Debris from implosion of Titanic-bound submersible is returned to land

PORTLAND, Maine — Debris from the Titan submersible has been returned to land after a fatal implosion during its voyage to the wreck of the Titanic captured the world’s attention last week.

The return of the debris to port in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, is a key piece of the investigation into why the submersible imploded, killing all five people on board. Twisted chunks of the 22-foot submersible were unloaded at a Canadian Coast Guard pier Wednesday.

The Canadian ship Horizon Arctic carried a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, to search the ocean floor near the Titanic wreck for pieces of the submersible. Pelagic Research Services, a company with offices in Massachusetts and New York that owns the ROV, said Wednesday that it has completed offshore operations.

Pelagic Research Services’ team is “still on mission” and cannot comment on the ongoing Titan investigation, which involves several government agencies in the U.S. and Canada, said Jeff Mahoney, a spokesperson for the company.

“They have been working around the clock now for 10 days, through the physical and mental challenges of this operation, and are anxious to finish the mission and return to their loved ones,” Mahoney said.

Debris from the Titan was located about 12,500 feet underwater and roughly 1,600 feet from the Titanic on the ocean floor, the Coast Guard said last week. The Coast Guard is leading the investigation into why the submersible imploded during its June 18 descent. Officials announced on June 22 that the submersible had imploded and all five people on board were dead.

The Coast Guard has convened a Marine Board of Investigation into the implosion. That is the highest level of investigation conducted by the Coast Guard.

One of the experts the Coast Guard consulted with during the search said analyzing the physical material of recovered debris could reveal important clues about what happened to the Titan. And there could be electronic data, said Carl Hartsfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

“Certainly all the instruments on any deep sea vehicle, they record data. They pass up data. So the question is, is there any data available? And I really don’t know the answer to that question,” he said Monday.

Representatives for Horizon Arctic did not respond to requests for comment.

Coast Guard representatives declined to comment on the investigation or the return of debris to shore Wednesday. No bodies have been recovered, though Coast Guard officials said days earlier that they were taking precautions in case they encountered human remains during the investigation.

OceanGate CEO and pilot Stockton Rush was killed in the implosion along with two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

Representatives for the National Transportation Safety Board and Transportation Safety Board of Canada, which are both involved in the investigation, also declined to comment. The National Transportation Safety Board has said the Coast Guard has declared the loss of the Titan submersible to be a “major marine casualty” and the Coast Guard will lead the investigation.

“We are not able to provide any additional information at this time as the investigation is ongoing,” said Liam MacDonald, a spokesperson for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

A spokesperson for the International Maritime Organization, the U.N.’s maritime agency, has said any investigative reports from the disaster would be submitted for review. Member states of the IMO can also propose changes such as stronger regulations of submersibles.

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Americans remain divided on gun control as national worry over violence rises Pew report finds

As gun-related death rates continue to rise each year in the U.S., a new Pew Research study found that while views about gun ownership and gun policy remain starkly divided along party lines, Americans across the political spectrum increasingly see gun violence and violent crime as issues of national concern.

Democrats and Republicans agree on little when it comes to gun ownership and gun policies, according to the report released Wednesday. Seventy-nine percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents surveyed said they believe that gun ownership increases safety; nearly the same percentage of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said the opposite. Only one policy proposal, restrictions on gun purchases for people with mental illnesses, received bipartisan support in the Pew study.

Despite these differences, 60 percent of Americans surveyed said they believe gun violence is a ‘very big’ national issue, up seven percentage points from 2018. Americans in both parties are also increasingly concerned about violent crime; 59 percent of Americans see violent crime as a ‘very big’ national issue, up seven percentage points from 2018, according to the report. Over 60 percent of Americans said they believe that gun violence will increase in the next five years; just seven percent believe it will decrease during that time period.

Concerns among Democrats and Republicans about crime have increased similarly. Fifty-two percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans view crime as a ‘very big’ national issue, up eight and 12 percentage points from 2021 respectively.

Meanwhile, concerns about gun violence are up 11 points among both Republicans and Democrats. That said, an over 40-point gap still exists between the two parties’ voters on the issue; 81 percent of Democrats view gun violence as a ‘very big’ issue as opposed to just 38 percent of Republicans.

The data from Pew comes as violent crime remains a critical talking point for Republicans on the campaign trail, and as the number of mass shootings and gun-related homicides and suicides continues to increase in the wake of the pandemic. FBI data from 2021, the most recently available year for crime data, noted that 61 mass shootings occurred that year, and that gun-related homicides and suicides that year were responsible for the deaths of 48,830 Americans.

