Episode 956: AI and the U.S. Military

Summary

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Newt’s World Episode 956: "AI and the U.S. Military"

Original Air Date: March 15, 2026
Host: Newt Gingrich
Guest: Michael Horowitz, Senior Fellow for Technology and Innovation, Council on Foreign Relations

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and the U.S. military. Host Newt Gingrich is joined by Michael Horowitz, a leading expert on emerging military technologies, to discuss the slow adoption of AI within the Department of Defense (DoD), the recent dispute between the AI company Anthropic and the Pentagon, and the sweeping implications of AI for national and global security. The conversation is rich with historical context, policy analysis, and speculation about the future of warfare in an AI-driven world.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Pentagon's Cautious Experimentation with AI

• Why Is Military AI Adoption Slow?

  • Horowitz attributes the Pentagon’s caution to its long-standing dominance: “When you're the best, it's hard to transform because every day the US Military is in fact the best. And so change seems risky.” (05:26)
  • There’s institutional inertia: top leaders are reluctant to invest in unproven technologies that could disrupt the current system—even though they acknowledge the transformative potential of AI.

• Historical Parallels with Military Reform

  • Gingrich recalls resistance to past reforms, like the transition to "jointness" post-Goldwater-Nichols and early rejections of aircraft carriers by battleship admirals, emphasizing the perennial struggle to modernize the military. (06:18–08:35)

2. Three Buckets: How the Military Uses AI (09:58)

• Bucket 1: Back-Office Functions
  • AI for logistics, human resources, inventory management—mirroring commercial uses.
• Bucket 2: Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR)
  • AI processes massive data streams (from satellites, sensors, etc.) to provide commanders with fast, actionable insights. “It becomes an incredible teammate to help speed up that process of getting more accurate information to commanders.” (11:39)
• Bucket 3: Warfighting and Autonomy
  • AI as decision support for commanders near the battlefield and the development of increasingly autonomous weapons, from semi- to fully autonomous strike systems.

3. Autonomous Weapons and Human Oversight

• Collaborative Combat Aircraft:
  • The U.S. Air Force is developing fighter jets accompanied by multiple “loyal wingman” drones, which are semi-autonomous but still under human control for lethal actions. (15:36)
  • “This isn’t science fiction anymore. This is becoming reality…We are on track to start fielding some of those systems before 2030.” – Michael Horowitz (15:36)
• True Autonomy?
  • Horowitz explains that, for now, humans still make the final decision to use force, but future increments may see greater autonomy as trust and technology mature. (16:47–18:04)
  • Discussion of existing semi-autonomous munitions (e.g., Javelin and radar-guided missiles) highlights that increasing autonomy is an evolutionary process. (18:44)

4. The Pentagon–Anthropic Dispute: A Case Study

• The Disagreement:

  • Anthropic, an AI company, developed a model (claudegov) for classified use but requested assurances it wouldn’t be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous lethal systems. Negotiations broke down, leading to a high-profile lawsuit and the Pentagon labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk.
  • “This is a tragedy. And my bottom line up front on that is the winner is China.” – Michael Horowitz (19:46)

• Breakdown of Trust:

  • “The Pentagon didn’t trust that Anthropic would be there for important national security use cases. Anthropic didn’t trust that the Pentagon would use its technology responsibly.” (21:29)
  • The irony: The military continued to use Anthropic’s systems even after the fallout due to their operational value. (22:11)

• Industry Ramifications:

  • Other AI firms (OpenAI, Microsoft, Elon Musk's X.ai) are reacting, some stepping in, some supporting Anthropic’s legal case to protect their own interests. Disentangling Anthropic from current DoD operations will be costly and complex. (23:36–25:05)

5. Inevitability of AI Proliferation in Defense

• General Purpose Technology:
  • Horowitz likens AI to electricity: “Every office in the Pentagon will be using artificial intelligence in one way or another…algorithms embedded in every American military platform in the coming decades. And I do think that that is inevitable.” (28:27)
• Pace & Global Competition:
  • The key question is whether the U.S. can maintain its edge and implement AI fast and responsibly enough to stay ahead of China and other actors. (28:27–29:48)

6. The Shift to Mass, Low-Cost Weaponry

• Cost Declines & Changing Battlefield Economics:

