The Pentagon is asking for $54.6 billion for autonomous warfare next year — up from about $226 million this year. That same week, Secretary Hegseth announces a new four-star Autonomous Warfare Command, the 12th combatant command in American history, and Ukraine says drones caused nearly all of the roughly 35,000 Russian casualties it counted in March. Mike and Neal ask whether the United States is finally admitting that the next century of war belongs to machines, and whether a new four-star command is the right way to get there.

They walk through what was announced at Quantico — a command with service-like authorities, new drone career fields in the Army, Navy, and Air Force, an interim team called Project Agincourt, and a future-warfare panel co-led by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich. They also dig into the cost math behind it all — cheap drones against expensive interceptors, tanks pulling back from the front, and why quantity now matters as much as quality.

Neal sees a necessary break from the old system, pointing to the SOCOM model of giving a new mission its own budget and buying power so it can’t lose every fight to the next fighter jet or ship. Mike likes the direction but worries a twelfth command adds bureaucracy, and he wants the new four-star to start by getting close to the fight in Ukraine, where tactics are being written in real time. For Mike, the real test is whether the command can change how the Army and Navy fight, not just run its own program. Both hosts flag the conflict of interest in putting people whose companies do business with the Pentagon on the panel that shapes its future. Still, Mike, who runs Aclymate, and Neal, who runs Airloom, take the founder’s view — launch it, bring in smart people, and iterate — while keeping a healthy dose of skepticism about who is writing the rules.

In the listener mailbag, one commenter argues the U.S. is simply turning up the heat on Canada until it comes to the table, and another wonders whether China is safer than American AI executives. Mike and Neal push back on both — covering what it costs to treat an ally like an adversary, why China is not the safer bet, and why Mike would hold AI developers to a strict liability standard. In goods, bads, and others, Mike cheers a Michigan credit union for parting ways with its CEO after an AI-edited “Lake America” sweatshirt photo, groans at Senator Eric Schmitt’s perjury accusation against Jack Smith and the Hawks versus Hawkeyes moment that followed, and tracks private investment in nature growing fivefold to more than $14 billion a year. Neal salutes seven F-22 pilots awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, six of them for Operation Midnight Hammer, laments the Ratepayer Protection Act stalling in the Senate after passing the House 417 to 3, and reflects on the last U.S. troops leaving Iraq after 23 years.

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