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The Military AI

The Army Is Burning Through Its AI Tokens (wired.com) 91

Posted by BeauHD from the supply-and-demand dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A little over a month after the Department of Defense (DOD) bragged that nearly half of its 3.5 million employees were using AI at work, members of the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) received an email informing them that they were burning through tokens, and needed to limit use. "Although the Army CIO announced in May 2026 that they were offering unlimited tokens, by mid-June the Army CIO pool was exhausted of tokens and had to re-establish limits," the email reads. The email goes on to say that although the Army has chosen to renew token usage at "its current levels," it's unclear "if the Army CIO pool will be renewed after 1 Oct."

The Army uses Ask Sage, a multimodal generative AI platform where users can run different large language models (LLMs), including Alphabet's Gemini, Meta's Llama, and OpenAI's ChatGPT. "Apparently the whole Army burned through the whole year of tokens for just one service," says an Army employee who spoke to WIRED [...]. The Army employee says that the Army has been pushing its workers to lean into using generative AI. Employees were given an allotment of at least 200,000 tokens per month, according to emails viewed by WIRED, and were automatically allocated more if they burned through their initial allotment. Employees who had signed up for Ask Sage but were not regularly using it would receive emails encouraging them to use more of their allocated tokens.

In order to use Ask Sage, the Army had access to 100,000,000 tokens as part of an annual subscription to an "enterprise pack." Tokens represent a unit of output, either in text or image, from an LLM. For the Ask Sage tool, a single token equates to about 3.7 characters, according to documents viewed by WIRED. The Defense Department burned through some 20 billion tokens per day during the 38-day Operation Epic Fury in Iran, according to Breaking Defense. It's unclear if the tokens used by regular DOD employees are drawn from the same pool as those who might be using AI tools on classified or secret information.

The Army Is Burning Through Its AI Tokens More | Reply

The Army Is Burning Through Its AI Tokens

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  • The US military mostly does not use capitalism. It is the largest anti-capitalism organization in the USA. They care about lives, not bank accounts. It is run in a bureaucratic system that is far more similar to socialism than the Republican party wants to admit.

    Therefore it has to deal with the various weaknesses of that system, one of which is over-use of resources for 'trendy' and 'popular' ideas at the expense of the less sexy but more efficient programs.

    Right now that means drones and AI rule.

    • Re:The Army is not capitalist (Score:5, Insightful)

      by machineghost ( 622031 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @03:10PM (#66251908)

      This isn't about that. This is corruption, pure and simple. The US taxpayer is hemorrhaging money directly into the wallets of the AI companies, who undoubtedly paid off the guy at the top.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by logjon ( 1411219 )
        The time to worry about that would have been before electing the world's most prolific con artist to the world's most powerful position of authority. Our president is a scammer, so our economy is a scam. The American people decided in November 2024 that this is who we are.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by evanh ( 627108 )

          So give up and rejoice in the misery, instead?

          As the saying goes: Misery is easy, it's happiness we have to work at.

      • While I would love to grouse about how this is the result of corruption or incompetence, I don't see this problem as surprising. It's like the army fielding a new close combat battle rifle and then complaining about all the ammunition the army is firing.

        The modern battlefield is changing. We saw a similar shift in the 1980s when electronics went from tubes to discrete components to integrated circuits and then microprocessors. The war in Ukraine has shown how drones have become integral to the battlefiel

        • The difference is that Ukraine has beaten the worlds second^H^H^Hthird^H^H^Hfourth^H^H^Hsomewhere-in-the-top-ten military with relatively minimal resources. When the US tries to do drones it'll take 15 years of development, be built by Northrop Grumman with production spread across at least 40 states, cost $7m per drone, and require another 15 years of debugging to get it working properly.

          • I do not get your point.
            Is that rather cheap? Or rather expensive?
            And the bugs? Is that rather slow or rather quick?

            I mean, they could always say: works as designed, won't fix ... or something like that. For example: the problem is always between the chair and the joy stick ...

            Or even better: can't reproduce. Drone exploded as specified.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by logjon ( 1411219 )

      They care about lives

      I remember my first beer.

    • Should the Army be capitalist? You say this like it's a bad thing.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jhoegl ( 638955 )
        No, nor should education, healthcare, road repair, or water/sewage/trash/gas.

        Explain why you think they should.
        • I'd add utilities (electricity, internet) to that list.

          But think of the children. If you deprive the capital owners from making money off of basic human needs, they won't be able to hire servants, who won't be able to feed their kids. It's for the kids.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jhoegl ( 638955 )
            Yeah, this isnt cost effective or efficient. Instead what it does is moves tax money from the people, to oligarchs/rich. This was the argument back in 1980s as they were migrating public works to private company bidding.