  • Cheap, effective drones and missiles are now ubiquitous—even non-state actors have precision strike capabilities. “The Houthis generated, you know, a billion dollars in economic damage, essentially firing flying lawnmowers that cost $20,000 a pop…Our sailors would sometimes fire million dollar missiles to shoot them down. That's not a good cost exchange ratio.” – Michael Horowitz (30:15)
  • Viral proliferation: Ukraine’s DIY drone revolution, the U.S. reverse engineering cheap Iranian drones for its own use (Lucas platform), and general spread of strike capabilities. (30:15–32:08)

• Strategic Shift Required:

  • The U.S. must shift to a “high-low mix” of expensive, exquisite systems (like Tomahawks) and truly low-cost, high-volume weapons—adopting Ukraine’s innovations and rethinking procurement. (33:55)
  • Current budget allocations remain heavily weighted toward legacy systems, with comparatively negligible investment in low-cost tools despite rhetorical recognition of their value. (34:48–36:01)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Transformation Resistance:
  “Sometimes when you’re the best, it’s hard to transform because every day the US Military is in fact the best. And so change seems risky.”
  — Michael Horowitz (05:26)

• On Historical Military Reform:
  “During the liberation of Grenada, an army officer had to go to a payphone, use his credit card, call the Pentagon to get a friend to call the Navy to tell them that the army and Navy radios were not working together.”
  — Newt Gingrich (08:01)

• On AI’s General Purpose Role:
  “Every office in the Pentagon will be using artificial intelligence in one way or another…algorithms embedded in every American military platform in the coming decades. And I do think that that is inevitable to some extent.”
  — Michael Horowitz (28:27)

• On Supply Chain Risk Labeling:
  “If you have negotiations that go south with the Pentagon and then the Pentagon doesn’t just cancel your contract, they also…try to take out your business…that creates a risk for everyone.”
  — Michael Horowitz (23:36)

• On Low-Cost Warfare:
  “The Houthis generated, you know, a billion dollars in economic damage, essentially firing flying lawnmowers that cost $20,000 a pop…And our sailors would sometimes fire million dollar missiles to shoot them down. That's not a good cost exchange ratio.”
  — Michael Horowitz (30:15)

• On Budget Priorities:
  “Even then we're talking what, like 1% of the defense budget? Something like that. It's a lot of money to me or you, but for the Pentagon, it's a fraction of what one aircraft carrier costs.”
  — Michael Horowitz (35:00)

• Concise Visual:
  “The battlefield is a very harsh rejecter of incompetence and the prices are enormous.”
  — Newt Gingrich (18:04)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Time | Segment & Focus | | ----------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | | 03:10 | Introduction: Anthropic/DoD Dispute; Guest Introduction | | 05:02 | Slow Pace of AI Adoption in the Military | | 06:41 | “Age of Precise Mass” in Warfare | | 09:58 | Three Buckets of Military AI Use | | 15:17 | Autonomous & Semi-Autonomous Combat Aircraft | | 19:26 | Evolution of Autonomy; Real-world Precedents | | 19:46 | Pentagon–Anthropic Fight: Details and Implications | | 23:08 | Tech Industry Response, Effect on Future Partnerships | | 28:09 | Inevitable Proliferation of AI in Defense | | 29:48 | Falling Costs and Rise of Low-Cost, High-Volume Weapons | | 33:28 | High-Low Mix: Shifting U.S. Defense Procurement Strategy | | 34:48 | Sclerotic Budget Processes, Underfunding of New Weapons | | 36:02 | Closing Thoughts and Guest Farewell |

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Thematic Takeaways

• The DoD’s conservatism in the face of radical technological change is rooted in institutional success and structural inertia.
• AI’s impact comes in waves—from efficiencies in logistics, to reshaping real-time battlefield awareness, to new frontiers in autonomous lethality.
• The Anthropic controversy highlights the tension between military necessity, commercial tech ethics, and bureaucratic politics—potentially impacting America’s strategic edge.
• The future of warfare is defined by low-cost, high-volume technological diffusion; the U.S. must adapt or risk strategic obsolescence.
• The infrastructure, procurement, and budget realities need to catch up to the rapidly shifting technological landscape to maintain U.S. military superiority.

