U.S. Cyber Command Prioritizes AI Model Flexibility Over Politics in Cyber Warfare Strategy

U.S. Cyber Command is prioritizing the testing and deployment of the most advanced AI models available, regardless of their country of origin or political implications, according to the command’s chief AI officer.

The command is actively sidestepping debates surrounding model access by developing infrastructure designed to seamlessly integrate and swap between AI models from any vendor or origin.

“To survive anywhere, just in case our operators want an open-source made-in-China model or something very boutique, we have to create the infrastructure and that ability to be agile — no politics,” Brig. Gen. Reid Novotny, chief AI officer at Cyber Command, told Axios.

“Our operators are very well set for what they need right now.”

State of Play: Access and Competition in AI Models

The White House is currently negotiating access to Anthropic’s Mythos Preview, a model the company has restricted due to its advanced hacking capabilities. As of now, only a limited number of agencies—including the National Security Agency and the Department of Commerce’s AI testing institute—have access to the model. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is notably excluded from this access.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is leveraging the confusion to rapidly engage with federal, state, and international government offices to deploy its competing product, GPT-4-Cyber.

What Cyber Command’s AI Officer Is Saying

“I'm zero percent concerned about politics,” Novotny told Axios at the SANS AI Cybersecurity Summit in Arlington. “There are so many things we can do in the space right now: adopting newer technologies, going after companies that are model agnostic.”

Funding and Infrastructure: The 2026 AI Push

Cyber Command has dedicated funding for AI programs for the first time in 2026, following years of preparation within the Pentagon and Congress. This funding is being used to pilot commercial AI capabilities while simultaneously building the underlying infrastructure that allows operators to switch between models as technology evolves.

Novotny emphasized that this flexibility extends even to models developed outside the United States.

AI Integration in Cyber Operations: Balancing Risk and Mission

As the first AI officer at Cyber Command, Novotny is responsible for integrating AI into both offensive and defensive cyber operations. This includes using AI models to accelerate operations and process large volumes of intelligence data, while also embracing the inherent risks of military missions.

“The true point of our military, at some scope and scale, is to be less secure and a little bit more dangerous,” Novotny said during a panel discussion.

Addressing Risks: Civilian Infrastructure and AI Governance

Externally, concerns persist about AI systems misidentifying or improperly targeting civilian infrastructure. Novotny reassured that these risks are governed by existing military rules, not new AI-specific policies.

“If we train a model to go hack an entire country, we know going in about hospitals, schools and so on,” he said. “We know what we need to do and not do, and then we prove it out, making sure the model is doing what we say.”

Novotny added, “I don't want to say we're not worried about it, but we know how to apply our morals and our laws when we adopt a new technology.”

Human Oversight: The Current State of AI Autonomy

While Cyber Command is testing varying levels of human oversight in AI systems, fully autonomous operations remain under evaluation.