AI, machine learning, and data science will be used to create some of the most compelling technological advancements of the next decade. The OODA team will continue to expand our reporting on AI issues.
Recent OODA analysis on Artificial Intelligence:
-
Michael Kratsios was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 25, 2025, as the 13th Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in a bipartisan 74–25 vote. In this role, he also serves as the President’s Science Advisor, guiding national strategies on emerging technologies, innovation, and scientific research. He has just…
-
A sweeping new memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directs U.S. federal agencies to aggressively expand their use of artificial intelligence while establishing strict governance and risk management protocols. Why This Matters: This is the most comprehensive federal policy to date on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in government operations. It…
-
As we navigate multiple technological revolutions happening simultaneously, few authors offer as rich a vision of human-AI coexistence as Iain M. Banks’ “The Culture” series – a collection that deserves more attention from those of us working on the challenges of emerging technologies.
-
The AI business landscape is shifting from a focus solely on innovation capacity to an emphasis on diffusion capacity, recognizing that the ability to scale AI applications is more valuable than standalone technological breakthroughs. Many companies invest heavily in research but struggle with widespread adoption, leading to underutilized advancements.
-
The recent U.S. AI policy reversals aside: the AI technology diffusion model should remain central to your AI business strategy (i.e. customer development, vendor relationships, strategic partnerships, business model generation, value proposition design, and platform economics).
-
This week’s member only OODA network dispatch provides insights into some of the dramatic changes underway in US and Chinese robotics and AI capabilities as well as an update on the geopolitical dynamics set off by the trade war. We held our March member meeting video call today. Topic was federal government spending on AI. We…
-
Researchers at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) continue to build on their March 2024 “Argument for Hybrid AI Incident Reporting” with a mandatory AI incident reporting framework designed to systematically capture harms from artificial intelligence systems.
-
AI’s ability to autonomously complete tasks has been doubling every 7 months since 2019, mirroring Moore’s Law. If this trend holds, AI could independently execute month-long human-equivalent projects by 2030
-
Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) provides a standardized way for AI models to connect to external data sources and tools, removing information silos and enhancing AI’s ability to interact with dynamic, real-time data. Blender MCP extends MCP’s capabilities into the 3D modeling space, integrating AI-driven automation into Blender 3D content and 3D modeling asset production…
-
If there is any macroeconomic impact of artificial intelligence we have been looking to frame (as part of this OODA Loop Macroeconomics of AI in 2025 series), it is this: “Fears of large-scale technological unemployment are probably overblown. The history of general-purpose technologies shows that the growth they bring is accompanied by strong demand for…
-
This week’s member only OODA network dispatch covers what we are hearing regarding changes in the federal workforce and policies and funding, new ways to access OODA AI, and an update on NYC deep tech week, as well as a round up of geopolitical, cybersecurity and technology developments around the world.
-
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) 2024 Annual Threat Assessment identifies the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a significant competitor in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI). The assessment underscores China’s strategic intent to leverage AI advancements to bolster its military capabilities, enhance economic competitiveness, and expand its global influence. China’s integration…
-
The modern threat landscape demands immediate action in revolutionizing how organizations approach security, risk assessment, and strategic planning. The implementation of hybrid AI-human red teams isn’t just an evolution in organizational resilience — it’s an imperative for survival in today’s rapidly changing environment. The Urgent Challenge Before Us Organizations face a perfect storm of vulnerabilities in their traditional…
-
For years DoD has struggled to avoid the temptation of buying software the way they buy aircraft carriers. Leaders have long recognized that it is more efficient, effective and overall smarter to buy commercial software instead of developing it in house or running inefficient, wasteful large scale development contracts to build custom solutions. And when…
-
AI and the rise of AGI has been a consistent topic examined by the experts of the OODA network, including topics related to national security. These are also recurring thematics at OODAcon, so the recent RAND report Artificial General Intelligence’s (AGI) Five Hard National Security Problems” caught our eye.