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For listeners interested in the cutting edge of military technology, defense policy, and the real-world drama at the intersection of government and Silicon Valley, this episode offers historical insight, candid analysis, and a sense of urgency about what comes next.

Transcript

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[Newt Gingrich]

On this episode of Newts World the AI company Anthropic created a special model called claudegov, the first to be used on classified systems. This model does not have the same guardrails and restrictions that their models available to the public have on Tuesday, February 24, Secretary Hegseth met with Dariel Amodai, the Anthropic Chief Executive at the Pentagon, and they could not come to an agreement over Anthropic asking for reasonable assurances that its model would not be used for surveillance of Americans or in autonomous weapons such as drone operations that did not involve human oversight. Anthropic is now suing the Department of Defense and escalating their dispute over the use of artificial intelligence and warfare. I am really pleased to welcome my guest, Michael Horowitz. He is a Senior Fellow for Technology and Innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations. He's also Director of Perry World House and Richard Perry professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development and Emerging Capabilities and Director of the Emerging Capabilities Policy Office. He is the author of the Diffusion of Military Power, Causes and Consequences for International Politics and co author of why. Michael, welcome and thank you for joining me on Newts World.

[Michael Horowitz]

Thanks so much for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

[Newt Gingrich]

I'm delighted that you would take time to be with us, particularly with all the things that are going on right now. You've suggested that the Defense Department is really still approaching military artificial intelligence in kind of an experimentation mode. Why do you think adoption has been slower and more tentative than some people expected?

[Michael Horowitz]

You're a student of history, and I think it comes straight from there. The United States we have been privileged that the United States has the world's most powerful military and the world's best soldiers and the world's best technology. And sometimes when you're the best, it's hard to transform because every day the US Military is in fact the best. And so change seems risky. And so when it comes to the incorporation of Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. I think many people in the Pentagon, both before I served, sort of while I was there, and now recognize the enormous potential that AI has to transform warfare, just like so many other elements of our society. But it's been hard to get senior decision makers to invest the real dollars that you need to scale capabilities across the military.

[Newt Gingrich]

Why do you think that's true? There's a sort of sticking with the old system, and this is not new. This was also true, you know, for example, the battleship admirals who kept rejecting the idea that aircraft would work from carriers. Exactly what should we as a country do to get a genuinely modernizing Department of War?

[Michael Horowitz]

I think that we now live in an era that I would call the age of precise mass and war, where the combination of commercial manufacturing, the fact that precision guidance is now 50 year old technology, and advances in autonomous systems and artificial intelligence mean that now every country and militant group around the world can launch precision strikes in one way or another, and sometimes in large volumes, as we see Iran doing in the Middle east right now. And in that era, the way that the US has thought about setting up its military, I think needs to change a little bit and that the United States needs to be a lot more aggressive in incorporating some of these artificial intelligence tools that can help our troops and our senior decision makers make sense of the battlefield, processing information much faster and getting information to the right people at the right time so they can make the correct decisions and help the American military fight and win the nation's wars.

[Newt Gingrich]

I helped found the Military reform caucus in 1981. I was the third witness on behalf of the Goldwater Nichols bill that profoundly changed the system and moved us towards jointness, in which, by the way, every currently serving active duty force are opposed. They hated the idea of being forced into jointness, and they actually got Reagan and Secretary of Defense Weinberger to oppose it. And we won anyway because it was so obvious how out of cycle the system was, because during the liberation of Grenada, an army officer had to go to a payphone, use his credit card, call the Pentagon to get a friend to call the Navy to tell them that the army and Navy radios were not working together.

[Michael Horowitz]

Unbelievable. I mean, it is believable. That's the problem.

[Newt Gingrich]

What it did was it led to hearings where these four stars would come in, explain the system was really working. And then an everyday congressman who might not have been all that sophisticated said, let me get this straight. You think that having to use a credit card at a pay phone is a solution? And of Course, they had no answers and they just were totally discredited. So I've been working this problem of how do you modernize defense for a fair length of time? It always involves the building doing everything it can to avoid it. Great speeches, but very timid decisions when you look at that. And it strikes me that artificial intelligence is both going to have a supportive role in that. Things like managing inventories, tracking data. There's just a thousand ways that it's going to dramatically improve and accelerate what we can do. And at the same time, it may well end up having a war fighting role. So you've got to actually look at both sides of this. How are you using it to dramatically modernize and improve the ongoing systems? But also, how do you potentially have to rethink the whole art of war in what could really become a real time, astonishingly complex situation? How do you approach that? How do you think about that?

