The Department of Defense announced on Tuesday that it has partnered with Google to deploy Gemini for Government across its new GenAI.mil platform, positioning one of Silicon Valley’s most controversial firms at the center of U.S. military artificial intelligence operations. Google and its parent company, Alphabet, Inc., have faced years of public scrutiny over censorship, surveillance cooperation, and national-security contracts. Now it becomes the first backbone model for the Pentagon’s generative AI infrastructure, signaling a decisive shift in how President Trump’s defense leadership wages war, manages data, and governs military decision-making at scale.
In its press release, the Department of Defense—referred to by the administration as the Department of War—stated it has launched Google Cloud’s Gemini for Government as the initial generative AI capability on GenAI.mil, a platform designed to house future AI systems. Officials described GenAI.mil as built to cultivate an “AI-first workforce” and create a “more efficient and battle-ready enterprise.” The Pentagon confirmed additional AI models will follow, with access extended to all civilians, contractors, and military personnel. This move implements the White House’s AI Action Plan announced earlier this year.
President Donald Trump mandated in July that the Department achieve “an unprecedented level of AI technological superiority.” The Pentagon reported that as a result, AI capabilities have been deployed across desktops in the Pentagon and U.S. military installations worldwide. Officials characterized Gemini for Government as enabling “intelligent agentic workflows,” large-scale experimentation, and “AI-driven culture change,” framing the deployment as a shift that will “dominate the digital battlefield for years to come.”
The platform operates through the AI Rapid Capabilities Cell within the Office of Research and Engineering. The department stated this cell embodies priorities to revive “the warrior ethos,” rebuild force capability, and restore deterrence via technological dominance. Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael declared: “There is no prize for second place in the global race for AI dominance.… We are moving rapidly to deploy powerful AI capabilities like Gemini for Government directly to our workforce. AI is America’s next Manifest Destiny, and we’re ensuring that we dominate this new frontier.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tied the platform directly to military operations: “We are pushing all of our chips in on artificial intelligence as a fighting force. The Department is tapping into America’s commercial genius, and we’re embedding generative AI into our daily battle rhythm.” The Pentagon also announced no-cost AI training for all department employees to build confidence and operational fluency, with tools on GenAI.mil meeting Controlled Unclassified Information standards and Impact Level 5 security requirements.
Gemini enables secure natural-language conversation and retrieval-augmented generation, using Google Search integration to reduce hallucinations. Officials described this combination as delivering analytical and creative power directly to military planning environments. The initiative is part of Trump’s “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” published on July 23, which outlines three pillars for securing U.S. leadership in AI: accelerating innovation, building infrastructure, and leading in international security.
The plan mandates continuous joint assessments by the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to track AI adoption by the United States, competitors, and adversaries, ensuring U.S. military programs maintain comparative advantage. It warns that without aggressive AI adoption within the Armed Forces, “the United States will not maintain its global military preeminence.” The document orders the Pentagon to establish new talent-development programs, transform senior military colleges into AI research hubs, and create an AI and Autonomous Systems Virtual Proving Ground for testing emerging systems.
Additionally, the Pentagon directed DARPA to lead a technology initiative with the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) and the National Science Foundation to advance AI interpretability, control systems, and robustness. Google’s integration into GenAI.mil follows broader defense restructuring, including contracts totaling $200 million each with Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI, and an Army award of over $48 million to Metron Inc. for battlefield-tactical AI tools. Anduril has secured hundreds of millions in contracts for autonomous drones and counter-drone systems. As cloud giants increasingly host classified military data—Amazon and Microsoft manage critical workloads while SpaceX provides satellite connectivity—Google now serves as the Pentagon’s generative decision-support layer, pushing early stages of military judgment through proprietary black-box algorithms.