The move comes as the Pentagon is pumping billions of dollars into cloud and AI programs with plans to spend more in the coming years to boost its digital modernization and give new tools to warfighters and back-office workers.

The Protecting AI and Cloud Competition in Defense Act of 2025 was reintroduced in the Senate by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and introduced in the House by Reps. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., Pat Fallon, R-Texas, and Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., according to a press release issued Thursday by Warren’s office.

Warren and Schmitt are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Jacobs, Fallon and Deluzio are members of the House Armed Services Committee.

The bill “would ensure that DoD’s new contracts protect competition in the AI and cloud computing markets, instead of giving an unfair advantage to a few big players,” per the release.

If enacted, the Pentagon would be required to have a competitive award process for each procurement of cloud computing, data infrastructure and foundation model solutions when contracting with vendors that have entered into contracts totaling $50 million or more with the department in any of the five previous fiscal years.

Additionally, it directs department leaders to pursue modular open systems approaches, mitigate barriers to entry faced by small businesses and nontraditional contractors, and prioritize multi-cloud technology “unless doing so is infeasible or presents a substantial danger to national security.”

The Pentagon would also have to keep lawmakers updated.

“Not later than January 15, 25 2027, and annually thereafter for four years, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in coordination with the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, shall submit to the congressional defense committees a report assessing the competition, innovation, barriers to entry, and concentrations of market power or market share in the AI space for each period covered by the report … The report shall also include recommendations of appropriate legislative and administrative action,” the bill states.

Lawmakers also aim to protect data.

The legislation calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) to update or promulgate provisions of the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement to ensure that government-furnished data “provided for purposes of development and operation of AI products and services to the Department of Defense, is not disclosed or used without proper authorization” — and that such data “cannot be used to train or improve the functionality of commercial products offered by a covered provider without express authorization by the Department of Defense.”

Government-furnished data stored on vendor systems “for purposes of development and operation of AI products and services” must also be “appropriately protected from other data on such systems.”

Violation of these provisions would be subject to penalties, including fines and contract termination.

However, the legislation allows for DOD component acquisition executives to issue exemptions if they determine that doing so is “necessary for national security.” The acquisition execs would be required to notify the CDAO about each exemption and provide a justification for the move.

“It’s a mistake to let Silicon Valley monopolize our AI and cloud computing tools because it doesn’t just stifle innovation, it increases costs and threatens our national security,” Warren said in a statement. “Our bill will make sure the military can access cutting-edge tools and will keep our markets strong and our information secure.”

In the press release from Warren’s office, Schmitt warned against “allowing a select group of companies to dominate the awards process,” adding that the Defense Department should adopt policies that create opportunities for emerging AI defense companies.

Jacobs said in a statement that competition “always pushes the limits of creativity, innovation, and excellence – whether in AI or any other field. That’s why the Department of Defense needs to prioritize competition in its AI and cloud computing contracts to ensure we deploy the best technologies to protect and strengthen our national security.”

Deluzio added that enacting the legislation would help “protect data and public money from the failures of concentrated power” and “promote real competition” in the defense tech sector.

“By relying on free market principles, the Department of Defense can help ensure competition and innovation when it comes to the bidding process for government AI and cloud contracts,” Fallon stated in the release. “Due to the varied cyber threats facing our nation today, we must also ensure that AI and cloud related data is secure when it is held exclusively by the federal government. For these reasons, the Protecting AI and Cloud Competition in Defense Act is the next step forward Congress must take in the interest of US national security.”

Warren and Schmitt introduced similar legislation in December during the previous session of Congress, but it was never enacted.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is looking to bring more companies into the fold for AI, cloud and other digital capabilities.

“Competition in the marketplace enables the government to acquire the best solutions at lower cost to the taxpayer. As agencies seek to accelerate the adoption of AI-enabled services, they must pay careful attention to vendor sourcing, data portability, and long-term interoperability to avoid significant and costly dependencies on a single vendor,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought wrote to department and agency heads in an April memo.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a memo in March directing all Defense Department components to embrace a rapid software acquisition pathway and use commercial solutions openings and other transaction authority to speed up the procurement of digital tools for warfighters.

“When we take that software pathway mechanism and we combine it with innovation that [the Defense Innovation Unit] has been working in commercial solutions openings, or CSOs, and other transaction authorities, OTAs, we get to the point where now we can expose the programs, the software programs, to nontraditional and commercial software developers, while we simultaneously … lower the barrier for those nontraditional and commercial software developers to get into defense programs of record,” a senior defense official told reporters during a background briefing in March regarding Hegseth’s directive.

The Office of the DOD Chief Information Officer recently released an updated software modernization implementation plan. The first goal outlined in the document is to accelerate and scale the Pentagon’s enterprise cloud environment.

At AFCEA’s TechNet Cyber conference last week, Rob Vietmeyer, chief software officer for the deputy CIO for information enterprise, said the contract vehicle for the $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program — under which Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft have been competing for task orders — was “suboptimal” for large acquisitions. Officials in the CIO’s office are currently planning for JWCC 2.0, a follow-on phase that aims to add more vendors and different contracting mechanisms to the program.