[Michael Horowitz]

It's a great question. I think that artificial intelligence is really changing the character of warfare. And I would think about three different buckets that artificial intelligence falls into for a military like the United States. The first bucket are uses of artificial intelligence for the military that sort of, as you suggested, are exactly like what you would see in a company in the private sector. Uses for human resources, payroll processing, basic logistics, all of those things where artificial intelligence can speed workflows, simplify things, generate efficiencies, et cetera. That's bucket one. Bucket two is in what I would call the intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance arena. And that is the way that the military is getting all sorts of data from satellites, from human sources, from airborne sensors, from troops on the battlefield, and taking all of that data and trying strategically to understand the capabilities of potential adversaries like China or Russia. And tactically, then, in the context of a conflict that's happening, figure out what is actually going on in Iran or what is actually going on in the Strait of Hormuzzi. And in that case, the ability of artificial intelligence to process data quickly and to pull out the signal from the noise faster than a human might be able to, means that it becomes an incredible teammate to help speed up that process of getting more accurate information to commanders. So that's bucket two. Then Bucket three is the sort of pointy end of the spear. And that is the use of artificial intelligence as decision support, essentially tools to help commanders make good decisions close to the battlefield. And then potentially the incorporation of artificial intelligence into what are called autonomous weapon systems, which are weapon systems that can select and engage targets themselves after a human activates them. And to be clear, as you know, the military has been using artificial intelligence for decades and the United States has actually fielded some of these kinds of weapon systems with very, very simple sort of more primitive types of artificial intelligence since the 1980s. But today as artificial intelligence tools have become much more powerful then the prospect for them to really impact the battlefield has become much more powerful as well. But those are the three buckets I think.

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[Newt Gingrich]

When you think about it in those three buckets. Let me start with the last one you mentioned, the point of the spear. How realistic is it in your mind that you're going to have, for example, one fighter aircraft with 30 or 40 smart drones that are capable of operating autonomously?

[Michael Horowitz]

I sure hope that happens sooner rather than later. When I was in the Pentagon a couple of years ago, we moved forward and created a new program for the Air Force called Collaborative Combat Aircraft, where the whole idea is that you have an advanced US fighter jet like say an F35 surrounded by a series of unmanned aircraft that can operate mostly autonomously but are controlled by that pilot or by someone in a different aircraft nearby. And that really can amplify the ability of our individual fighter pilots to have impact on the battlefield because each of those drones then can carry missiles, they can carry sensors, and we are on track to start yielding some of those systems before 2030. So this isn't science fiction anymore. This is becoming reality. And it might be one pilot surrounded by five drones to start, not one pilot surrounded by 30 drones. But that's the direction of travel we are moving in.

[Newt Gingrich]

From that standpoint, does that become truly autonomous? Is there some middle ground here where you still have human engagement interacting with semi autonomous systems?

[Michael Horowitz]

So the collaborative combat aircraft that the US Air Force is envisioning right now are what we would call semi autonomous. And that they have autonomous flight and they can do lots of things autonomously. But when it comes to the use of force, actually firing a missile, dropping a bomb, there's still that human pilot in say the F35 or in some other airplane that's controlling them is still the one that makes the decision about that. Now that of course raises the question, as technology improves, and sorry, just to be clear about this, the Air Force isn't, or at least I hope not, isn't having the human make the decision. Because out of principle per se. It's because they think that's the most effective way to use force. And in part that's because the technology still has a ways to go for something like collaborative combat aircraft. Before you could have autonomous weapons release, but one could imagine future increments, future collaborative combat aircraft that the Air Force deploys that would be completely autonomous. And it's just a question of how quickly the technology advances and whether the Air Force can prove that it reliably works. Since you know this better than I do, nobody wants their technology to work more than the military because it's their lives that are on the line.

