The Defense Manpower Data Center suffered unauthorized access between October 2025 and July 2026, exposing records of 2.76 million living personnel and 294,000 deceased individuals. Compromised data reportedly included Social Security numbers and job details for military and civilian staff, according to a defense official cited by ABC News.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-30
Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel with over 620,000 X followers, worked as a civilian government employee under the Pentagon's undersecretary for personnel and readiness, part of a task force targeting 'woke' content at military war colleges. WIRED reviewed years of his social media posts containing extremist and anti-democratic rhetoric, including a 2021 call for authoritarian crackdowns on liberals, which had not previously been reported alongside his Pentagon role.
wired.com
· 2026-09-29
Heven AeroTech, a maker of hydrogen-powered drones known for long flight endurance and high onboard power output, says its aircraft could serve as airborne platforms for directed-energy laser weapons. The company frames its technology as a potential answer to the Pentagon's challenge of getting high-energy lasers airborne.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-29
A federal appeals court ruled 2-1 that the Pentagon acted within its legal authority when it designated Anthropic a supply chain risk, effectively blacklisting the AI company from certain defense-related dealings. The ruling affirms an earlier decision favoring the government's position over Anthropic's challenge.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-09-25
A federal appeals court has ruled against Anthropic in its dispute with the Pentagon, upholding the government's designation of the AI company as a supply chain risk. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decided 2-1 in favor of the Defense Department, rejecting Anthropic's legal challenge to the label.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-25
A federal appeals court in Washington DC declined to overturn one of two Pentagon designations that flagged Anthropic as a national-security supply-chain risk, letting that label stand indefinitely. The ruling leaves in place restrictions ordering removal of Anthropic's Claude models from military and other federal systems, while a separate designation was already struck down by a San Francisco judge earlier this year. Anthropic says it is weighing further appeals, including to a larger DC Circuit panel or the Supreme Court.
wired.com
· 2026-09-25
A federal appeals court in Washington ruled 2-1 to uphold the Defense Department's designation of Anthropic as a national security supply chain risk, blocking the Pentagon and its contractors from using Claude AI models. The ruling addresses one of two separate designations the DOD used to justify the ban; a San Francisco court had already struck down the other designation last month. Anthropic said it disagrees with the decision and is considering further legal options.
cnbc.com
· 2026-09-25
The Pentagon is developing a program called Polygraph+ (or Polygraph Next) that uses AI and machine learning to score truthfulness, alongside 'standoff sensing' techniques that gather physiological data without attaching devices to a subject. Separately, new research on transplanted hearts challenges the idea that young organs can rejuvenate older recipients, complicating theories popularized by comments from Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping about biotechnology extending life.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-25
A Pentagon budget document requests $30 million to develop 'Polygraph+,' an AI-enhanced deception-detection program to be run by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. The system would be used for vetting job applicants and detecting insider threats, though the specific technologies involved have not been disclosed. The request follows a period of increased polygraph use under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, including tests given to roughly 50 Joint Staff officers after leaks about weapons stockpiles.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-25
A Bloomberg investigation citing an unreleased Pentagon review found that overreliance on Palantir's Maven Smart System contributed to a strike that killed over 150 people, including 123 children, at an elementary school in Iran on the first day of the war. Outdated intelligence wrongly labeled the school an IRGC facility, and Maven surfaced it as a recommended target without flagging the stale data, officials said. Palantir denies responsibility, saying it does not own the underlying intelligence data, while the Pentagon retains accountability for what is fed into the system.
news.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-22
A Bloomberg report citing Pentagon investigators found that the February 28 double-tap strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' school, which killed over 150 people including at least 123 children, resulted from outdated intelligence compounded by heavy reliance on an AI targeting system. Investigators described the tragedy as a cascade of small errors rather than a single mistake, involving technology similar to systems used to fast-track thousands of strikes earlier in the war.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-21
A report indicates that faulty artificial intelligence output was mistaken for genuine intelligence within US military systems, coming close to provoking a serious confrontation with China. The error reportedly stemmed from an AI-generated assessment being treated as credible without adequate human verification before reaching decision-makers.
news.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-19