The Army Special Operations Command at Fort Liberty, North Carolina — formerly Fort Bragg — is retooling its commandos for operations against China. Last spring, some of the command’s 35,000 special operations forces took part in an unprecedented deployment to Taiwan’s Kinmen island, about three miles from the Chinese mainland.

The online military blog SOFREP reported at the time that the U.S. commandos were training Taiwanese military forces to use the Black Hornet Nano. The pocket-sized military unmanned aerial vehicle is produced by Oregon-based Teledyne FLIR, which describes the drone as an “airborne personal reconnaissance system for dismounted soldiers.” Teledyne’s website boasts that the Black Hornet 4 model minimizes “cognitive strain on soldiers” and that flight performance of the drone has been “augmented by new obstacle-avoidance capabilities and an advanced battery.”

The U.S.-Taiwan training cooperation, meanwhile, suggests the outlying Taiwan islands could be used as part of what the commander of the Indo-Pacific Command calls the “Hellscape” strategy. The strategy involves the use of thousands of armed drones — both aerial and sea-based — that would be used against invading Chinese forces to prevent a rapid takeover of Taiwan and buy time until U.S. and allied forces could arrive in force.

Leading artificial intelligence company Anthropic and software giant Palantir are collaborating with Amazon to bring the Claude AI models to national security officials.

In announcing the collaboration earlier this month, Anthropic Head of Sales and Partnerships Kate Earl Jensen said that the Claude 3 and 3.5 models — delivered via Palantir’s AI Platform — will help the spy agencies and military officials process large swaths of data. “This will dramatically improve intelligence analysis and enable officials in their decision-making processes, streamline resource intensive tasks and boost operational efficiency across departments,” she said.

Palantir said Claude became accessible within Palantir’s platform on Amazon Web Services earlier this month. The new functionality is accessible to defense and intelligence agencies responsible for operations that depend on quickly processing data, identifying patterns, and streamlining decisions in time-sensitive situations.

Mr. Biden issued a National Security Memorandum on Artificial Intelligence last month that the White House said was “designed to galvanize federal government adoption of AI to advance the national security mission.” Chief artificial intelligence officers from across the government’s 18 intelligence agencies are gathering in a council to standardize approaches and share best practices.

John Beieler, the U.S. intelligence community’s AI chief, told Threat Status in July that the intelligence community was focused on the ethical use of AI and the proper monitoring of models once deployed. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mark R. Warner said recently during an exclusive Threat Status Influencers video interview that debate is underway over whether a single large-language model should be used across all U.S. spy agencies.

The Department of Defense is busy making an AI overhaul, too. The changes include the development of NIPRGPT, a generative AI platform with the approval of the Pentagon that leverages the Non-Classified Internet Protocol Network (NIPRNet). U.S. Central Command Chief Technology Officer Schuyler Moore said in October that her team has a chatbot it calls CentGPT, which uses the code base from NIPRGPT built onto a secret network.

AI companies see a promising market in the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. For example, OpenAI rewrote its rules to allow work with the Department of Defense to advance last year and then recruited a former National Security Agency director to the company’s board earlier this year.

Jack Teixeira, the former member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard arrested last year, was sentenced this week to 15 years in prison. The 23-year-old began illegally transferring classified information around January 2022 on the Discord tech platform and pleaded guilty in March to six counts of “willful retention and transmission of national defense information.”

“Jack Teixeira made the choice day after day, week after week, for a year to share the nation’s secrets that were entrusted to him,” Joshua Levy, the acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a statement this week. “This significant sentence sends a powerful message to every individual who holds a top-secret clearance: Anyone who willfully threatens our national security by illegally disseminating classified information will face very serious repercussions.”

While the case against one leaker closed, another one appears to be starting. The FBI arrested Asif William Rahman in Cambodia this week for allegedly leaking classified information assessing Israel’s plans to attack Iran. Mr. Rahman was indicted in Virginia and is set to appear in court in Guam on Thursday, according to The New York Times, which identified him as a CIA official. The leaked documents belonged to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency and were visible on a channel of the Telegram messaging platform last month.

Mr. Trump is expected to undo Mr. Biden’s artificial intelligence agenda, replacing an emphasis on safety with a new focus on freedom.

Mr. Biden signed an AI executive order last year, created the AI Safety Institute and recently issued new guidance to shape national security officials’ adoption of AI. The president has put concerns about safety front and center in forming AI policy. Mr. Trump has said he favors an AI policy that does not restrict expression nor innovation and has pledged for nearly a year to trash Mr. Biden’s AI executive order.

AI policy experts predict the president-elect will deliver on the pledge. R Street Institute senior fellow Adam Thierer told Threat Status he fully expects Mr. Trump to repeal and replace Mr. Biden’s AI executive order. Mr. Thierer, who researches tech and innovation at the free market think tank, believes Mr. Trump will put new constraints on federal agencies’ AI-related regulations as well.

“I also expect there to be an even stronger focus in the new administration on how to extend America’s AI might as a geopolitical technological advantage over China,” Mr. Thierer said in an email. “Another key thing to watch will be the likely connection between AI policy and energy policy priorities, with Trump looking to capitalize on his party platform’s promise to boost ‘reliable and abundant low-cost energy’ options, which are vital to meeting AI’s growing energy demands.”

Mr. Thierer also said he anticipates a lot of pushback from Republicans on “woke AI” concerns, which he defined as the stress on diversity, equity, and inclusion priorities through tech policy during Mr. Biden’s term in office.

• Nov. 17-20 — 2024 PRIM&R Annual Conference, PRIM&R

• Nov. 21 — Competition policy 2024: Urgent Questions Emerging within Digital Markets, Chatham House

• Nov. 22-24 — Halifax International Security Forum

• Dec. 7 — 2024 Reagan National Defense Forum, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute