From PowerPoint to Power Moves: Harnessing the U.S. Military's Experience through AI and Data-Centric Strategies

The U.S. Military’s experience is both a great asset and entirely underutilized.

Co-authored by Bakari Dale (Army Executive), Greg Little (Palantir Senior Counselor), Colonel Joseph O’Callaghan (XVIII Airborne Corps Fire Support Coordinator), and Major Zach Riley (USMC Artillery Officer).

To maintain its edge and transition from PowerPoint to power moves, the U.S. must ensure that its military experience remains a powerful asset and that new technology is deployed at the speed of relevance. By adopting a data-centric approach to warfare, the U.S. can harness the depth and breadth of its military experience, transforming it into actionable insights for both humans and machines. Every day, there is missed opportunity as the Department does not create or integrate digital workflows and knowledge across its business and warfighting functions. If capitalized on, this opportunity will result in what our adversaries fear the most: a machine-augmented, battle-tested, and experienced U.S. Military.

The Why: Digital Workflows and Knowledge Empower Modern Warfare with Enhanced Decision-Making

In today's rapidly evolving military landscape, the importance of digital workflows and knowledge in accelerating the OODA loop – Observe, Orient, Decide, Act – cannot be overstated. This concept, developed by military strategist and U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd, underscores the vital role of agile decision-making in combat situations. Boyd emphasized, "Machines don't fight wars. Terrain doesn't fight wars. Humans fight wars. You must get into the minds of humans. That's where the battles are won." It is critical to understand and adapt to human elements in warfare. These were words of both advice and warning from Boyd. The military traditionally values standardization and often is challenged to remain agile in its approach to organizational change.

In the digital era, advanced technologies, digital workflows and knowledge empower military personnel to observe and orient themselves in complex environments more swiftly, enabling faster and more informed decisions. At the tactical level, this significantly shortens the OODA loop, allowing for a more dynamic and effective response to emerging threats and operational challenges. At the strategic level, it enables the synchronization of policy and sustainment with military goals, such as using informed means to apply expensive precision munitions and a finite number of assets. The integration of digital tools into military applications would merge Boyd's insights with modern technological advancements, creating a formidable force in contemporary warfare.

The problem is the vast majority of the DoD, from the boardroom to the battlefield, is run using PowerPoint. PowerPoint is static in presentation and transient in duration. It requires human cognition to find information, transform it, and present it on a slide. There is no automation and no exploitation of machine learning or AI that enables the presentation of live data “at the speed of war”. Once a meeting ends, the nuanced analysis and strategic insights the slides contain is often lost or forgotten. This problem is compounded by the static format, which does not easily allow for the capture of evolving thoughts, dynamic real-time insights, and integration of feedback. Essentially, the DoD, through the use of PowerPoint or visual presentation briefs, describes "what has happened" but does not achieve a decision advantage by presenting information on "what is happening" or "what can happen".

One individual or millions of PowerPoint slides do not scale in a globally contested, high-end fight against peer adversaries and asymmetric threats. Consider a seasoned chess master facing off against DeepMind's AlphaZero or the open-source Stockfish engine. Even the most knowledgeable and experienced human player is at a disadvantage against the machine's ability to process vast amounts of data and calculate numerous possible outcomes almost instantaneously. Similarly, the U.S.'s extensive military experience will not be able to meet the challenges from the complexities of modern warfare unless it can be rapidly converted into scalable, adaptive strategies where humans are augmented by the speed and power of machines.

The U.S. military’s experience serves as a formidable deterrent against rivals such as China. It’s not just about the size of the forces or the sophistication of the weapons; it's about the hard-earned lessons from past conflicts and operations. General James Mattis articulated this lesson, saying, “The most important six inches on the battlefield are between your ears.” This wisdom encapsulates the depth of understanding that comes from experience, an area where the U.S. holds a distinct edge.

The What: Digital Workflows and Knowledge Will Transform the Battlefield

So what would this look like in practice versus the status quo? Imagine we have a hypothetical Major Smith spearheading a U.S. Marine unit tasked with countering the strategic maneuvers of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In the era preceding digital transformation, Major Smith’s operational capabilities would be bounded by the limitations of analog methodologies and linear staff processes that require information to sequentially flow from one war fighting function (intelligence) to another (operations). His command post, cluttered with paper maps and lengthy reports, is a testament to the arduous task of decision-making without the aid of modern technology. Intelligence efforts would be compartmentalized and reliant on disparate sources that provide fragmented insights into the operational theater. Planning for critical missions, especially those aimed at preempting PLA advances, would be marred by delays and the inherent inaccuracies of piecing together static data. In this environment, Major Smith would be forced to rely on his experience and gut, as he has no ability to utilize the vast amount of data available to him.

Now imagine it’s 2027, and with the widespread adoption of digital workflows and knowledge as well as DoD’s data-centric approach, Major Smith's command center is reborn as a nexus of technological prowess. This digital command ecosystem integrates data from diverse sources—UAVs, satellites, and ground intelligence—into a unified, real-time operational view. At the heart of this transformation is an AI-driven platform, underpinned by a detailed military ontology, that not only aggregates current intelligence but also incorporates invaluable lessons from past military engagements. Major Smith achieves decision advantage by reviewing and selecting machine-generated courses of action.

This platform's unique capability to leverage historical data alongside real-time intelligence is precisely what PLA China fears most. The AI system meticulously analyzes previous operations against PLA tactics, drawing upon the entirety of the DoD's vast repository of experience to inform its predictive models. By evaluating how similar strategies have fared in the past under analogous conditions, the system can recommend actions that are not only tactically sound but also historically validated and sustainable.