[Newt Gingrich]

The battlefield is a very harsh rejecter of incompetence and the prices are enormous. So you're exactly right. I think people who've never served or never been close to military really do not appreciate how harsh it is and how great the pressure is to try to do it right. There are some anti tank weapons that in fact are relatively autonomous in that they have been programmed to look for tanks and if they see a tank, they've been programmed to go ahead and kill it. And I think they currently don't do that with any kind of permission from the initial source. I think it's all on board.

[Michael Horowitz]

That's absolutely right. Those are still from a very technical Pentagon policy perspective. Now those are still called semi autonomous because a human is firing the individual Javelin. But another example is think about radar guided missiles. Radar guided missiles have been around for 40 some odd years. And so a pilot and a US fighter aircraft gets a ping that there's an enemy radar. They fire a missile, that missile goes off in the direction that the pilots fired it. It opens a seeker and it goes for the radar. And what if that radar is on top of a school? What if that radar is on top of a hospital? Like it doesn't know, like it just goes and hits the radar. There's no human supervision on it. That's a system that dozens of militaries around the world have used I think since the late 60s. Essentially, if you go back to heat

[Newt Gingrich]

seeking missiles in that sense, there's a lot deeper pattern of gradually evolving these systems than people sometimes think. It's not like there's a brand new world that opened up on Tuesday. Explain to me what is the big fight between the Defense Department and Anthropic,

[Michael Horowitz]

who had a controversy there the last couple of weeks. I think this is a tragedy. And my bottom line up front on that is the winner is China. And let me explain why I get to that. Conclusion. Anthropic was the first of the big artificial intelligence frontier labs, you know, leading American companies pushing the edge forward that was willing to do classified work with the Pentagon. And there's no dispute between the Pentagon and Anthropic about any projects that they are working on together today. There is also no dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon about any projects the Pentagon has asked Anthropic to work on. It sounds like what happened is after the Maduro operation in January, an Anthropic staffer called up a staffer at a company called Palantir, which operates a sort of dashboard for US Military commanders called Maven Smart System. And they called up somebody at Palantir and they said, hey, was our system, you know, Anthropic system being clawed, used in the Maduro operation? And the Pentagon heard about this and they were upset. Why is Anthropic asking questions about the use of their technology? Of course we're using their technology responsibly. And this dispute kind of escalates where the Pentagon is essentially talking to Anthropic, thinking about adopting Anthropic technology the way that you think about acquiring a missile from Lockheed. When Lockheed sells the Pentagon a missile, Lockheed doesn't get to tell the Pentagon, hey, you can only use it against these countries, but not those other countries. And meanwhile, Anthropic was nervous that the Pentagon might be thinking about employing its technology in areas where Anthropic thinks it's not ready and wouldn't be effective. And so you really had essentially a breakdown in trust, I think, on both sides where the Pentagon didn't trust that Anthropic would be there for important national security use cases. Anthropic didn't trust that the Pentagon would use its technology responsibly. This is a tragedy in some ways because Anthropic is already working with the American military. And in fact, Anthropic's technology is supporting our troops in the operation against Iran. I think that this is really about personality and politics in some ways, like masquerading as a policy dispute.

[Newt Gingrich]

It sounds like you ought to lock some people in a room and tell them, work this out and we'll unlock the door.

[Michael Horowitz]

It's unbelievable in some ways to me that on Friday at 5:01pm you have announcements from the President and from senior leadership in the Pentagon putting Anthropic essentially on the naughty list from the perspective of the US Government. And then the next day, US Central Command in the Middle east is using Anthropic technology. To help, you know, initial hours of the strikes against Iran, which illustrates how useful the actual warfighters think that this technology is. And so you would think that there should be a path to agreement then where both sides could get along. But they seem really dug in at this point. And I think Anthropic's leadership doesn't want to back down. You know, they don't want to look weak to their workforce. And I think the Pentagon, under Secretary Hegseth is, as I'm sure you've noticed, a little aggressive at times. And so, I'm sure also doesn't want to back down. That's a recipe for a disagreement that, at least in my view, isn't needed.

[Newt Gingrich]

I've been fascinated that there's a churning effect where when you have the kind of fight we're seeing with Anthropic, they pull back, but then all of a sudden you have somebody else jump in. Is it your judgment that this fight will drive people who are good at artificial intelligence away, or that in fact, it just creates a vacuum where other players come in because they see it as their advantage?

