- Pentagon employees are creating over 100,000 AI agents using low-code tools
- Autonomous agents now handle about 25,000 daily Pentagon workflow sessions
- Routine administrative tasks are increasingly being automated across unclassified networks by the Department of Defense
Pentagon personnel are rapidly embracing vibe coding to create autonomous AI agents at a rate that now exceeds 20,000 new tools each week across unclassified Defense Department networks.
More than 103,000 semi-autonomous agents have been built in less than five weeks using a version of Google Gemini’s Agent Designer available through the GenAI.mil platform.
Usage is rising just as quickly, with these agents collectively running around 180,000 sessions each week, which equates to around 25,000 daily usage across the system.
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Low code or no code systems
Each session represents a single use of an agent by a user, meaning that widely used tools can be triggered thousands of times, while more specialized ones run only occasionally.
Many of the most widely used agents handle repetitive HR tasks such as preparing after-action reports, compiling formal staff appraisals, analyzing images, and reviewing financial or strategy documents.
Staff build their own tools directly on the network, creating agents that automate routine digital work without requiring traditional programming knowledge.
“It’s a very exciting time,” said Robert Malpass, the Pentagon’s Deputy Chief Digital & AI Officer for Intelligence, at the INSA Spring Symposium.
“[Now] everyone across the department can start building out and working with advanced artificial intelligence in their own context, [customizing] the specific way they need the information to be processed, displayed and built into an operational workflow,” he added.
Officials say the system is authorized to operate at power level 5, which allows the agents to operate on unclassified networks while remaining within defined security and surveillance boundaries.
Some observers remain wary of how quickly automated tools are spreading, pointing to incidents outside the Pentagon where poorly controlled agents wiped systems, disrupted services or acted without clear human approval.
Defense executives argue that speed is becoming inevitable as technology cycles continue to compress and development timelines shrink.
“The cycles are just getting shorter and shorter and shorter … as things get faster, as AI itself allows the speed of technology to increase,” Andrew Mapes, the Pentagon’s acting deputy director for digital and artificial intelligence, said during the INSA event.
“The onus is on us … to make sure it doesn’t take five to 10 years to bring something new into the military. We just don’t have the luxury of taking that kind of deliberate approach,” he concluded.
Via Breaking Defense
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