How much?
The US doubles down on military AI
While we wait for the Defence Investment Plan (lumbering into view any moment, surely, just behind Godot), I was startled by a couple of stats that floated past in my timeline today so dramatic that I had to pause, recalibrate, and deepen my sense of unease that the UK is in trouble. Here they are.
The AI economy in the US is growing by 2000% a year - Jack Clark, Import AI
Frontier models are doubling in capability every 100 days or so - METR time horizons
Next year, the US will spend more on AI and autonomy than the entire US Marine Corps budget (USMC is, on its own, one of the world’s largest and most capable militaries). And - more significantly - that’ll be more than the entire UK defence budget.1
Well sure. Apples and oranges, Ken. We are smaller than the US. I hear you. But we certainly aren’t spending as much as any one of our services on this. And the scary difference is the ambition for this transformation. It’s accelerating rapidly in America. We are busy doing W1 intrigue, nimbyism, due process and all manner of nothing very much. Strategic emergency, anyone?
Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG woof!) ($54.6bn) and the AI Arsenal ($46bn) are separate FY2027 budget lines: the former funds autonomous platforms and unmanned systems, the latter sovereign AI computing infrastructure. Combined, they exceed both the US Marine Corps FY2027 request ($80.3bn) and the entire UK defence budget (£62.2bn / ~$78bn in 2025/26). I reserve the right to be factually incorrect about all these numbers, caveat reader! But I don’t think I am… me and Claude worked hard on this.