[Michael Horowitz]

That's a really good question. You know, OpenAI stepped into the breach here, and I think OpenAI deserves some credit in this context because they were, I think, initially trying to broker a piece essentially to come up with an agreement that they could make with the Pentagon that Anthropic would make as well. Since I do think that these technology companies see what the Pentagon is done to Anthropic and labeling them as a supply chain risk, that creates a risk for everyone in some ways. If you have negotiations that go south with the Pentagon and then the Pentagon doesn't just cancel your contract, they also, you know, like, salt the earth essentially, and, like, try to take out your business. I mean, we've seen Microsoft, for example, support Anthropic's lawsuit against the Pentagon. You know, because they're a software company, they have terms of service in their contracts, and they want to be able to have terms of service in their contracts with the Pentagon the same way they have for decades. I think OpenAI seems likely to step in. Xai Elon Musk's company has said that they're willing to do classified work with the Pentagon, but it's going to take time. Anthropic's technology, its platform, claude, is now built into the operational workflow of how US Military commanders around the world are getting information and making decisions and untangling that is going to be messy. And that's why simultaneously Anthropic has been labeled a supply chain risk, but the Pentagon has six full months to disentangle them. As an illustration, I think of how useful the actual warfighters think that this technology is.

[Newt Gingrich]

Well, in six months time, who knows what negotiations will go on behind closed doors.

[Michael Horowitz]

Is that a six month bargaining period?

[Newt Gingrich]

Maybe.

[Michael Horowitz]

I would hope so. I would hope so, but we'll see.

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support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It also starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available at public.comdisclosures hi, I'm

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[Newt Gingrich]

Do you think that the evolution, the sheer power of artificial intelligence as it's being developed across an enormous range of companies and entrepreneurs, do you think despite these occasional glitches, it's almost inevitable that it will permeate the entire Department of War?

[Michael Horowitz]

The short answer is in one word, yes. And the reason is that artificial intelligence to me is a general purpose technology. And it's not the only general purpose technology in history. You know, we have other general purpose technologies. Think back to the late 19th century and electricity and the combustion engine and the airplane and you know, like it's early 20th century. But the idea being you have these breakthroughs that are not just like a single widget, but are transformational to the economy, to society and to the military. Think about the way that electricity permeates every area of American society and the economy and everything that's happening in the military in a way that it's ubiquitous. You don't think about like, oh, like there's the impact of electricity in some ways. And I think artificial intelligence is poised to be very similar. And in that way you would expect that every office in the Pentagon will be using artificial intelligence in one way or another, and they'll be algorithms embedded in every American military platform in the coming decades. And I do think that that is inevitable to some extent. The question is just do we get there fast enough in a way that preserves America's military edge and do we do it right in a way that ensures that the technology is effective and keeps us ahead of China, our greatest competitor?

[Newt Gingrich]

The other thing that's going on is a declining cost. If you look at what, for example, Ukraine now makes drones for compared to what the Pentagon would make a drone for if left to its own devices? There are staggering crashes and costs coming our way and that's going to make a lot of mid size countries more dangerous than they used to be.

[Michael Horowitz]

It used to be that if you wanted to launch a missile a thousand, 2,000 kilometers, you know, maybe you'd be looking at trying to buy an advanced missile from the United States that maybe costs $1 million per shot or $2 million per shot. This goes back to what I said earlier about us being in this age of precise mass. Look at what the Houthis did in the Red Sea. The Houthis generated, you know, a billion dollars in economic damage, essentially firing flying lawnmowers that cost $20,000 a pop, $40,000 a pop at US Navy ships. And our sailors would sometimes fire million dollar missiles to shoot them down. Like that's not a good cost exchange ratio. And what Ukraine has done is remarkable in the way that they have leveraged these one way attack drones to hold back the Russian invaders over time. If you want a good news story here, though, one of the things that happened in the context of the Iran operation is the U.S. deployed for the first time a system called the Lucas. It's the low cost unmanned combat aerial system. And the Lucas is about $35,000 and is reverse engineered from Iran's Shaheed 136, which Iran has sold tens of thousands of these to the Russians and the Russians have built their own version. Well, the US captured a couple of these Iranian shaheds, reverse engineered them, and then thought, well, hey, maybe we could build these from ourselves after all. If, you know, Russia's using tens of thousands of these a month sometimes like this is a system that's proven to work. And so in the opening hours of the campaign against Iran, the US Actually used Iran's own technology against it in the form of this Lucas platform, which is, rather than being a $2 million tomahawk, is a $35,000 system. The US is starting to get it. It's just been slow.