            Which, as we see today, isnt a smart move by the people, but it is for those with those businesses, they get rich off of this, where as public works, no one gets rich, they just get paid and then pay taxes on that, literally a circular monetary system vs the Oligarch hording one.
            • I agree. People have been sold this belief that the government is incompetent, inefficient, and that letting the rich buy our infrastructure would mean it would be better managed and we would pay less at the end. That is the biggest lie of all, as any efficiency gain squeezed out goes to the owner, not us as a society.

      • Should the Army be capitalist? You say this like it's a bad thing.

        Sure, what could possibly go wrong? Just have private equity, the epitome of unbridled capitalism, take over the army. Again, why could possibly go wrong?

    • they care about lives? tell us more about you never been in service nor know anything about the military. that was a good troll tho lol

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by drnb ( 2434720 )

        they care about lives? tell us more about you never been in service nor know anything about the military. that was a good troll tho lol

        Actually your just the mirror image of what you claim to hate. Just ignorance of the opposite polarity.

        People who actually served know very well that it varies from officer to officer.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by drnb ( 2434720 )

      Right now that means drones and AI rule.

      Yes, the corporals producing the power points, charts, and graphics for meetings will have to do things themselves once again. I’m not sure I want the E4 maifa to go AI either, that sounds more dangerous than skyet. :-)

    • The Army is fascist (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @03:41PM (#66251960) Homepage Journal

      The US military mostly does not use capitalism. It is the largest anti-capitalism organization in the USA. They care about lives, not bank accounts. It is run in a bureaucratic system that is far more similar to socialism than the Republican party wants to admit.

      Therefore it has to deal with the various weaknesses of that system, one of which is over-use of resources for 'trendy' and 'popular' ideas at the expense of the less sexy but more efficient programs.

      Right now that means drones and AI rule.

      In the hopes of clarifying some concepts and descriptive words:

      The US army runs under fascism. Management is top-down, everyone has to do what their superior says to do, and if you don't do it there are grave consequences.

      All militaries across the globe run under fascism. All militaries throughout history have run under fascism.

      Almost all businesses are run under a similar system: there is one person at the top, usually with a vision of what he wants to happen, and everyone from there down what their immediate superior says to do. There is some leeway in the case of business: you can disagree with your superior and perhaps have a discussion, doing the right thing against orders is OK if it works out, and the penalties for disobeying aren't as severe (getting fired versus getting sent to Leavenworth, or being shot).

      The fascist model of governance is one of a handful of governing types we know about, and is useful in situations where decisions need to be made quickly based on experience (military planning) or based on vision (business planning). Military actions fall squarely within those situations. It's not the best model for an economic system, where divergent opinions and "try it and see" is more efficient, or a political system where individual corruption can lead to violations in human rights or reasonable policy.

      The US military is not capitalistic, but it is not "anti-capitalism" system in the sense that it works against capitalism in any way.

      The US military isn't socialist, except that it tries to provide for it's members in compensation for the risks they take. It's similar to businesses providing health insurance or stock options or reimbursement for college courses - we don't normally think of employment perks as "socialism", and in the same manner we shouldn't think of military benefits as socialism either. Socialism is a foundational principle, not a system of perks.

      I don't know that using AI is a weakness of the system. The military is famous for actually studying the effects that certain decisions have. You can look up the government's studies on whether and how much coffee improves performance, whether sleep learning is of any use, and the minimum IQ to allow before it takes more resources to manage an individual than the resources the individual brings by enlisting.

      Looking into new technologies and their application to warfare is something the US military does very well.

      And apropos of nothing, it's completely obvious that drones are a tectonic shift in military technology, this came as a complete surprise from the Ukraine war, and we totally should be pivoting away from expensive missiles and more towards swarms of cheap drones.

      I don't know why you're characterizing drones as trendy and popular, either.

      • Re:The Army is fascist (Score:5, Informative)

        by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @03:59PM (#66251982)
        But under fascism, the assets of the Army would be under private ownership, and this is clearly the opposite of what the OP is complaining about (precisely that it isn't privately owned).

        It's more accurate to call it some form of socialism.

      • Businesses are not run like the US army. Your understanding of them is heavily flawed. They are NOT all alike.

        Also, from what I understand, the various US branches are dramatically different. Being on a ship is very different than being a pilot, and both differ from infantry. In truth I hear it matters a lot about who your commander is.

