A six-month effort to build and pilot an online course that equips cross-sector AI professionals and other stakeholders with a deep understanding of military AI technologies and the limits and opportunities for oversight.
A six-month effort to build and pilot an online course that equips cross-sector AI professionals and other stakeholders with a deep understanding of military AI technologies and the limits and opportunities for oversight.
Project Details
Updated 07/02/26 · Edited by orgContext
AI is rapidly becoming a tool for state coercion as governments are using AI-enabled technology to identify perceived threats, parse intelligence, classify populations, and engage in surveillance, targeting and the use of force.
At the same time, the emergence of a new AI-driven military industrial complex, particularly in the United States, has accelerated the speed of such force projection globally, while concentrating influence within a closed network of government agencies, universities, defense contractors/startups, and venture capital firms. Today for instance, the U.S. Department of Defense / War accounts for nearly 99% of all federal AI spending.
This is an existential risk that has been acknowledged by many sections of the AI community (see here and here).
Activities
Over six months, I plan to:
- Research and curate a reading list, a syllabus, and materials (slides, case studies, etc.) for an advanced course focused on military AI oversight
- Launch at least one online pilot course (~4 to 8 weeks long) aimed at professionals interested in, or already involved in, military AI oversight work anywhere in the world.
Tentative curriculum themes include (subject to some revision):
- AI applications in war fighting, intelligence and national security operations: A deep dive into AI as a battlefield technology, including its use in intelligence, targeting, autonomous weapons systems, decision-making and operations.
- Military AI procurement practices and the concentration of power: How a cabal of venture capital firms, defense tech startups, defense primes and “neo-primes,” frontier AI labs, universities, and government agencies are reshaping the military AI ecosystem. This module also examines how narratives of national-security urgency, and public-private financing have turned military AI procurement into an opaque pipeline that accelerates adoption while weakening accountability.
- Non-U.S. applications and global diffusion of military AI: Adaptation and use of these technologies in non-U.S. contexts and war zones globally.
- Governance and Accountability in military AI: Impact of military AI on civilians, human rights implications, emerging regulatory frameworks, the limits and opportunities for oversight, and research methods to further investigate such systems.
About me:
I have worked as an investigative journalist and researcher for several media outlets and thinktanks including the NYTimes, Time, BBC, HDNet, Small Arms Survey, the Center for American Progress and others. I have led both an intelligence division and a human rights division in the United Nations and served as a UN Secretary General-appointed member of the UN Panel of Experts investigating sanctions evasion, war crimes, and kleptocratic regimes. I’ve advised Wall Street firms on sanctions and financial crime, working closely with OFAC, other U.S. agencies, and regulators worldwide. I teach Bluedot’s Frontier AI Governance course, and have previously taught courses in digital investigations and other topics. I have also raised and managed grants ranging from 6- to 8-figures.
Note to readers: If this is a topic you care about, I'd love to hear what you’d like me to cover. What questions about military AI do you think deserve more scrutiny? Share your ideas in the comments!
Theory of Impact
Updated 07/02/26 · By grantmaking.aiAt the moment, the continued buildout of military AI technology has no significant counterweight by way of financing, accountability, and alternative or critical narratives. As AI becomes further embedded in national security systems, it can reach a point of no return. Changing this requires changing the public conversation around the value and merits of such technologies for national security, in war fighting, and in the creation of harm. And changing the conversation requires public awareness of the risks and challenges associated with military AI.
By educating people on (i) the financial flows driving military AI, (ii) the applications themselves, (iii) their deployments worldwide, and (iv) the harms and risks linked to these systems, we can enable more informed policy, raise the cost of reckless deployment, erode state and vendor secrecy, and build the oversight capacity needed to check this technology.
People
Updated 07/02/26 · By grantmaking.aiTeam Member
Funding Details
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Discussion
Hi Mayank, a few comments for you to consider:
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Theory of change - this is not very clear. How would delivering a training course for 'professionals' move the needle in this area? What kinds of professionals are you planning to target? OHCHR and others are already public about AI military risks, so how would this course bring additional attention to the issue?
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Impact:
(a) Importance - I agree this is an important area. However I'm not sure that military oversight is an x-risk? The links cited above support concentration of power as an x-risk, and military oversight could be a factor in this, but it's not the same thing.
(b) Neglectedness - you could strengthen your proposal by explaining how your work would be different to the training courses on military uses of AI already developed by other actors - eg the training courses and workshops by DCAF and Geneva Action, the 40 AI military training scenarios developed by UNIDIR, and noting that UNIDIR has a new Centre of Excellence focusing on military AI risk, etc.
(c) Tractability - which parts of this issue seem most tractable to you? the issue is in the public view already, and your narrative would be competing against the military complex that you describe - would this be tractable? -
Cost effectiveness / Budget realism
This seems to be effectively a salary grant for 6 months. You might have more success pitching it in this way? There are no training costs included - would the training be delivered online at zero cost (software etc?).
