Summary

  • GAO’s 14 October report says the Defense Department’s Responsible AI Division had filled three of ten authorized posts as of February 2026. Its cross-component Working Council did not meet from late 2024 until August 2025.
  • The council resumed, but lacked a charter assigning roles and meeting frequency. As of April, 29 of 64 implementation lines remained incomplete; GAO says DOD agreed to recommendations on the charter and the division’s workforce.

A speed order, a thin office

The Pentagon’s January AI strategy demanded faster adoption across the department. The office meant to make that speed usable had three people in ten authorized positions. That contrast comes from the Government Accountability Office’s full audit, released on 14 October. The count dates to February; a current staffing roster would change the picture. It still places the capacity question inside the period when the new strategy was taking effect.

The staffing gap is only part of the machinery. The Responsible AI Working Council, the department’s standing forum for cross-component implementation problems, stopped meeting from late 2024 until August 2025. Four components told GAO they encountered problems during the gap that would have benefited from collaboration. The Air Force built its own governance arrangements and had difficulty drawing on other components’ practice; the Navy likewise wanted to test its approach with peers. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency wanted a common reading of federal guidance for high-impact uses. The council did reconvene in August 2025.

GAO found it still had no charter saying who is responsible for what or how often it must meet.

GAO’s April record adds a second measure of unfinished work: 29 of 64 lines in the department’s Responsible AI implementation pathway were incomplete. CDAO had tracked the lines but had not developed metrics for implementation. Those figures describe unfinished administrative work. GAO selected one use case in each of ten components and treated the sample as nongeneralizable. The institutional facts are narrower and harder to wave away: an office with vacancies, a coordination forum that proved optional in practice, and a progress system without the intended metrics.

GAO recommended a council charter and action on the division’s staffing needs. DOD concurred with both. A charter will not fill seven vacant chairs, but it can put a name and a meeting date beside the problems that travel across services. If adoption is to move at the speed of the strategy, the same clock has to run for the people who test, interpret and resolve its risks.