-
As AI’s energy demands surge, nuclear power has emerged as a cornerstone of the technology sector’s long-term energy strategy. Industry giants such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are rapidly investing in small modular reactors (SMRs) and large-scale nuclear solutions to sustain AI-driven operations and data centers. However, regulatory hurdles remain significant challenges, and the…
-
Microsoft has announced the development of Majorana 1, what they call the world’s first quantum processor powered by topological qubits, utilizing a novel class of materials called topoconductors. What do the latest systems from OpenAI and Grok say about it.
-
Any macroeconomic consideration of the impacts of artificial intelligence must also include the future of data writ large: in this era of exponential disruption and acceleration, the flow of data across borders has become the backbone of global trade and economic activity. Currently, regulatory interventions, driven by concerns over privacy, security, and national interest, are…
-
As AI-generated content proliferates, the U.S. Copyright Office and legal frameworks grapple with how to assign rights and responsibilities in this rapidly evolving space.
-
The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence in cloud environments is reshaping industries, but security vulnerabilities are mounting just as fast. The “State of AI in the Cloud 2025” report by Wiz Research highlights the rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into cloud environments, emphasizing both opportunities and challenges.
-
We’ve often invoked that Toffler’s concept of Future Shock was occurring a few decades late, but the era of Future Shock is fully upon us. The velocity of change has reached a point where decision-makers no longer have the luxury of incremental adaptation. We are living through a recursive cycle of whiplash—technological, geopolitical, economic, and…
-
I’ve been using OpenAI’s “Deep Research” capability for the last several days, trying to evaluate how it can be used to improve the research and reporting we do for our network. Deep Research is an AI agent. It uses reasoning to synthesize large amounts of online information and conduct complex multi-step research tasks. The goal…
-
Since 2017, The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) has produced an annual study of the macro-level trends and impacts of Artificial Intelligence.
-
According to a recent report by Google, there were more than 50 threat actors tied to China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia that the company observed using artificial intelligence (AI) technology powered by Google’s Gemini to facilitate their nefarious cyber and information-enabled operations. These actors leveraged the technology to support different phases of the cyber attack cycle,…
-
As transformative AI reshapes industries, businesses must rethink how they create and deliver value – forcing companies to adapt their business models and value propositions to stay competitive in a new economic paradigm.
-
The true macroeconomic impact of artificial intelligence remains uncertain. While it promises productivity gains and economic growth, concerns about job displacement, global competition, AI acceleration and diffusion, and misleading economic indicators are rising.
-
To differentiate OODA Loop coverage of the recent DeepSeek disruption of the global AI marketplace, we start with a straight no-chaser DeepSeek-R1 technical and performance benchmark analysis designed for our spectrum of readers.
-
As open-source AI continues to challenge proprietary systems, historical lessons from the broader open-source movement provide valuable insights into the balance between innovation, security, and regulation.
-
The U.S. government’s new push for AI deregulation aims to solidify American leadership in the AI race while raising concerns over security and ethical oversight.
-
Artificial Intelligence (AI) dominated the tech landscape during the past year integrating into business with companies seeking to improve their operations, work more efficiently, automate wherever possible, and generally enhance their operations
-
A recent analysis by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), entitled The AI Maturity Matrix: Which Economies Are Ready for AI? highlights that while many organizations are making strides in AI adoption, most are still far from achieving true AI maturity, leading to significant risks to economic stability, job markets, and geopolitical power dynamics.
OODA Loop Analysis
The Executive’s Guide To Artificial Intelligence: What you need to know about what really works and what comes next – The megatrend of Artificial Intelligence is transforming the algorithms of business in exciting ways.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Testifies on “Oversight of A.I.: Rules for Artificial Intelligence” – Fast on the heels of his May 4th meeting at the White House with Vice President Kamala Harris and other top administration officials to discuss responsible AI innovation, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
NIST Makes Available the Voluntary Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0) and the AI RMF Playbook – NIST’s Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0) “The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released its Artificial Intelligence
Using Artificial Intelligence For Competitive Advantage in Business – AI technologies are making continuous advances in domains like industrial robotics, logistics, speech recognition and translation, banking, medicine and advanced scientific research. But in almost every case, the cutting edge AI that drives the advances drops from attention, becoming almost invisible when it becomes part of the overall system.
The Future of Enterprise Artificial Intelligence – A short overview of the business aspects of AI focused on informing decisions including due diligence.