Information about the training course output needed to consider value for money is not included - eg number of trainees, number of training hours etc. Assuming a 14 hour course over the 4-8 weeks (?), you would have a bit under 2 weeks to research and design each training hour of the course. This seems a bit generous given you are already an expert in this field.
- Team capacity
Your professional background seems very strong for this proposal, at least on the thematic side.
I'd suggest your application would be strengthened if you can sharpen it to consider these issues.
Really appreciate this feedback, Mark. Thanks for your time and thoughtfulness. I am unable to edit the proposal itself, but I've pasted my responses below. Thanks again!
On importance:
Military oversight is not the x-risk. Oversight (accountability) is how one would manage or address the x-risk associated with military AI.
The MIT risk initiative, which some would consider as the go-to source on all AI risks, identifies "dangerous capabilities", "AI weapons", and "power centralization" as the "most severe risks" and the highest priority catastrophic risks with the potential to cause more than 1M deaths or over $100B in economic losses in the next few years. For some, these risks aren’t hypothetical or some future existential state. Incidents such as the targeting of schoolgirls in Iran show that AI enabled systems are already shaping life and death outcomes.
On neglect:
You’re right that there are many channels of learning, and my intention isn’t to duplicate or replace the work that UNIDIR, DCAF etc are doing. I’m hoping to build an entry point for cross-disciplinary professionals from journalism, human rights, policy, AI governance, etc. who are interested in military AI but don’t necessarily have a pathway into the field. My course hopefully connects the dots on the full lifecycle of military AI while leaving participants with some practical research and oversight skills they can use.
I can split ongoing training efforts into roughly four categories – universities, MOOCs, fellowships, and courses offered by firms / organizations. Each has strengths and weaknesses, depending on coverage and scale. Universities are high cost, low scale. MOOCs have massive reach but abysmal completion rates, not always up to date, or too generalized. Firms / Orgs might offer specialized trainings but they’re usually in person, gated, and can be a bit of an echo chamber. Fellowships are limited to mentor-driven themes, with heavy funneling, reinforces an expert pipeline, and landing one can still feel somewhat tribal. I’m hoping to complement ongoing training efforts, not compete with them. In some ways, I see this course playing a role similar to organizations like Bluedot, which doesn’t replace existing offerings, but rather creates a different onramp to bring more people into this field.
On tractability:
I may be misunderstanding the question here, but I don't think the tractable intervention I’m pitching is about changing the incentives of the defense sector directly. The buildout of military AI is already well underway and is supported by enormous financial, institutional, and geopolitical momentum.
I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation for 80 AI / defense tech startups that have opened shop since 2022. Nearly 50 of them have not disclosed their funding. The remaining have already raised approximately $2bn in funding. Expand this to the top 200 startups, and the disclosed funding is nearly 18.5 bn (at valuations that are orders of magnitude higher).
This is for defense startups alone. It doesn’t include the tens of thousands of people working on such systems directly or indirectly, via government or other major public companies or universities.
Given the imbalance, I see the tractable opportunity in building an ecosystem that can scrutinize these technologies. The number of people who understand, or are trained to investigate, explain, regulate or hold military AI accountable is a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed. I’m hoping the course will help such people ask better questions, identify new areas of intervention, and perhaps shape governance of military AI.
On cost effectiveness:
Comparable organizations typically budget substantially more for similar roles. For example, recent positions at the Future of Life Institute and UNIDIR have offered approximately $17,500 and $16,000 per month as salaries, respectively. My funding request is significantly lower and time bound.
The six month timeline includes both curriculum development and delivery. I plan to build the course, pilot it with at least one live cohort, incorporate participant feedback, and, if time and demand allow, run additional iterations within the initial phase.
It is too early to predict demand with confidence, but my initial goal is at least 20 participants for the pilot. As with all such initiatives, in the beginning, I’d prob have to target a broad section of professionals working in / on AI or AI-adjacent fields to help me understand who is interested, where they’re joining from, and which audiences find it most valuable.
On the theory of change:
If I understand correctly, it appears that you’re asking as to why I think education might be a bottleneck here, i.e. why another course on military AI would matter. For me, the objective is not simply raising awareness of military AI risks. The issue is that there are still too few people who have the domain knowledge needed to translate those concerns about military AI into meaningful oversight or accountability. The more people we can have with such expertise, the better guardrails we can develop and the better we’re going to do with governing such technologies.
A very well rounded follow up. It shows that lot has been considered and thought through in this course.
I would be very interested to see a course like this.
This stands out as something urgently needed, given how hastily AI is already being applied in military contexts. I can personally attest I know quite a few who would find a course offering like this to be valuable.
With the current acceleration of AI applications to war, this course is essential to move beyond brainstorming military applications and, instead, thinking about control and proper use.