims process, for a cost. The companies, which aren’t allowed to assist with claims filing, instead provide help gathering evidence to support initial claims and then help veterans on appeal.

But there is evidence that some of these companies have broken the law and are extracting fees from veterans with initial filings.

In May, a federal judge found the company Veterans Guardian operated as an unaccredited agent, engaging in deceptive business practices. In the class action suit, plaintiffs alleged the company collected more than $250 million in fees from veterans.

Bergman has introduced two bills that would allow firms such as Veterans Guardian assist legally with initial claims, capping fees at $12,500.

Both Bergman and Bost also have received political donations from political action committees affiliated with Veterans Guardian.

In response to questions from Military Times, VFW General Counsel John Muckelbauer said neither Bost nor Bergman reached out to the group before sending the letter. According to Muckelbauer, the VFW believes its advocacy campaign against a portion of the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act is consistent with its mission.

“We are confident that our advocacy is entirely consistent with our responsibilities as an accredited veterans service organization. Speaking forcefully on behalf of veterans is not separate from our mission. It is one of the principal reasons Congress chartered this organization more than 125 years ago,” Muckelbauer wrote in an email Thursday.

He added that the letter challenges that advocacy and nothing in it “identifies allegation[s] that the VFW or any of its accredited representatives violated VA accreditation requirements, acted unethically, failed to competently represent a single veteran, or otherwise failed to satisfy the standards applicable to accredited veterans service organizations.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs did not respond to a request for comment by publication.