Artificial Intelligence for Defense & National Security

AI for Defense & National Security – Cipher Brief CEO & Publisher Suzanne Kelly sits down with David Appel, Vice President, Global Government National Security & Defense at Amazon Web Services (AWS), for a rapid-fire conversation at the 2025 Cipher Brief Threat Conference. They cover where AI is actually moving the mission today - Agentic AI for command & control, predictive maintenance (yes, even for nuclear submarines), interoperability with allies, and the leadership culture required to move at speed. Appel also shares concrete examples from across industries (F1 race car telemetry, PGA Tour ball-tracking, healthcare and Traumatic Brain Injury research) that are informing defense use cases, and how partnerships with government, academia, and industry are training talent and hardening the ecosystem. What you’ll learn • AWS focuses on four pillars: infrastructure, education, partner ecosystem, mission services • How agentic AI can bridge legacy C2 systems to accelerate decisions • Why top-down, “ruthless” leadership, empowered to take risks, is essential to scale real outcomes • Lessons from commercial data-driven operations (F1: 1.1M data points/sec) • Interoperability in practice (e.g., AWS Wickr real-time translation in NATO exercise) • Balancing guardrails with rapid adoption (incl. Amazon Bedrock access to multiple LLMs) • The path ahead: AI now, quantum on the horizon - and competing with adversaries that move without our bureaucratic friction. Chapters 00:12 Intro 01:09 The near future of AI in national security 02:20 Allies, academia & industry partnerships 03:26 Infra & education (20M+ cloud/AI training commitment) 04:39 Cross-industry lessons (PGA, F1) 05:58 “Ruthless, top-down” leadership for speed 06:51 Where to apply now: autonomous systems & predictive maintenance 07:33 Agentic AI across legacy command-and-control 08:22 Customer-obsessed culture at AWS 09:18 Interoperability & secure comms (AWS Wickr, live translation) 10:30 Bright spots from healthcare & TBI research 11:48 Competing with adversaries; move fast despite bureaucracy 13:19 Building a nation-scale partnership model 14:22 What the public should know; optimism & prep for quantum 16:47 Guardrails + Amazon Bedrock 17:40 Exponential curve ahead 18:40 Closing thoughts 19:26 Talent exchanges between gov & industry 20:17 Speaking a common language about “the cloud” 21:03 Wrap About the series This interview is part of The Cipher Brief’s post-conference debriefs with leaders at the intersection of technology and national security. Follow & subscribe For more expert conversations and threat-focused analysis, subscribe to The Cipher Brief’s channel. #AI #defense, #nationalsecurity, #AWS, #DavidAppel, #SuzanneKelly, #thecipherbrief, #ThreatConference, #C2, #agenticai, #NATO, #DOD, cyber, autonomy, #drones, #f1, #pgatour, #quantumcomputing, #Intelligence, #expert