THE CRUNCH

OpenAI has brought in Dan Driscoll, who led the US Army as its top civilian official, as Senior Counselor for National Security Modernization, a newly created role advising on responsible AI for national security modernisation, cyber resilience and collaboration with US allies. In the role, Driscoll will work with governments, industry, academia and allied nations, and help OpenAI's teams grasp the practical needs of security institutions.

Driscoll was the Army's 26th Secretary, responsible for close to a million soldiers and over 265,000 civilian staff. While in that post he championed AI modernisation across the service, including Project ARIA, which applied AI to budgeting, logistics and deploying tactical models, giving him direct experience of how the military buys and uses AI.

The hire lands as OpenAI pushes to become the go-to AI company for US national security and defence. The Wall Street Journal reads the move as a signal that OpenAI wants closer military ties, more government work and influence over how AI rules are shaped for the armed forces and intelligence agencies. Driscoll, a close ally of Vice President JD Vance with relationships across both parties in Congress according to AP, could also open doors on Capitol Hill as the midterm elections approach.

The timing is notable. In late February 2026, the Pentagon labelled rival Anthropic a supply chain risk after CEO Dario Amodei declined to remove limits on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons from his contracts. That same day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a deal to run OpenAI's models on classified Pentagon networks, stressing that the agreement included safeguards similar to those Anthropic had fought to keep.