Army officers and officials meet with tech industry executives for a cyber defense wargame, AI TTX 2.0. (Army photo by Cpl. Giselle Gonzalez)
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Artificial intelligence will be a budget priority for Army Cyber Command over at least the next fiscal year and likely beyond, according to the service’s principal cyber advisor.
“We’re at the stage now where we need to have dedicated funding to it and it might not only be Army funds, these are a lot of oftentimes joint solutions,” Brandon Pugh told Breaking Defense on Thursday in an interview at the TechNet Augusta conference.
Dedicated funding is key, according to Pugh, who advises the secretary of the Army and certifies the cyber budget, because Army Cyber Command cannot fund AI work strictly from their operational budget.
AI for cyber, and particularly for defensive cyber, has been one of the four top priorities of Pugh’s office over the past year. Almost since the dawn of hacking, attackers have had the advantage in cyberspace. With the birth of AI, there might be a natural advantage for defenders.
