01100011 parent
You realize that the DoD has a huge amount of normal business work like logistics, project management, people management, benefits management, etc? Right?
The United States Military (Waterhouse has decided) is first and foremost an unfathomable network of typists and file clerks, secondarily a stupendous mechanism for moving stuff from one part of the world to another, and last and least a fighting organization. —Cryptonomicon
I suspect it's more than that.
“Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains,” the Defense Department said.
Knowing the DoD, I bet it's not. I bet they just want their own secure servers or some sort of corporate data/encryption management, and they're willing to pay out the nose to not have to use asksage or some terrible DoD friendly clone
“National security challenges” is incredibly broad, providing the right size of boots to USCG rescue swimmers could be considered a national security challenge.