Two companies are set to receive contracts for a pilot effort
The U.S. Army plans to award contracts to two companies by the end of the week to develop artificial intelligence agents that could act against cyber threats on military networks.
“The one that we plan to award on Friday is our take action element. So essentially, how are we not only autonomously detecting a potential adversary? How are we now doing something — having an autonomous response within prescribed parameters of a human operator, or even in conjunction with that?” Brandon Pugh, the Army’s principal cyber advisor, said at the annual AUSA conference.
Pugh did not name the companies ahead of the announcement. The two firms may work together on the effort or pursue separate approaches.
Project Griffin aims to move from detection to response
The effort, known as Project Griffin, grew out of a tabletop exercise involving senior Army leaders and industry executives. In August, the Army issued a commercial solutions opening to solicit proposals. It received 108 submissions, which were narrowed to 10 finalists.
The Army already has tools to identify malicious activity. Pugh cited Panoptic Junction, which he said has a nearly 90% success rate in detecting suspicious activity on the network. The service still lacks a way to remediate those threats, particularly with limited human staffing.
Trust and oversight remain major hurdles
Awarding the contracts will not mean AI agents immediately begin operating on government networks. Army Cyber Command chief Lt. Gen. Christopher Eubank said the central question is whether personnel are ready to let an agent take action—and how they will verify its work.
Until now, humans have applied patches and remediated vulnerabilities. The Army must work out what it means to assign those tasks to an autonomous agent and how to ensure that its actions are correct, Eubank said.
The service is working directly with the companies to define what autonomous action would involve in practice and how it could be tested safely on Army networks. Any implementation will go through a deliberate, controlled process.
Army seeks to learn what industry can deliver
Pugh said industry representatives suggested using an open commercial-solutions process to encourage a broad range of proposals, rather than prescribing in advance what companies should provide.
Industry may have capabilities and ideas that are not yet on the government’s radar, he said. The Army therefore plans to test the companies’ offerings and assess what they can provide before deciding how to apply them to its networks.