In response to several high-profile mass shootings, notably the May 2022 shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill negotiated the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which expanded background checks and federal funding for community and mental health initiatives. The bill, which President Joe Biden signed into law in July 2022, was the first major piece of gun control legislation passed in three decades.

However, the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill have continued to push for further federal gun control measures. In February, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) reintroduced the Background Check Expansion Act. The bill, which faces steep odds in the slimly-Democratic Senate and the Republican-controlled House, would extend federal background checks to cover almost all sales and transfers of firearms between individuals.

Biden has also indicated his desire to take greater action on gun violence, saying in a speech in Connecticut earlier this month that the Safer Communities Act was "an important first step" and that "we are not finished."

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How the Supreme Courts decision on election law could shut the door on future fake electors

The Supreme Court’s rejection of a controversial election theory may also have another huge political consequence for future presidential contests: It obliterated the dubious fake elector scheme that Donald Trump deployed in his failed attempt to seize a second term.

That scheme relied on friendly state legislatures appointing “alternate” slates of pro-Trump presidential electors — even if state laws certified victory for Joe Biden. Backed by fringe theories crafted by attorneys like John Eastman, Trump contended that state legislatures could unilaterally reverse the outcome and override their own laws and constitutions to do so.

Mainstream election lawyers on both sides of the aisle denounced the theory in the months after the 2020 election. But because no court had ever directly ruled on the theory, its proponents were able to describe it as a plausible, if untested, interpretation of constitutional law. Eastman himself, currently facing disbarment in California for his actions to subvert the election, has claimed that he was engaged in “good-faith” advocacy on an unsettled legal question.

But by rejecting the so-called independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper on Tuesday, Chief Justice Roberts effectively extinguished it as a plausible path in 2024 and beyond.

“It keeps the toothpaste in the tube, in the sense that the theories that would give state legislatures unvarnished power has been rejected,” said Ben Ginsberg, a prominent Republican elections attorney who loudly pushed back against Trump’s attempts in 2020 to overturn his loss. “State legislatures thinking that they can just, if they feel like it after an election, replace the popular will with a slate of electors is as gone as ‘there can't be any review of redistricting plans.’”

Tuesday’s opinion primarily revolves around an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause, which says that state legislatures can set rules for congressional elections in their states.

Though some on the right have interpreted the clause as giving state legislatures total authority to write and rewrite election procedures, without any input from governors or state courts, the Supreme Court rejected that notion.

That decision cuts the already-wobbly legal legs out from under Trump’s last-ditch efforts to remain in power. When Trump tried to subvert the 2020 election, his allies relied, in part, on a similarly fringe interpretation of the Constitution’s electors clause, which permits state legislatures to determine the method for appointing presidential electors. Eastman and other Trump allies argued that state legislatures could determine unilaterally that Trump was the rightful winner, appointing their own electors to be counted on Jan. 6, 2021.

No state legislatures embraced Eastman’s calls, and the effort collapsed when then-Vice President Mike Pence refused a simultaneous pressure campaign to single-handedly postpone the counting of electoral votes.

Tuesday’s decision contained just glancing discussion of the electors clause in its majority opinion, which was joined by liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson and conservatives Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. But in soundly rejecting the independent state legislature theory, the implications were clear: “The Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review,” Roberts wrote.

“Today’s ruling makes clear, for example, that an elected state legislature cannot cut the people of the state out of the loop of picking presidential elections if the state constitution requires that electors to the electoral college be popularly selected,” argued Vikram Amar, a law professor at the University of Illinois, on a call organized by the group Protect Democracy and others who opposed the independent state legislature theory.

The elections clause and electors clause contain very similar language. The elections clause reads that the “times, places and manner” of electing senators and representatives “shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof,” while also granting explicit powers to Congress to do the same. The electors clause similarly says each state shall appoint presidential electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.”

“The operative constitutional language in the two clauses is essentially identical,” said Michael Luttig, a former conservative federal appellate judge who advised Pence to reject those alternative slate of electors on Jan. 6.

The clearest link between Tuesday’s decision and the Trump election gambit was in the references to a 140-year-old Supreme Court decision in McPherson v. Blacker — a ruling cited repeatedly by Trump’s allies as they sought to justify their efforts to supplant Biden’s electors with their own.

That 1892 decision paved the way for a Michigan law that permitted the appointment of electors by congressional district, and it emphasized the power of legislatures to dictate the way presidential electors are chosen.

Eastman has repeatedly cited that ruling as evidence that state legislatures could simply ignore state court decisions they disliked regarding the appointment of electors, and he has reupped those arguments as he seeks to hold onto his California law license this month.

Like Eastman, then-DOJ official Jeffrey Clark cited the McPherson decision in a now-infamous letter that he pressed Justice Department leaders to issue on the cusp of Jan. 6, 2021, urging them to call their legislatures into session and consider appointing a new slate of electors. Trump appeared to briefly appoint Clark as acting attorney general amid this battle before rescinding the decision amid a mass resignation threat by top DOJ officials.

Roberts made clear that the McPherson ruling was not a green light for state legislatures to ignore the constraints of state constitutions, laws and courts. In fact, the 19th-Century opinion didn’t address such a conflict.

“Our decision in McPherson … had nothing to do with any conflict between provisions of the Michigan Constitution and action by the State’s legislature — the issue we confront today,” he wrote.

Conversely, the dissent from the Roberts opinion, authored by Justice Clarence — whom Eastman clerked for in 1996 — might provide Eastman a boost in his effort to save his bar license. Eastman has argued that even if his legal theory was wrong, it’s not a punishable offense to give incorrect or unpopular legal advice.

Bar discipline authorities seeking to disbar him, however, say Eastman’s advice was catastrophically wrong and built on assumptions and inferences that no lawyer could make in good faith. They have repeatedly emphasized that Eastman sought to avoid court battles over his theory because they might have resulted in an adverse decision before Jan. 6.

But Thomas’ dissent made clear he endorsed a key aspect of Eastman’s view: that state legislatures are not bound by their own constitutions when it comes to the appointment of electors. Citing McPherson, Thomas rejected Roberts’ interpretation of the case.

“Contrary to the majority’s suggestion of ambiguity … this statement can only have meant that the state legislature’s power to direct the manner of appointing electors may not be limited by the state constitution,” Thomas wrote in a footnote. One other justice — conservative Neil Gorsuch — signed onto that portion of Thomas’ dissent.

Eastman had urged Pence to consider electoral votes purportedly cast by pro-Trump activists in several states that Biden won, even when no state legislatures agreed to endorse a slate of “alternate” electors.

That push has landed Eastman at the center of both bar disciplinary actions as well as ongoing criminal probes in Washington and Georgia.

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Supreme Court ruling supercharges state fights over partisan gerrymandering

The Supreme Court just turbo-charged the nationwide fight over gerrymandering.

It is a rejection of the so-called independent state legislature theory, with the Supreme Court leaving a role for state courts to wade into the increasingly common battles over partisan gerrymandering. State courts have been immensely influential over congressional control over the last half-decade.

The ruling ensures that state Supreme Courts will remain ultimate arbiters of partisan gerrymandering, and that they can rein in legislatures looking to use redistricting to eviscerate a minority party. Previously under the radar judicial contests will continue to see millions of dollars pour in to influence their outcomes.

“There was this real movement into state courts after 2018,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, referring to Democrats’ success in challenging Pennsylvania’s GOP-drawn map before a state court. “If anything, this is just ensuring that those fights can continue, and that a broader landscape of litigation can continue to be pursued.”

Wisconsin Democrats are perhaps the most immediate winners of the decision. Liberals won a majority on their state Supreme Court for the first time in over a decade earlier this year. They are already plotting to use it to unravel what is perhaps the strongest GOP gerrymandering in the country. The independent state legislature theory threatened to upend those plans, so Democrats now have a clearer path to litigate those maps thanks to Tuesday’s ruling.

It also has a major effect on a long-running fight in Ohio, where the state Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down GOP maps there as illegal gerrymanders. Ohio Republicans have asked the nation’s top court to intervene on similar grounds, but the court has not yet acted on their plea. Tuesday’s ruling means the fight will likely remain between the legislature and the state Supreme Court, which became more favorable to Republicans last year.

Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing to have court-drawn lines thrown out in New York, where a particularly aggressive Democratic gerrymander could cost Republicans several seats. While that fight in state court is ongoing, there is no immediate ruling that would give Democrats the green light to immediately ignore their state judiciary.