The DOD has a variety of cloud efforts beyond JWCC. The software modernization implementation plan also calls for the establishment of additional contract options for cloud innovation geared towards smaller vendors and “niche providers.“

“In the implementation plan, we’re trying to build that next-generation cloud infrastructure and extend it. Not just looking at JWCC, but we’re also looking at how we extend for small business cloud providers,” Vietmeyer said.

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The CIO’s recently released software modernization implementation plan for fiscal 2025 and 2026 marks another call from Pentagon leadership for the entire department to improve delivery of software-based capabilities. The document lists three key goals for the next two years — focusing on software factories, enterprise cloud and transforming processes — as well as specific tasks for each goal that aims to improve overall software modernization.

The goals and tasks in the document build upon the DOD CIO’s first software modernization implementation plan for fiscal 2023 and 2024. According to the new roadmap, the Pentagon completed 27 out of 41 of the tasks outlined in the previous plan, carried 12 tasks over to FY25 and FY26 and combined two tasks with others in the updated document.

Rob Vietmeyer, chief software officer for the deputy CIO for information enterprise, said that while working through the goals in the first implementation plan, the office realized that some of the associated tasks weren’t mature enough to fully execute on.

“For a small portion, we learned that we didn’t know enough about a couple of those activities, so we dropped them. And then some of them, we were maybe over aggressive or they evolved,” he said Wednesday during a panel discussion at AFCEA’s TechNet Cyber conference. “I’ll say, from an agile perspective, we didn’t have the user score exactly right, so some of these stories have continued into the implementation plan two.”

The first goal outlined in the new plan is to accelerate and scale the Pentagon’s enterprise cloud environment. Along with its multi-cloud, multi-vendor contract known as the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC), the department also has a number of other efforts aimed at providing cloud infrastructure overseas and at the tactical edge. 

Vietmeyer said that even though JWCC has been a relative success — noting that the department has awarded at least $2.7 billion worth of task orders under the program — the contract vehicle was “suboptimal” for large acquisitions. The CIO is currently planning for what it calls JWCC 2.0, a follow-on phase that adds more vendors and different contracting mechanisms to the program.

Beyond JWCC, the implementation plan calls for the establishment of additional contract options for cloud innovation — specifically geared towards small business and “niche providers” — that can be awarded before the end of fiscal 2026.

“In the implementation plan, we’re trying to build that next-generation cloud infrastructure and extend it. Not just looking at JWCC, but we’re also looking at how we extend for small business cloud providers,” Vietmeyer said. 

The document also offers guidance for Pentagon efforts to expand cloud access to the edge, such as through Stratus or the Joint Operational Edge (JOE) environments. In the next two years, the department will develop a reference design for an “underlying cloud mesh” that facilitates data transport, software development and information-sharing across different infrastructures overseas, according to the plan.

The mesh architecture would allow warfighters from one military service to access a cloud node operated by a different service, or one owned by the Defense Information Systems Agency, Vietmeyer explained.

“We’ve seen that one of the challenges is moving to a mesh type of architecture, so we can identify where computing infrastructure exists and allow the warfighters to take advantage [of it],” he said. “How do we start to build the ability for applications and data to scale across that infrastructure in a highly resilient way?”

Along with enterprise cloud, another goal within the updated implementation plan focuses on creating a Pentagon-wide software factory ecosystem that fully leverages a DevSecOps approach. The CIO intends to take successful practices from the various software factories in DOD and replicate them across the department, according to the plan.

“DoD must continue to scale success and bridge the right disciplines together … to ensure end-to-end enablement and realization of the software modernization vision and adoption of software platforms and factories organized by domain,” the document stated.

The CIO will also work to remove existing processes and red tape that prevents software developers from accessing critical tools and capabilities; increase the number of platforms with continuous authorization to operate (cATO) approvals; and create a DevSecOps reference design for artificial intelligence and software-based automation deployment.

Lastly, the implementation plan outlines multiple tasks geared towards evolving the Pentagon’s policies, regulations and standards to better support software development and delivery — including creating secure software standards, improving software deployment in weapons platforms and growing its workforce.

Although work to accelerate the Pentagon’s software modernization has been happening for years, leaders at the department have begun pushing for more focused efforts to remove bureaucratic red tape through new guidance — such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s Modern Software Acquisition memo released in March, and the CIO’s new Software Fast Track (SWIFT) program.

“For modern practices to become the routine way of developing and delivering software, policy, regulations, and standards must be reviewed and updated,” the implementation plan stated. “DoD must work with DoD Components to update policy and guidance to reduce the barriers to adopting new practices and to accelerate software delivery and cybersecurity approvals to enable adoption of the latest tools and services.”

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The issue currently is reducing the amount of systems each unit across the services has to bring to support their missions.