        But with regards to businesses, your opinion is far off the norm. Each person running a business runs it differently. Some run it the way you describe, but that is in n

      • "The US military isn't socialist, except that it tries to provide for it's members in compensation for the risks they take."

        It should try harder

      • A Godwin thread, how fun! I'll play.

        I thought I'd take a look at wiki to refresh my terms, which sayeth, "Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.[3][4]"

        Good enough atm. So, on to the Gedankenspiel...

        support for a dictatorial leader: I got g

      • The military runs as an authoritarian. You have your top guy, his team of generals, and down the line it goes.

        Fascism: A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

        Now we can pretend the USA is a fascist regime for sake of argument, but that does not mean that all armies of all history have been under fascist re

      • The word you are looking for, is dictatorship.

        Fascism as expressed in Germany in the 1940s was a dictatorship, but not all dictatorships are fascist.

        Fascism has racism as a key component.

        • Fascism has racism as a key component.
          Nope.
          For example ancient Rome was not racist.

          Fascism mean, you treat humans as tools.
          And every human has the option to kill his superiores and advance in rank. Unless he gets killed by his superiours.
          Every rank / caste is a clique of more or less like minded people who like to kick down on the lower ones and progress into the higher ranks.

          For that you do not need "racism" or any special enemy class.

          Everyone is your enemy.

      • The American army is not fascist (Score:4, Informative)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @09:46PM (#66252548)
        Yes there is a command structure but the command structure goes up to and includes democratically elected civilians. Our army is managed and overseen by civilians democratically elected to prevent exactly what you're describing. There is a complex series of committees and oversight that most Americans are blissfully unaware of. Senator Warren will be happy to talk your ear off about it because she serves on all of those committees.

        Also remember if you are given an unlawful order you have a duty to disobey that order. That is not fascism. Fascism is a duty to a single individual. The US military has no such duty. Your duty is to the US Constitution and the United States and its democracy.

        Now one more election with the fascists winning and yeah the army will be fascist because the civilian infrastructure that controls and oversees it will be fascist. But that's because the entire country is fascist.

        We have a shitload of systems designed to prevent fascism and they are gradually being broken down. They have not completely broken down but the fascists have been working on this since newt Gingrich came up with the contract with America. So we are pretty far along in the process. It's a classic chesterton's fence where we kept tearing down a fence without knowing why it was put there

      • All militaries across the globe run under fascism.

        Just a nitpick, but you have it flipped. Militaries are not fascist. Their top down, hierarchical and disciplined organization has long existed before anyone came up with fascism. Fascism rather admires the kind of control militaries have of their ranks and tries to apply it to civil society and the economy. I agree with you that it's a lousy as an economic model for similar reasons that a socialist economy, where governments or large collective bodies directly controls the means of production, is slow or i

      • That is not what the word fascism means.
        Perhaps you should look up the word.

    • > They care about lives,

      As long as you're a white american.

    • I wonder if the Army is better off building their own data centers. For the cost of all those tokens, having their own, separate, sovereign AI space might just be the best thing for them, long term. Especially if they are able to create and fab their own silicon.

  • 65 years later... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SouthSeb ( 8814349 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @03:08PM (#66251906)

    In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

    We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

    https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20... [yale.edu]

    • Re:65 years later... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @03:12PM (#66251914)

      https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20... [yale.edu]

      I have to say - it's VERY depressing reading that and comparing President Eisenhower's thoughtful words with the bile, bombast, and often even absolute hatred that's regularly spewed by the current occupant of that office.

    • And the barely-ever-quoted next paragraphs, perhaps even more salient?

      "Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

      In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

      Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forc

    • Sort of a modern re-phrasing of "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee"

  • Wait, what? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The Army is using Google, Facebook and some random LLM, aka someone's else computer to do it's business? Wow, I now feel much more secure.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      they're mainly using palantir and it is proving to be very effective for ... pounding sand and concrete, which turns out to not be effective at all.

      btw, don't worry, the "army" has never been about securing you, it's only there to secure a few fat banker's business. (ok, some dedicated branches are there to make sure that you don't step out of line)

  • Chickens are home to roost. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @03:34PM (#66251950) Homepage
    The true cost of an AI query is coming to light. Also wtf is the army outsourcing anything to someone else's datacenter ON THE INTERNET? They get tax payer money almost like a blank check. They should have their own physically secure data centers AND they should not be on the internet...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      AI Overview:
      To overcome the fear of breaking things, reframe mistakes as feedback rather than failures.