It will, however, have little effect in North Carolina, the state where Moore v. Harper originated. Republicans there, spearheaded by state House Speaker Tim Moore, asked the Supreme Court to restrain their state’s then-Democratic controlled high court from wading into a fight on partisan gerrymandering. But while awaiting a final ruling, Republicans won control of North Carolina’s Supreme Court, which overturned the previous court's ruling. Republican lawmakers are expected to redraw the lines this summer, and are expected to heavily favor their party.

“I don’t have confidence in North Carolina,” said former Rep. G. K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), who was once a state supreme court justice, pointing out that the changed partisan makeup of the state high court affects the ultimate outcome there. “I have no confidence that that court will overturn the maps.”

Republicans agree. “This decision has no practical effect on the already-underway redistricting effort in North Carolina. We look forward to the North Carolina General Assembly drawing fair lines that best represent North Carolina,” Jack Pandol, a spokesperson for the House GOP campaign arm, said in a statement.

The court’s decision on Tuesday also seemingly blessed the authority of independent redistricting commissions, which were the subject of a 5-4 divided Supreme Court ruling less than a decade ago. Both parties have benefitted from independent mapmakers in different states — but a world where California Democrats, for example, could gerrymander unabashedly would have been disastrous for GOP representation on the West Coast.

GOP operatives say the current judicial arms race began in the run-up to the 2018 midterms when Democrats secured a majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and then successfully sued to have the Republican-drawn map overturned.

The result: The Pennsylvania congressional delegation went from five Democrats and 13 Republicans to an even 9-9 split. Democrats took back the House majority for the first time in eight years.

The Supreme Court reinforced Democrats’ strategy in 2019 when it ruled that federal courts had no role in policing partisan gerrymandering — but left the door open for states to do so.

For Republicans, that was a wake-up call. They started pouring millions into judicial races in key states like North Carolina. In states where justices are appointed, they leaned on GOP governors to tip the scales.

A handful of states have partisan gerrymandering litigation pending in the state courts. Earlier this year, New Mexico Republicans argued that the state’s congressional maps were gerrymandered to benefit Democrats. A Democratic-controlled legislature crafted a map that helped now-Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.) oust then-incumbent Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell from her district. Herrell has already mounted a comeback bid.

But one of the judges said in January the state Supreme Court is going to be “deliberative” and won’t rush to a decision.

State Supreme Court hearings are also upcoming in Utah on July 11 and in Kentucky on Sept. 19. Both of those cases deal with GOP-controlled maps, with Republicans sweeping all four congressional districts in Utah and all but one in Kentucky.

In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s decision, Republicans were quick to point out that the Supreme Court does not give state courts unchecked authority in redistricting and other redistricting litigation.

“The questions presented in this area are complex and context specific,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion. “We hold only that state courts may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”

That, some court watchers argue, is a clear shot across the bow to state judiciaries to not get carried away.

“This is a first, positive step toward reining in recent overreaches of state courts,” said Adam Kincaid, the president of the National Republican Redistricting Trust.

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

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Kansas City teen recounts being shot after he rang wrong doorbell

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There was no way, Ralph Yarl thought, that the white man pointing the gun at him through the glass door would shoot him. But the Black teenager, who had gone to the wrong house in Kansas City looking for his younger brothers, was wrong a second time.

Yarl’s brothers were actually at a home a block away, and he said in an interview with “Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts that aired Tuesday that he hadn’t met the family of his brothers’ friends, “so maybe it was their house.”

After ringing the doorbell, he said, he waited a long time on the porch before the door opened.

“I see this old man and I’m saying, ‘Oh, this must be like, their grandpa,’” said Yarl, now 17. “And then he pulls out his gun. And I’m like, ‘Whoa!’ So I like, back up. He points it at me.”

Yarl braced and turned his head.

“And then it happened, and then I’m on the ground. I fall on the glass, the shattered glass,” he told Roberts, and “then before I know it, I’m running away, shouting, ‘Help me! Help me!’”

Yarl was bleeding and said he wondered how it was possible that he had been shot in the head. The man he had never met before said only five words to him, he said: “Don’t come here ever again.”

Andrew Lester, 84, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the April 13 shooting.

Lester admitted that he shot Yarl through the door without warning because he was “scared to death” he was about to be robbed by the Black person standing there. He remains free after posting $20,000 — 10% of his $200,000 bond.

The shooting drew international attention amid claims that Lester received preferential treatment from investigators. President Joe Biden and several celebrities issued statements calling for justice. Yarl’s attorney, Lee Merritt, has called for the shooting to be investigated as a hate crime.

