The U.S. Army’s 18th Airborne Corps can now target artillery just as efficiently as the best unit in recent American history—and it can do so with two thousand fewer servicemembers. This report presents a case study of how the 18th Airborne partnered with tech companies to develop, prototype, and operationalize software and artificial intelligence for clear military advantage. The lessons learned form recommendations to the U.S. Department of Defense as it pushes to further develop and adopt AI and other new technologies.

The U.S. government has an opportunity to seize strategic advantages by working with the remote sensing and data analysis industries. Both grew rapidly over the last decade alongside technology improvements, cheaper space launch, new investment-based business models, and stable regulation. From new sensors to new orbits, the intelligence community and regulators have recognized these changes and opportunities—the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, and other agencies should follow suit.

While the effects of the U.S. Department of Defense’s broad investments in research and development go far beyond what is publicly disclosed, authors affiliated with the DOD do publish papers about their research. This analysis examines more than 100,000 papers by DOD-affiliated authors since 2000 and offers insight into the patterns of research publication and collaboration by the DOD.

China’s leadership believes that artificial intelligence will play a central role in future wars. However, the author's comprehensive review of dozens of Chinese-language journal articles about AI and warfare reveals that Chinese defense experts claim that Beijing is facing several technological challenges that may hinder its ability to capitalize on the advantages provided by military AI. This report outlines these perceived barriers and identifies several technologies that Chinese experts believe may help the country develop and deploy military AI-enabled systems.

In February 2024, CSET introduced its new cybersecurity jobs dataset, a novel resource comprising ~1.4 million LinkedIn profiles of current U.S. cybersecurity workers. This data snapshot uses the dataset to identify top-producing institutions of cybersecurity talent.

President Biden's October 2023 executive order prioritizes the governance of artificial intelligence in the federal government, prompting the urgent creation of AI risk management standards and procurement guidelines. Soon after the order's signing, the Office of Management and Budget issued guidance for federal departments and agencies, including minimum risk standards for AI in federal contracts. Similar to cybersecurity, procurement rules will be used to enforce AI development best practices for federal suppliers. This report offers recommendations for implementing AI risk management procurement rules.

U.S. technology companies have become important actors in modern conflicts, and several of them have meaningfully contributed to Ukraine’s defense. But many of these companies are deeply entangled with China, potentially complicating their decision-making in a potential Taiwan contingency.

Research participants who read propaganda generated by GPT-3 davinci (a large language model) were nearly as persuaded as those who read real propaganda from Iran or Russia, according to a new peer-reviewed study by Josh A. Goldstein and co-authors.

This data snapshot is the first in a series on CSET’s cybersecurity jobs data, a new dataset created by classifying data from 513 million LinkedIn user profiles. Here, we offer an overview of its creation and explore some use cases for analysis.

Strengthening the federal cyber workforce is one of the main priorities of the National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy. The National Science Foundation’s CyberCorps Scholarship-for-Service program is a direct cyber talent pipeline into the federal workforce. As the program tries to satisfy increasing needs for cyber talent, it is apparent that some form of program expansion is needed. This policy brief summarizes trends from participating institutions to understand how the program might expand and illustrates a potential future artificial intelligence (AI) federal scholarship-for-service program.