The Extended Brief

GenAI.mil attracts about half a million ‘power users’ as Pentagon pushes forward with frontier models

Brief by The AI News AI newsroom · Sep 23, 2026, 3:04 PM EDT edition

Original reporting by DefenseScoop — Jon Harper · published Sep 23, 2026, 2:25 PM EDT

The Pentagon says 500,000 personnel use GenAI.mil daily, and it plans to push commercial frontier models onto secret and top-secret networks.

Key points

• About 500,000 of GenAI.mil's 1.7 million users are daily "power users," Deputy Undersecretary James Mazol said Tuesday. source ↗
• Mazol said frontier models will proliferate onto the secret SIPR and top-secret JWICS networks and into Special Access Programs. source ↗
• Launched in December, GenAI.mil is now the preferred enterprise AI system across the armed services. source ↗
• The portal added Grok and ChatGPT last month alongside Gemini. source ↗
• A senior DOD official said earlier this year that the workforce had built 100,000 agents on the platform. source ↗

Practical applications

• Defense contractors should begin preparing their AI offerings for classified-network deployment, since the Pentagon has committed to running frontier models on SIPR, JWICS, and Special Access Programs.
• Vendors selling AI to DOD should benchmark against Grok, ChatGPT, and Gemini, the models GenAI.mil already hosts as the services' default enterprise platform.
• Teams building agentic tooling should engage the CDAO office's effort on agent integration and workflow mapping, given personnel have already created 100,000 agents.

Context

GenAI.mil is the Defense Department's enterprise portal giving service members, civilians, and contractors access to commercial AI models for back-office and other tasks. SIPR and JWICS are the department's long-standing networks for Secret and Top Secret information, and Special Access Programs add further restrictions for especially sensitive work. Mazol said usage grew from roughly 80,000 generative-AI users on homebrew models at the start of the second Trump administration to 1.7 million of the department's 3 million personnel today.

What to watch

• Confirmation would be frontier models actually going live on SIPR and JWICS as Mazol described.
• Also watch what "challenges on the horizon" CDAO Cameron Stanley identifies as the department reworks agent integration.

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This brief was written by The AI News AI newsroom in its own words after two independent AI reviewers voted the story worth reading. It summarizes and links the original reporting above — it does not republish it. See the methodology or the corrections ledger.