Yarl’s mother, Cleo Nagbe, said on “Good Morning America” that she had been worried that her son got a flat tire, but that she then got a call from police telling her about the shooting, and she headed to the hospital. He was partially alert, but it was traumatizing, she said.

Ten weeks later, Yarl is physically recovered but said that he has headaches and trouble sleeping and that sometimes his mind is just foggy.

“You’re looking at a kid that took the SAT when he was in eighth grade — and now his brain is slowed,” Nagbe told Roberts. “So physically he looks fine. But there’s a lot that has been taken from him.”

Yarl said he is seeing a therapist and hopes to continue his recovery by focusing on his passions for chemical engineering and for music.

“I’m just a kid and not larger than life because this happened to me,” Yarl said. “I’m just going to keep doing all the stuff that makes me happy. And just living my life the best I can, and not let this bother me.”

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Ivanka Trump dismissed from New York fraud lawsuit against Trump family business

A New York state appeals court on Tuesday dismissed Ivanka Trump from the New York state attorney general’s civil fraud case against former President Donald Trump, the Trump Organization and three of his adult children.

The court ruled that legal claims against Ivanka Trump were too old because she left the family business to advise her father in the White House in early 2017. Attorney General Tish James filed her lawsuit in September 2022, too late to cover any alleged misconduct by Ivanka during her time at the company, according to the five-judge panel of the appeals court.

“The allegations against defendant Ivanka Trump do not support any claims that accrued after February 6, 2016,” the ruling said. “Thus, all claims against her should have been dismissed as untimely.”

The court also left open the possibility for the trial judge to further narrow the case.

James’ lawsuit alleges a yearslong fraud in which Donald Trump, his family business and the other defendants included false and misleading valuations on financial statements as a way to reduce the companies’ tax bills while winning favorable terms from banks and insurance companies.

The case is set to go to trial in October.

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The Pentagon tries to get AI right again

Russia’s use of military drones in Ukraine has grown so aggressive that manufacturers have struggled to keep up. China’s strategy for a “world-class military” features cutting-edge artificial intelligence, according to Xi Jinping’s major party address last year.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, has struggled through a series of programs to boost its high-tech powers in recent years.

Now Congress is trying to put new pressure on the military, through bills and provisions in the coming National Defense Authorization Act, to get smarter and faster about cutting-edge technology.

Defense pundits widely believe the future competitiveness of the U.S. military depends on how quickly it can purchase and field AI and other cutting-edge software to improve intelligence gathering, autonomous weapons, surveillance platforms and robotic vehicles. Without it, rivals could cut into American dominance. And Congress agrees: At a Senate Armed Services hearing in April, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said AI “changes the game” of war altogether.

But the military’s own requirements for purchasing and contracting have trapped it in a slow-moving process geared toward more traditional hardware.

To make sure the Pentagon is keeping pace with its adversaries, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) introduced a bill this month to analyze how the U.S. is faring on key technologies like AI relative to the competition.

The 2024 NDAA, currently being negotiated in Congress, includes several provisions that target AI specifically, including generative AI for information warfare, new autonomous systems and better training for an AI-driven future.

Other members of Congress have started to express their concerns publicly: Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, told Politico that the military has fallen “way behind” on AI and that military chiefs had received “no guidance.”

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in March looking for answers on whether the DOD was adapting to the “changing nature of war.” In response, Milley said the military was in a “transition period” and acknowledged it urgently needed to adapt to the new demands of warfare.

As AI has quickly become more sophisticated, its potential uses in warfare have grown. Today, concrete uses for AI in defense range from piloting unmanned fighter jets to serving up tactical suggestions for military leaders based on real-time data from the battlefield. But it still amounts to just a tiny fraction of defense investment. This year the Pentagon requested $1.8 billion to research, develop, test and evaluate artificial intelligence — a record, but still just a fraction of the nearly $900 billion defense budget. Separately, the Pentagon asked for $1.4 billion for a project to centralize data from all the military’s AI-enabled technologies and sensors into a single network.

For years, the Pentagon has struggled to adapt quickly to not just AI, but any new digital technology. Many of these new platforms and tools, particularly software, are developed by small, fast-moving startup companies that haven’t traditionally done business with the Pentagon. And the technology itself changes faster than the military can adapt its internal systems for buying and testing new products.

A particular challenge is generative AI, the fast-moving new platforms that communicate and reason like humans, and are growing in power almost month-to-month.

