AI Peacocking: A Critical Look at the United States’ New Military Strategy

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The United States has announced an ambitious new military vision: to become “the world’s undisputed artificial intelligence-enabled fighting force.” Earlier this month, the country’s Department of War unveiled its AI Acceleration Strategy, outlining plans to fast-track the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) across military operations.

At first glance, the strategy signals bold innovation and technological leadership. However, beneath the confident rhetoric lies a more complicated reality. The sweeping claims and urgency surrounding the strategy raise important questions about whether this is genuine technological progress — or a case of what might be called “AI peacocking”: loud public signalling of AI dominance that overshadows the technology’s current limitations and risks.

What the AI Acceleration Strategy Proposes

Militaries around the world, including those of China and Israel, are increasingly integrating AI into defence operations. Yet the US strategy stands out for its aggressive “AI-first” approach.

The AI Acceleration Strategy aims to make the US military more lethal, more efficient, and faster in decision-making. It proposes eliminating what it describes as “bureaucratic barriers” to accelerate AI deployment, investing heavily in AI infrastructure, and encouraging experimentation with advanced AI models.

One of its most controversial initiatives involves using AI to transform intelligence “into weapons in hours, not years.” This would dramatically shorten the time between gathering intelligence and executing military action. While framed as an efficiency gain, such speed raises serious ethical and operational concerns.

Reports from Gaza have already highlighted the risks of AI-enabled decision-support systems in military contexts. Observers have linked the rapid automation of targeting processes to increased civilian casualties. Accelerating such pipelines further could heighten the risk of unintended harm, especially when systems operate at unprecedented speed and scale.

Another major proposal involves placing American AI models directly into the hands of roughly three million civilian and military personnel, across all classification levels. However, the strategy provides little clarity on why such widespread access is necessary or how it would be managed responsibly. The prospect of broadly disseminating military-grade AI tools across civilian populations raises significant security and accountability questions.

The Hype Versus the Reality

The strategy’s sweeping promises contrast sharply with the current limitations of AI technologies. In July 2025, a study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that 95% of organisations reported zero return on investment from generative AI tools in business contexts.

The study highlighted several technical constraints. Most generative AI systems — including widely known tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot — struggle to retain feedback over time, adapt reliably to new contexts, or demonstrate consistent improvement without extensive retraining.

Although the MIT research focused on corporate applications, the implications extend to military use. If AI systems face reliability issues in relatively controlled business environments, their weaknesses may be magnified in high-stakes combat scenarios.

AI is not a single technology but a broad umbrella term encompassing diverse tools such as large language models, computer vision systems, predictive analytics, and autonomous decision-support platforms. Each comes with its own strengths and limitations. However, public discourse often bundles these distinct technologies together under one sweeping narrative of transformative capability.

This broad-brush marketing resembles the dotcom bubble of the early 2000s, when enthusiasm and investor confidence often outpaced technical maturity. In that era, hype frequently substituted for sustainable business models. Today, a similar dynamic appears to be influencing geopolitical positioning.

The Rise of “AI Peacocking”

The term “AI peacocking” captures the phenomenon of governments or organisations publicly showcasing AI adoption as a signal of strength, innovation, and global leadership. In the case of the US military strategy, the emphasis on becoming the leading AI-powered fighting force may serve as a geopolitical signal as much as a technological roadmap.

The narrative promotes AI as a solution to nearly every operational challenge. It also plays on the fear of falling behind rival powers in the global AI race. Such framing creates urgency and justifies rapid deployment — even when the underlying systems remain technically immature.

However, military environments are unforgiving. Errors in commercial applications may result in inconvenience or financial loss. Errors in defence contexts can result in civilian casualties, international escalation, or strategic miscalculations.

Deploying brittle AI systems in moments of crisis could expose significant vulnerabilities. Overreliance on unproven tools may create blind spots in command structures, reduce human oversight, and amplify unintended consequences.

Strategic Signalling or Sustainable Innovation?

There is no doubt that AI will play a growing role in future defence systems. Machine learning can enhance logistics, predictive maintenance, surveillance analysis, and cyber defence. The challenge lies not in whether AI should be used, but in how responsibly and realistically it is integrated.

A strategy driven primarily by marketing logic — focused on signalling dominance rather than ensuring technical robustness — risks undermining long-term military resilience. Effective AI integration requires rigorous testing, transparent accountability frameworks, ethical oversight, and clear limitations on automated decision-making in lethal contexts.

Without these safeguards, rapid acceleration may create more instability than strength.

Conclusion

The United States’ AI Acceleration Strategy presents a bold vision of technological supremacy. Yet beneath the confident language lies a deeper tension between ambition and reality.

AI remains a powerful but imperfect tool. While it offers significant potential benefits, it also carries technical limitations and ethical risks that cannot be ignored — particularly in military settings.