As Major Smith faces the imminent threat of PLA incursion, the digital data-centric platform suggests a countermeasure that had been effective in past confrontations with PLA forces, finely tuned to the nuances of the current scenario. This recommendation enables Major Smith to achieve decision advantage grounded in the cumulative experience of the U.S. military.

This operation, executed with the precision and foresight afforded by the digital, data-centric command system, serves as a stark demonstration of the U.S. military's evolved capabilities. Cyber operations cripple the adversary's communication networks, while Major Smith's forces, optimally positioned based on the AI's guidance, effectively neutralize the PLA threat. This victory is not merely tactical but symbolic of the broader strategic edge that the U.S. holds — a direct consequence of its ability to augment human decision-making with digital knowledge and a common ontology framework.

The How: Ontology + LLMs

The DoD faces the challenge of navigating a fragmented and non-integrated IT environment predicated on Napoleonic staff functions that seek to use human cognition at the highest level – the commander or director – to integrate data. Traditional software architectures prioritize optimizing individual components at the expense of the overall system’s performance and agility. The DoD can change this paradigm by harnessing the power of ontological approaches to data and Large Language Models (LLMs). This approach directly addresses the challenge of effectively scaling and integrating the DoD's disparate IT systems and data across multiple business and warfighting functions, enabling collective experience to be leveraged as a strategic asset in future conflicts.

Digital knowledge, in this context, refers to the vast array of data and information that has been digitized, allowing for easier manipulation, analysis, and dissemination through automated systems. It encompasses a broad spectrum of data, from operational and intelligence to logistical databases, all critical for informed decision-making and strategic planning. Ontology, a term borrowed from philosophical discourse but increasingly relevant in information science, refers to a systematic framework that categorizes and organizes digital knowledge. It provides a structured way to represent relationships between different pieces of information, facilitating a common understanding and interoperability among various automated systems. This shared categorial structure enables different data sources and systems to "speak the same language," enhancing the military's capacity to synthesize and act upon information quickly and accurately. Ontology and digital knowledge are intricately related; ontology structures the digital knowledge in a way that mirrors the complex realities of the operational environment, thereby improving the accuracy and utility of information systems. The good news is ontologies are being embraced by the DoD and the Intelligence Community.

To simplify, the ontology natively models actions within a cohesive, decision-centric model of the enterprise. If the data elements in the ontology are “the nouns” of the enterprise (the semantic, real-world objects and links), then the actions can be considered “the verbs” (the kinetic, real-world execution). With every ontology-driven workflow, the nouns and the verbs are brought together into complete sentences through human- and AI-driven reasoning, which incorporates various pieces of logic. By implementing a decision-centric ontology that harmonizes data, logic, and action elements across the entire IT landscape, organizations can finally break free from the constraints of rigid enterprise architectures. The ontology centralizes knowledge, encapsulating it within a shared system and serving as a higher-level abstraction to write code for decision advantage.

In the short-term, the DoD can use LLMs to integrate essential data contained in a plethora of documents and presentations (e.g. PDFs, PowerPoints, SharePoints) into a shared ontology, subject to appropriate security and permissions. Using this unified data foundation, LLMs can then be used to radically accelerate analysis and decisions, enabling human decision-makers to ask direct and intuitive questions which are seamlessly triaged to the appropriate data and tools. This synergy between LLMs and ontologies facilitates the extraction, interpretation, and application of historical insights, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of past military operations and strategies.

The strategic advantage of such an approach is profound. It allows the DoD to leverage its historical knowledge in real-time, ensuring that decisions are informed by the lessons of the past while being tailored to the demands of contemporary warfare. This digital knowledge base becomes a force multiplier, enabling the U.S. military to adapt and respond to emerging threats with unprecedented speed and accuracy. In essence, it transforms the accumulated experience of the military into a living, evolving digital asset that can provide a significant edge over adversaries who may lack such a deep and readily accessible historical perspective.

The good news is that organizations like CENTCOM and the XVIII Airborne Corps are conducting daily joint operations using a data-centric approach, digitizing their mission workflows and knowledge across intelligence, operations, and logistics at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. They are also rapidly experimenting and fielding capability through efforts like Scarlet Dragon and Scarlet Dragon Oasis. These efforts are making a significant and immediate impact on military operations today, evidenced by the US Army's AI-enabled precision strike at Fort Liberty in 2020, which marked a significant advancement in military technology application. This trend has continued to accelerate, with AI technologies now actively enhancing target identification and precision in conflict zones globally. Nations like the U.S., Israel, and Ukraine are incorporating these digital workflows into their operations, showcasing the real and current influence of AI and digital workflows and knowledge on the battlefield, further emphasizing the importance and effectiveness of adopting a data-centric approach in modern military operations. In addition, initiatives like the Deputy Secretary of Defense’s Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE) and the Joint Fires network (JFN) aim to extend and scale this approach to all Combatant Commands.

In the long run, this approach could revolutionize military strategy and operations, making the U.S. military not just a repository of historical knowledge, but a leader in the application of advanced data analysis and AI-driven decision-making and workflows in the global arena. To echo the words of Winston Churchill, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” This data-centric and AI driven approach enables the DoD to look back with clarity, and thus, move forward with unparalleled foresight.

Waiting to use these capabilities on day one of World War III is unfortunately conceivable, but entirely unnecessary.