Building Trust in Defense Manufacturing

🚀 Building Trust in Military AI—A Practical Framework for Governance As AI reshapes global security, ensuring trust, accountability, and responsible development in the military domain is no longer optional—it’s a necessity. The new policy brief from Institut UNIDIR, Governance of Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain, Yasmin Afina, PhD and Giacomo Persi Paoli provides a structured, multi-stakeholder approach to tackling this challenge. 🔑 Why This Matters AI in military applications raises profound security, ethical, and governance challenges. Without clear frameworks, we risk unintended escalations, opaque decision-making, and reduced human control over autonomous systems. This report outlines six priority areas for a practical, trust-based approach to AI governance in defense: 📌 1. Building a Knowledge Base – AI in the military lacks global definitions and shared understanding. The report calls for a living lexicon to align key concepts, risks, and governance strategies. 📌 2. Trust Building – Trust in states, technology, and operators is essential. This means: • Identifying red lines on AI applications. • Creating verification mechanisms for compliance. • Developing global technical standards to ensure responsible AI deployment. 📌 3. The Human Element – AI must remain accountable to human decision-making. The report pushes for: • Clear guidelines on human oversight across the AI lifecycle. • Regular training for military personnel on AI limitations and risks. 📌 4. Data Practices – Biased or opaque data fuels unreliable AI. The report recommends: • Stronger data governance to ensure reliable and lawful AI training. • Cross-sector data-sharing platforms to improve transparency. 📌 5. Life Cycle Management – AI doesn’t stop evolving after deployment. The report outlines: • End-of-life strategies to prevent outdated AI from becoming a security risk. • Procurement guidelines for states and defense contractors. 📌 6. Destabilization Risks – AI could escalate conflicts if not carefully managed. The report suggests: • A multi-stakeholder platform to track risks and prevent proliferation. • Clear international agreements on AI’s role in warfare. 💡 Practical AI Governance, Not Just Policy Talk This report goes beyond theory—it provides clear, structured recommendations for governments, militaries, researchers, and industry stakeholders to work together on AI safety. 🔍 AI governance isn’t just about regulation—it’s about trust. Without multi-layered, practical solutions, AI risks becoming a destabilizing force in military operations. 📢 How should global leaders approach AI trust-building in defense? Let’s discuss. ⬇️ #AIGovernance #MilitaryAI #AISafety #ResponsibleAI #AITrust #EthicalAI __________________________________ Did you like this post? Connect or Follow 🎯 Jakub Szarmach, AIGP, CIPM Want to see all my posts? Ring that 🔔

Domino’s can track a $12 pizza. Some contractors still can’t track a $12M program... Defense buyers hate surprises. One manufacturer lost trust because 30–40 process steps were invisible. The contract stalled. Revenue slipped. The fix wasn’t flashy: 👉 Map the process 👉 Agree milestones with DLA (or any other defence buyer) 👉 Show progress in one clear interface Think Domino’s pizza tracker - but for defence programs. Queued → in work → paused → complete. Auditable, visible, predictable. Why does it matter? Because when buyers can see progress, they sign off faster. Trust grows. Cash flows. Programs don’t stall. That’s how you become the partner defence needs - not just capable, but reliable. #Defence #SupplyChain #AdditiveManufacturing #Compliance Sam Emeny-Smith Harry Toor James Longacre Authentise Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) Department of Defense Office of Small Business Programs

The Pentagon, 2017. The U.S. defense industrial base was stagnant, built to win the Cold War. Legacy prime contractors operated on cost-plus contracts, incentivizing 10-year timelines and billion-dollar overruns. Lockheed's F-35: 17 years, $1.7 trillion lifecycle cost. Boeing's KC-46: 8 years late, $5 billion over. The bottleneck wasn't technology. It was the trust architecture. The DoD trusted process over performance. Anduril's founders saw an arbitrage opportunity: the Pentagon's procurement model was designed for a low clockspeed world. Palmer Luckey: the wild card genius who'd built the future outside the system, solving VR at Oculus before selling to Facebook for $2 billion. Trae Stephens: the inside man. Founders Fund partner who'd served on Trump's Defense transition team, learned how to sell complex software to government buyers at Palantir. Brian Schimpf: the execution engine. Nearly a decade at Palantir, rising from Forward Deployed Engineer to Director. Together, they assembled the credibility to get into decision rooms. While competitors optimized government relations teams, Anduril removed the need for them. They didn't promise a future system; they showed up with a working one funded by their own capital. Legacy primes move in 5-10 years.  Anduril ships in 5-10 months. Everyone credits the tech.  The real disruption was the trust model, built for velocity. The Moat Isn't Tech. It's the Trust Model. Anduril's advantage isn't what they built. It's what they removed: cost-plus contracts that reward delays, requirements cycles that kill urgency, integration nightmares that fragment systems. Competitors can't copy this without gutting their operating assumptions. The switching costs aren't technical. They're existential. They didn't target a massive DoD program first. They found a customer with an urgent problem: U.S. Customs and Border Protection. They deployed their Sentry Tower on a private Texas ranch and proved it worked: 55 arrests, 982 lbs of contraband in 10 weeks. They didn't sell a proposal; they delivered an outcome. Proof had beaten pedigree. When Microsoft stumbled on the Army's $22 billion IVAS program, the Pentagon handed it to Anduril. The lesson extends beyond defense: every industry has trust models waiting to be arbitraged. All industries hide behind process when performance fails. Every NewCo has a choice: inherit that process, or replace it with outcomes. The companies that win won’t just move faster. They’ll re-architect trust itself - not as a promise, but as a product. Take the beach. Earn the fleet. Redraw the map. (Full case study sent to subscribers)