To get up to speed on generative AI, the Senate version of the 2024 NDAA would create a prize competition to detect and tag content produced by generative AI, a key DOD concern because of the potential for AI to generate misleading but convincing deep fakes. It also directs the Pentagon to develop AI tools to monitor and assess information campaigns, which could help the military track disinformation networks and better understand how information spreads in a population.

And in a more traditional use of AI for defense, the Senate wants to invest in R&D to counter unmanned aircraft systems.

Another proposed solution to rev up the Pentagon’s AI development pipeline is an entirely new office dedicated to autonomous systems. That’s the idea being pushed by Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, who co-sponsored a bill to set up a new Joint Autonomy Office that would serve all the military branches. (It would operate within an existing central office of the Pentagon called the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, or CDAO.)

The JAO would focus on the development, testing and delivery of the military’s biggest autonomy projects. Some are already under development, like a semi-autonomous tank and an unmanned combat aircraft, but are being managed in silos rather than in a coordinated way.

The House version of the 2024 NDAA contains some provisions like an analysis of human-machine interface technologies that would set the stage for Wittman’s proposed office, which would be the first to specifically target autonomous systems, including weaponry. Such systems have become a bigger part of the Pentagon’s future defense strategy, driven in part by the success of experimental killer drones and AI signal-jamming in the Ukraine war.

Divyansh Kaushik, an associate director at the Federation of American Scientists who worked with Wittman on the legislation, said the problem that the bill was trying to address was a lack of “strategic focus” from DOD on how to buy, train, test and field critical emerging technologies that are needed by all the service branches at once.

Pentagon leaders have acknowledged that the procurement rules that worked for acquiring traditional weapons like fighter jets do not translate well to buying new AI-enabled software technologies. “There's some institutional obstacles that are set up in the old way of doing procurements that aren't efficient for software,” said Young Bang, who leads the Army’s tech acquisitions as principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army.

Also in the House version of the NDAA is a mandate introduced by Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Ca.) that asks the Pentagon to develop a process to determine what responsible AI use looks like for the Pentagon’s widespread AI stakeholders — including all the military forces and combatant commands. That process will need to build on the Pentagon’s own responsible AI guidelines, which debuted last June.

These new efforts follow many frustrated attempts to make the Pentagon better at buying and fielding cutting-edge tech.

Project Maven, a DOD effort to bring more commercially developed AI into the U.S. military, launched in 2017 with a strong push by tech executives Eric Schmidt and Peter Thiel. Parts of that project are now housed in the National Geospatial Agency.

Before that, the Pentagon had launched, then relaunched, the Defense Innovation Unit, which focuses on accelerating the adoption of commercial technology. That unit was effectively demoted to undersecretary purview by former Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis, and is set to be elevated again to the defense secretary’s direct oversight in the 2024 defense bill.

And in 2019, bolstered by Project Maven, Congress created the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center or JAIC to develop, mature and deploy AI technologies for military use.

The JAIC was meant to speed the Pentagon’s adoption of the new technology. “None of the military services were doing AI at the speed and definitely not at the scale” that DOD leadership was looking for, said retired Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, the center’s inaugural director.

But despite additional authorizations by Congress expanding the scope and budget of JAIC from $89 million to $242 million across the 2019 and 2020 National Defense Authorization Acts, by late 2021, the JAIC was defunct, rolled into another Congress-mandated body: the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, or CDAO.

Craig Martell, a commercial-sector hire who now heads the CDAO, said the military’s previous AI strategy was good for its time but had been outpaced by the technology itself: “The state of AI in the commercial sector, and the use of AI in military operations has changed significantly since the strategy’s creation.”

The Pentagon has issued new AI guidance since the days of JAIC. Kathleen Hicks, the current U.S. deputy defense secretary, flagged the Pentagon’s 2022 Responsible AI Strategy and Implementation Pathway document as evidence of the Pentagon’s commitment to responsible military use of AI and autonomy.

And Martell said the CDAO was working on an unclassified data, analytics and AI adoption strategy to replace the outdated one from 2018, to be released sometime later in the summer.

Congress is keeping its eye on that process. In the House version of the NDAA, Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas) asked the defense secretary to brief the House Committee on Armed Services by next June on the Pentagon’s enterprise efforts to train artificial intelligence with correctly attributed and tagged data.

The House and Senate will now need to reconcile their versions of the NDAA before President Joe Biden signs a final version into law.

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