  • 20 billion tokens per DAY?? (Score:3)

    by haruchai ( 17472 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @03:51PM (#66251972)

    when all they had to do was use a map?
    how did they manage to not get slaughtered in Afghanistan and Iraq, without AI?

  • 200k tokens is $10/month at most! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ihadafivedigituid ( 8391795 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @03:54PM (#66251976)
    Claude Fable is super expensive at $50/Mtok for output, but even so 200k is only 10 bucks! Opus 4.8 etc. are half the cost. What's the freakout all about?

    It would be insanely easy to go over that limit in a month when doing any kind of serious work. Calling it "burning through" is misleading.
    • Yup, it comes from not understanding how funding and military procurement works. If you go 1$ over your allotment it causes a lot of headaches....
  • 3.7 character per token? No wonder theyâ(TM)re âoeburning throughâ them - that doesnâ(TM)t get you very farâ¦

  • Ask Sarge would be better (Score:5, Funny)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @04:15PM (#66252018) Homepage

    Like ask Jeeves but with get 'er done attitude

  • Until someone can really, and I mean REALLY, explain to me what constitutes a token in a way that I can calculate and predict, these sorts of billing models are meaningless. Only then can we evaluate what the costs, risks and benefits of AI use really are in any sort of quantifiable way.

  • It's all that extra Testosterone! (Score:3)

    by jddj ( 1085169 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @04:35PM (#66252068) Journal

    Driving the generation of SUPER FREAKY AI PR0N!!!!

  • Nobody remembers or cares that a B-2's toilet cost $23k, so the Pentagon is updating to a newer, better form of government waste that kids today will better understand.

    • They're not the same as terrestrial toilets by a long shot, and production volume is tiny so no economies of scale.

      If you can design and fab a suitable shitter (priced to recover R&D, tooling, materials and integration into the aircraft etc) then go forth and get rich. Good luck with that.

  • list games

  • "The Defense Department burned through some 20 billion tokens per day during the 38-day Operation Epic Fury in Iran, "

    How many thousands asking "When should I place my Polymarket bet, is it NOW?"

  • So the $67 billion Hegseth asked for isn't for the Iran war, but for AI tokens?

    • Last year, the GOP congress gifted $500 billion over planned costs, nearly doubly the DoD budget. This year, GOP congress is attempting to gift $700 billion to the DoD.

      Apart from building "Trump class" warships without a blueprint, there's no discussion on how the money will be spent.

  • I'm wondering what questions cost 20 billion tokens per day. After a few days of simulations, the military should know the probable outcomes and and the easy-to-identify triggers. The problem isn't the military doesn't have a clue but more:
    - Political assumptions override the reality of a military campaign having large consequences.
    - Generals demanding an easy answer.

    Was the LLM hallucinating how to turn multiple failures to stop Iranian attacks, into a win?

  • I use on average 12 million a day. 200000 is about an hour at the desk.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Whibla ( 210729 )

      I use on average 12 million a day. 200000 is about an hour at the desk.

      Interesting, in the sense that, between you and a previous post(er), I now have an idea of scale* and costs:

      12m tokens / day @ $50 / m = $600 / day
      ~ $150,000 / year

      This equates to (roughly: varies by location, etc.) the salaries of 2 to 3 junior developers. And I have been led to believe that most AI companies are currently losing money on their offerings, with quoted ratios of 3:2.

      There's going to be some 'testing' times ahead...

      *I still have no real idea what you're using 12m tokens per day on - though I

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by BranMan ( 29917 )

        I also assume it is coding assistance. But $150K in tokens / year is the cost (not salary) of another engineer making about $110K. Assuming that LMB is paid roughly that, I would say that if he is doing the work of 3 people, the company is coming out WAY ahead on that deal.

        If he is doing the work of 2, it's break even, if more than 3, the company is making bank with this arrangement.

        In addition, there are other benefits too - more intangible. Like better morale - seeing stuff come together faster is very

  • And that was before they started burning through AI Tokens.

    Let it be known that our future is bleak - mitigation is not enough and world leaders are doing the opposite of what is needed.

    That said we can always spaff a few million on a new report that tells us nothing we dont already know and results in no action being taken.

  • That's another institutions that will want to be independent. I think all the companies "burning through tokens" are bad news for the expensive products and they will want to self-host. This will also be a reason why they want the government not to ban open models, because the offers of the large US companies are just too expensive in the long term.

  • Radar operator 1: incoming drone swarm !
    Radar operator 2: over 200 drones!
    Radar operator 1: targets increasing!

    Officer: start tracking, shoot them down!

    Fire control computer: tokens exhausted!

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