DOD Chief Digital and AI Office + DARPA AI Next/Forward — $2B+ since 2018 in defense AI

The Department of Defense's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO, established 2022) is DOD's principal hub for AI capability adoption and integration across the department, absorbing and operationalizing DARPA-developed AI capabilities for departmental deployment. DARPA's AI Next campaign, launched in 2018, has invested more than $2 billion in advancing AI for national security purposes; the successor AI Forward initiative focuses on trustworthiness for national-security AI systems.

For C-0038: defense AI investment runs in parallel with the civilian programs (NAIRR, NSF AI Institutes, DOE Genesis Mission). The combined federal AI funding envelope — civilian + defense — is the largest sustained federal commitment to a single research-and-development priority since the post-Sputnik space program. Institutions with credible AI capabilities are competing for both pools; institutions without them are competing for neither.

E-0064 captures the aggregate scale (~$3.3B/yr nondefense + $2B+ DARPA + $320M+ DOE Genesis Mission); this evidence node disaggregates the defense component.