Overview
- Vice President J.D. Vance, speaking at the U.S. Air Force Academy on Thursday to about 900 graduating cadets, urged officers to “never submit” to artificial intelligence and said decisions over life and death must remain with humans.
- Vance explicitly endorsed a recent document from Pope Leo XIV that cautioned against outsourcing moral decisions to digital technology and framed military judgment as a uniquely human responsibility.
- The speech follows April disclosures by Anthropic about thousands of severe cybersecurity flaws in widely used software and a White House effort to craft a voluntary model‑testing executive order that President Trump declined to sign.
- Tensions inside the administration have grown, with officials such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushing for closer oversight, others favoring a lighter touch, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth clashing with AI firms over lifting guardrails for military use.
- The vice president’s remarks put ethical limits at the center of the policy fight and raise the prospect that future U.S. military doctrine, testing regimes, and training will emphasize human control even as the government continues talks with AI companies.