Opportunities for Advantage: Measuring Trends in Artificial Intelligence – A summary post of major trends.
AI Security: Four Things to Focus on Right Now – This is the only security framework we have seen that helps prevent AI issues before they develop
When Artificial Intelligence Goes Wrong – By studying issues we can help mitigate them
The Future of AI Policy is Largely Unwritten – Congressman Will Hurd provides insight on the emerging technologies of AI and Machine Learning.
AI Will Test American Values In The Battlefield – How will military leaders deal with AI that may treat troops as expendable assets to win the “game”.
The AI Capabilities DoD Says They Need The Most – Savvy businesses will pay attention to what this major customer wants.
What Leaders Need to Know About the State of Natural Language Processing – Major improvements in the ability of computers to understand what humans write, say and search are being fielded. These improvements are significant, and will end up changing just about every industry in the world. But at this point they are getting little notice outside a narrow segment of experts.
NATO and US DoD AI Strategies Align with over 80 International Declarations on AI Ethics – NATO’s release in October of its first-ever strategy for artificial intelligence is primarily concerned with the impact AI will have on the NATO core commitments of collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security. Worth a deeper dive is a framework within the overall NATO AI Strategy, which mirrors that of the DoD Joint Artificial Intelligence Center’s (JAIC) efforts to establish norms around AI: “NATO establishes standards of responsible use of AI technologies, in accordance with international law and NATO’s values.” At the center of the NATO AI strategy are the following six principles: Lawfulness, Responsibility and Accountability, Explainability and Traceability, Reliability, Governability, and Bias Mitigation.”
“AI Accidents” framework from the Georgetown University CSET – The Center for Security and Emerging Technology) (CSET) in a July 2021 policy brief, “AI Accidents: An Emerging Threat – What Could Happen and What to Do,” makes a noteworthy contribution to current efforts by governmental entities, industry, AI think tanks and academia to “name and frame” the critical issues surrounding AI risk probability and impact. For the current enterprise, as we pointed out as early as 2019 in Securing AI – Four Areas to Focus on Right Now, the fact still remains that “having a robust AI security strategy is a precursor that positions the enterprise to address these critical AI issues.” In addition, enterprises which have adopted and deployed AI systems also need to commit to the systematic logging and analysis of AI-related accidents and incidents.
DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) releases Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Strategic Plan Amidst Flurry of USG-wide AI/ML RFIs – An artificial intelligence security strategy (see “Securing AI – Four Areas to Focus on Right Now”) should be the cornerstone of any AI and machine learning (ML) efforts within your enterprise. We also recently outlined the need for enterprises to further operationalize the logging and analysis of artificial intelligence (AI) related accidents and incidents based on an “AI Accidents” framework from the Georgetown University CSET. The best analysis is a sophisticated body of work on AI-related issues of morality, ethics, fairness, explainable and interpretable AI, bias, privacy, adversarial behaviors, trust, fairness, evaluation, testing and compliance.
AI-Based Ambient Intelligence Innovation in Healthcare and the Future of Public Safety – Disaster conditions will clearly be more impactful and more frequent due to the impact of climate change. The domestic terrorism threat stateside is becoming a constant, with the impact and frequency of growing domestic U.S. political instability and public safety incidents to be determined. We will need systems that are monitoring these temporal, ephemeral ecosystems and providing insights and recommendations for real-time decision-making support and situational awareness analysis. What can AI-Based Ambient Intelligence Innovation in Healthcare teach us?
The Future of War, Information, AI Systems and Intelligence Analysis – The U.S. is in a struggle to maintain its dominance in air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace over countries with capabilities increasingly on par in all domains with that of the U.S. In addition, information (in all its forms) is the center of gravity of a broad set of challenges faced by the United States. Information, then, is the clear strategic vector of value creation for the emergence of applied technologies to enable operational innovation. For the U.S., the desired outcome is continued dominance for another American Century. For the Chinese, military capabilities usher in the dawn of a new technological superiority and, as a result, geopolitical and military dominance on the world stage.
Katharina McFarland on Winning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence – Katharina McFarland has led change in a wide array of national security domains including Space, Missile Defense, Acquisition and Nuclear Posture. She is a former Assistant Secretary of Defense
