Recent US Air Force expenditures?

The US Air Force has invested up to $87 million in robotics and autonomous systems research. Autonomous capabilities are no longer just proof of concept but have entered the strategic level.

However, when autonomous systems begin to participate in military decision-making and execution, faster and smarter is not enough. An autonomous system without verifiable computation is inherently a national-level risk.

If we cannot confirm whether the model has been replaced, whether reasoning has been tampered with, or whether decisions are executed according to established rules, then even the most advanced robots are just an unauditable black box. Logs and vendor statements cannot bear military-level responsibility. An irreversible mistake could come at a high cost.

This is precisely why defense autonomous systems must prioritize verification. Instead of post-mortem analysis, constraints should be applied beforehand; instead of trusting the system to be problem-free, we should be able to prove it has indeed operated according to the rules!

In military scenarios, without cryptographic proof as a boundary, autonomous systems cannot be deployed at scale or form long-term security advantages. Truly reliable defense autonomous systems must be built on verifiable computation, not on trust assumptions.

When autonomous systems become foundational capabilities, proving they did the right thing is just as important as making them do their tasks!