In the 1960s, the Department of Defense began shoveling money toward a small group of researchers with a then-fringe idea: making machines intelligent. Military money played a central role in establishing a new science— artificial intelligence.

Sixty years later, the Pentagon believes AI has matured enough to become a central plank of America’s national security. On Tuesday, the department released an unclassified version of its AI strategy, which calls for rapid adoption of AI in all aspects of the US military.

The plan depends on the Pentagon working closely with the tech industry to source the algorithms and cloud computing power needed to run AI projects. Federal contracting records indicate that Google, Oracle, IBM, and SAP have signaled interest in working on future Defense Department AI projects.

“AI will not only increase the prosperity of the nation but enhance our national security,” said Dana Deasy, the department’s chief information officer, at a news briefing Tuesday. He said Russian and Chinese investments in military AI technology heighten the need for US forces to use more AI, too. “We must adopt AI to maintain our strategic position and prevail on future battlefields,” Deasy said.

Previous Defense Department efforts to tap into the tech industry’s AI expertise haven’t all gone smoothly. Last year thousands of Google employees protested against the company’s work on Project Maven, which was intended to demonstrate how the US military could benefit from tapping commercially available AI technology.

The pushback against Google’s work on a program using algorithms to identify objects in video from drones prompted the company to decide not to renew the contract. CEO Sundar Pichai also released new guidelines on its use of AI that forbid work on weapons, but permit other military work.

The heart of the Pentagon AI strategy published Tuesday is a unit established in June last year called the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, known as the JAIC. It will function as a hub of AI expertise to support military branches, and vet all Defense Department AI projects larger than $15 million. The JAIC will also develop its own AI projects in a similar vein to Project Maven, including by tapping tech company algorithms and AI tools.

The JAIC was initially proposed in 2017 by the department’s Defense Innovation Board of tech industry experts, chaired by Eric Schmidt, previously chairman and CEO of Google. It was structured in large part by Brendan McCord, previously head of machine learning at the Defense Innovation Unit, a kind of Silicon Valley embassy for the Pentagon. McCord is also the primary author of the department’s AI strategy.

Lt. Gen. John "Jack" Shanahan, who leads the JAIC, said the unit will focus on rapidly deploying existing AI algorithms and tools, often contracted from technology companies, in military scenarios.

“Commercial solutions are available for most of the problems we’ve discovered in the past and will discover in the future,” he said. “That is where some of the world’s best talent resides right now.” Shanahan also led Project Maven, which is being integrated into the JAIC, and appears to be popular with US commanders.

In budget requests last summer, the Air Force and Marine Corps described plans to make wider use of Maven algorithms, including putting them “on multiple unmanned aerial vehicles,” and using them to identify targets based on data from drones carrying special cameras that can monitor up to 40 square miles of territory at a time. William Carter, deputy director of the technology policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says Project Maven has won respect for showing that Pentagon AI projects could be quick, and efficient. “One of the most remarkable things about Maven was that it was so cheap relative to the power of the system that was developed,” he says.