The massive bureaucracy of the US establishment went from a slow, timid exploration of autonomous warfare to a chaotic embrace of it nearly overnight.

• FY 2026 funding for autonomous warfare: $225 million
  (DAWG: Defense Autonomous Warfare Group)

• Proposed FY2027 funding (submitted mid-April): $54.6 billion

• That’s a ~24,000 % increase in a year.

That’s a massive change in orientation. What happened? Let’s dig in.

Resistance to Reorientation

Big bureaucracies, particularly those riven with corruption and incompetence from decades of generous funding without meaningful accountability, are notoriously bad at decision-making.

• A major reason for this is an unwillingness or inability to update their orientation in response to feedback from actions (failures) or changes in the external environment (technological, political, theoretical, geographical).

• This bureaucratic intransigence to reorientation stems from;

  • Corruption: People who make their living by exploiting bureaucratic systems (beltway bandits, revolving doors, too-big-to-fail weapon systems, security clearances, etc.) for financial gain.

  • Ossification: Entrenched experts who gain political power and influence due to their connection to existing systems.

  • Delusion: People tied to outdated or ill-conceived beliefs — from how the world works (enemies, allies, dangers, goals, etc.) to how wars are fought (Polish cavalry vs. German tanks, Maginot Line, etc.).

• Historically, the only thing capable of making a big bureaucracy radically change (update, adapt, improve) its orientation, overriding all entrenched opposition, is a failure so big the bureaucracy can’t ignore it.

“It is impossible to get a man to acknowledge truth when his salary, status, or beliefs depend upon his not accepting it.”

I have a bit of insight into this resistance. Back in 2016, I worked for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as an outside expert (military experience — author of a popular book on technology and warfare — Boydist — top tech analyst) to write a forward-looking concept document on the future of drones, et. al., in warfare. The report focused on Autonomous Warfare (a topic I’ve continued to write about, on and off, for years).

• It detailed what autonomy is, how it would change warfare (how wars would be fought, and how best to use them), command structures, training, weapons development, etc.

• As expected, the resistance within the bureaucracy to this concept document, to put it lightly, was legendary. Nobody attacked it outright. Instead, it was a death of a thousand revisions driven by;

  • Disbelief: from ‘this isn’t real, it’s scifi’ (from non-technical people) to ‘these will be impossible to build,’ or if they are, they will be very limited in utility (from technical people).

  • Political sensitivities: this or that word or idea will generate pushback from general (insert name); this section directly threatens (insert name) big $$ entrenched weapons system (it’s better to have them support it); this portion is too advanced for this building (implication, these people are idiots).

  • Worse, even the term autonomy was considered heresy by many, since it implies that human beings won’t be central to warfare (it doesn’t).

• It wasn’t a total loss. It did serve a purpose, and likely the purpose the CJCS intended; it seeded the conversations that made the shift in orientation on autonomy we see today possible.

Failure as a Trigger

The trigger for this sudden reorientation (demonstrated by the budget request, weeks after the ceasefire) was a very visible military failure — the last three reports detail how this happened.