War-fighting Is Getting a Fresh Look, With an AI Focus

Posted: May 30th, 2023

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010. He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.

OPINION — “As service chief, we all have, you know, a dual obligation to make sure that the force can do what the combatant commanders need them to do now, today. But we also have to prepare them for the future. This is the secret sauce of being a service chief. You’re doing — all the time — balancing both of those requirements.”

That was Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David H. Berger speaking last Tuesday evening at the Council on Foreign Relations. Berger was there along with the five other Service Chiefs – Gen. James McConville, chief of staff of the Army; Adm. Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations; Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown, Jr., Air Force chief of staff; Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations of Space Command; and Adm. Linda Fagan, Commandant of the Coast Guard.

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