[Newt Gingrich]

We had better get to be a lot faster, both in competing with China, but also just random opponents. I mean, a lot of these countries are going to be able to buy stuff on the free market or be able to go to their own chatgpt and say, now how would you build this and have an amazing amount of information being distributed in virtually real time?

[Michael Horowitz]

Absolutely. I mean, in this period we're in, any country around the world is now going to be able to have their own essentially thousand kilometer, 2,000 kilometer strike weapons. They're not going to have to rely just on the United States for that or just on Russia for that, which is a more dangerous world. But it's not like you could stop that with arms control. That'd be like trying to stop water or something like this is an Inevitability like this is happening, which means that if you're the United States, then both the United States needs to get on the train. And I'm encouraged by some of the things that I'm seeing now. But it also means then that we need to figure out how to defend against these systems at a much lower cost. We're really lucky to be the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world, but we can't like forever shoot down, you know, 20, $30,000 things with million dollar defensive missiles. And it's why I was encouraging that the US Is now adopting some of the technology that Ukraine has been using to defend against these strikes.

[Newt Gingrich]

The ability to get to low cost, massively produced numbers. Lord Nelson in the Napoleonic wars once said that numbers annihilate. Seems to me that being able to produce a field and use relatively inexpensive weapons is a major key to surviving the battlefield in the next 30 or 40 years.

[Michael Horowitz]

I think that's absolutely right. The US has been in a position for the last 30 or 40 years where we've relied on increasingly small numbers of really exquisite systems. And that was okay because our systems were the best in the world. Even having small numbers of them was good enough to sort of take on any adversary. But that is going to be increasingly difficult in this era when so many different adversaries are going to have so many more capabilities and increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence. And so in this new era, then I think the US Needs to shift what I would call a high, low mix, where it's not that we need to get rid of our Tomahawk missiles or our fancy systems, but we need to complement those by spending a lot more on some of these low cost weapons and low cost sensors that are genuinely no cost, not like gold plated Pentagon low cost.

[Newt Gingrich]

Aren't we today actually spending a remarkably tiny amount of money on the kind of weapons you're describing compared to what we spend on very exquisite, complex systems.

[Michael Horowitz]

When I was in the Pentagon, we tried to move, I think $500 million at one point to move toward to something called the Replicator initiative to fund some of these kinds of systems. And it took more than 40 briefings of the appropriations committees in the House and the Senate of really senior leaders, busy senior leaders in the Pentagon, like up to the Deputy Secretary, then Deputy Secretary of Defense to get that done. And that was so much time to move what essentially was less than 1% of the Pentagon budget. And even today there was actually a bunch of money that the Trump administration really smartly put into the big, beautiful bill to try to accelerate these capabilities. But even with those, there's about like $5 billion or so there. Even then we're talking what, like 1% of the defense budget? Something like that. It's a lot of money to me or you, but for the Pentagon, it's a fraction of what one aircraft carrier

[Newt Gingrich]

costs, which then tells you where the attention of the senior leadership is.

[Michael Horowitz]

Yep, follow the money.

[Newt Gingrich]

It's a real problem. Listen, Michael, I want to thank you for joining me. Our listeners can follow the work you're doing at the Council on Foreign Relations by visiting the [e-mail] your book the Diffusion of Military Power Causes and Consequences for International Politics is available on Amazon. And I thought this is a very, very helpful conversation.

[Michael Horowitz]

Thanks so much for having me and happy to chat anytime.

[Newt Gingrich]

Thank you to my guest Michael Horowitz. New Twirl is produced by Gingrich360 and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garnzi Sloan. Our research researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Gingrich360. If you've been enjoying Newts World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Join me on [e-mail] I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newt's World.

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