Cameron Stanley will serve as the next Pentagon Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced during an address at SpaceX headquarters in Starbase, Texas. 

The advancement of artificial intelligence within the War Department was a key focal point of the secretary's messaging to industry professionals at SpaceX. 

Stanley, an Air Force veteran who recently served in the private sector, along with a team that includes some of the best and brightest who are also from the private sector, is most suited to help the War Department meet the AI goals President Donald J. Trump set in his executive order. 

"This team will not only provide a catalyst for change in this department but will also act, we believe, as a magnet for other talented members of the tech community who want to join us in doing the mission-focused work to protect our great republic," Hegseth said. 

Speed is at the forefront of what the CDAO team is expected to do, Hegseth said. 

"Speed wins; speed dominates," Hegseth said. "[Stanley] and his team at CDAO will define AI deployment velocity metrics for all the pace-setting projects in the next 30 days, and report at least monthly after that. These will become the new benchmarks for programs across the department." 

Another key to advancing AI within the War Department, Hegseth noted, is eliminating naysayers — those whose own work is meant to put barriers in the way of the work of those trying to speed AI to the battlefield. 

"We will take a wartime approach to people and policies that block this progress," he said. "Barriers to data sharing, authority to operate ... test and evaluation and contracting are now treated as operational risks, not simply bureaucratic inconveniences; we are blowing up these barriers." 

The secretary said he's established a "barrier removal SWAT team" within the Office of the Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering to make that happen. The team, he said, has the authority to waive nonstatutory requirements and escalate to the deputy secretary of war things that slow down the acceleration of AI capabilities. 

AI systems require advanced hardware to run — computer power — and Hegseth said that's another pursuit of the new CDAO team. The War Department will pursue its own computing power on its own military installations. 

"We will invest heavily in expanding our access to AI [computing power] from data centers to the tactical edge, and [we] will tap into hundreds of billions of dollars in private capital flowing into American AI," he said. "President Trump's executive order has directed us to build data centers on military land and to work with the Department of Energy to ensure that we dramatically increase the number and breadth of resources needed to power this computing infrastructure."