During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) questioned Lieutenant General William Hartman, the Acting Commander of the United States Cyber Command, about using artificial intelligence in responding to cyber security threats.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00General, I have just one other question. In early 2024, Congress received a briefing on
00:07the command's AI roadmap as required by the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.
00:14Given the release of the Chinese generative AI model, DeepSeq R1, what steps has the command
00:20taken to accelerate delivery of the capabilities and milestones in this roadmap and what is needed
00:27to make certain that we will be successful in this acceleration?
00:33Chairman Rounds, thanks so much for the question. So over a year ago, we produced, again, based
00:43on a congressional requirement, so thanks, our AI roadmap that laid out a plan for the next
00:49five years. Very close partnership with NSA and their artificial intelligence experts.
01:00And a little over a year ago, we decided that we had a really good plan from a staff standpoint,
01:07but where Cybercom could add value was in operationalizing these capabilities. So we took
01:14the majority of the staff portion of that AI task force, and we moved it to the Cyber National
01:20Mission Force. We went out and hired some additional AI talent, really focused on 90-day pilot projects
01:28that we could evaluate, and if successful, we could scale across the force. And if they weren't
01:35successful or didn't meet a need that we would then focus our efforts elsewhere. And so, over the last
01:4512 months, we have executed artificial intelligence pilots to secure the Dodon. Right? This is at the
01:53edge of the Dodon network. This is across network devices, and it's at our endpoints. It has been very
02:02successful, and it is where we're moving to in the future. We have integrated large language models
02:08into our hunt forward kits. We have integrated large language models into our offensive capabilities.
02:16We have partnered very closely with DARPA under Project Constellation and continue to transition
02:22capabilities mostly based on artificial intelligence to the force. Additionally, Senator, we have and will
02:31continue to work with the department on long-term resourcing that ensures we maintain
02:36advantage over China and any other adversary. I will say, you know, we were all, you know, paid close
02:45attention to and were alarmed by the DeepSeq model. All right? But the United States of America builds the
02:51best software in the world. All right? And we believe working with private industry, working across the
02:57government, that unique advantage in building the best software in the world will allow us to stay ahead of the
03:03Chinese. Thank you, General.