“How do we better support the edge environments? Today, folks are using cloud at the edge … the cloud on-premise computing technologies, those are being deployed today, both within the intelligence community and within the DOD environment,” Rob Vietmeyer, chief software officer for the deputy CIO for information enterprise, said at the virtual Defense Software Modernization Forum hosted by ExecutiveBiz on Wednesday. “The challenge we’re running into is sort of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ that if everyone has to bring their own [capabilities], we’re now sub-optimizing the use of floor space, power, bandwidth, maintenance and support within those edge environments. These are expensive resources.”

Vietmeyer said officials are now trying to figure out how to build a globally integrated cloud environment instead of everyone bringing their own edge systems.

“This will be a huge game changer, because today, in those edge environments, those are usually technically unique,” he said. “If we can get an enterprise edge capability out there that operates as a multi-tenant, it’s built on standard commercial configurations, this will be enabled to folks to deploy and deploy new tooling and new algorithms, get access to data, share data in ways that today’s environment make it very difficult. It’s a big focus here for the department.”

In December, the Pentagon awarded Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC), the first enterprise cloud capability for the department. Officials have said JWCC will bring increased capabilities to the edge.

“I am so excited about what JWCC brings from [outside the continental U.S.] and the edge,” DOD CIO John Sherman said last month at the DefenseTalks conference hosted by DefenseScoop. “Conflict with China is neither inevitable nor desirable and I want to emphasize that. [But] because we will look at what our forces might have to do inside a second island chain in the western Pacific as a Marine littoral regiment and that stand-in force … they [have] got to be able to have capabilities, compute, transport and so on, that works and is going to be there for them. That’s what JWCC is going to help bring to them.”

Vietmeyer said the DOD is now looking at creating an “operational edge” that becomes a staging point within the theaters in order to allow larger commercial cloud infrastructure to provide greater storage, persistence and capabilities closer to the tactical edge without organizations having to deploy their own.

“This operational edge sort of becomes this intermediary capability between what is mainly [continental U.S.] based, full cloud regions and then the fully deployed tactical edge,” he said.

“We’re working very closely with our networking improvement folks to flesh out both being able to leverage commercial SATCOM [from low-Earth orbit] and geosynchronous, as well as 5G and terrestrial communications. We’re working with the vendors to be able to peer vendor networks within [outside the continental U.S.] regions and peer those with our defense networks so we can avoid boomeranging across the ocean for communications that can happen within theater,” he added.

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“I’m cautiously optimistic with it,” Krolikowski said Wednesday during a virtual conference hosted by C4ISRNET. “The enablement of that tech is very, very exciting to see, but I also think you need to have a bit of a critical eye on it.”

ChatGPT is an online chatbot launched in late 2022 by research firm OpenAI that has gone viral. Broadly, generative artificial intelligence is able to take inputs from humans to create a range of content, including audio code, images, text, videos and more.

Since its rise in popularity, U.S. government organizations like the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Information Systems Agency and others within the Defense Department have begun ruminating over how the technology could be used to aid their work.

Krolikowski pointed to the benefits of using tools like ChatGPT for day-to-day tasks, such as drafting a long document that normally takes a lot of time and resources, and then having humans go in and make edits afterwards.

“It’s always easier to edit a document than it is to generate a document,” she said. “So I think using something like a ChatGPT to author, but then for us to put our actual brain cells against it to edit and then to validate it.”

Validating information from generative AI would be a key responsibility for the department in order to avoid inaccuracies, Krolikowski noted.

The Pentagon is worried about the generation of misinformation, also known as “hallucinations” associated with the technology. The department plans to host a conference in June to examine how it can strike a balance between leveraging the tech without spreading false information.

Rob Vietmeyer, the DOD’s chief software officer, also stressed the importance of dealing with misinformation created by these types of platforms. He noted one task will be better understanding why the models sometimes create inaccuracies in their answers, as well as addressing other ethical concerns.

Still, AI will certainly have a role in the Defense Department’s data-centric future, Vietmeyer said during the virtual conference on Wednesday.

“As you look at all of the telemetry that’s going to be coming off of our environments, if you look at the skill sets that are going to be needed to assess software, looking for security vulnerabilities, apply attack models — AI is going to just be a core component,” he said. “And we’re going to have to work through the hallucinations and the other concerns that we have with these models. But it’s going to be an ongoing adventure.”

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Rob Vietmeyer has assumed the role within the information enterprise division of the Office of the Chief Information Officer, according to posts on LinkedIn and Twitter by the DOD CIO.

In his new job, Vietmeyer will lead implementation of the Pentagon’s software modernization strategy and “advocate for software development approaches, cloud services and process transformation,” according to the LinkedIn post.

The DOD’s software modernization strategy was published in February and seeks to push more software adoption within the department akin to private industry.

Vietmeyer will also be charged with advancing DOD’s adoption of DevSecOps, agile software development and cloud native modernization.

Previously, Vietmeyer held various cloud-related roles within the department, most recently as DOD’s director of cloud and software modernization.

Defense officials have maintained that the department must embrace modern software development in order to stay ahead of sophisticated adversaries, arguing that the old platform-centric and hardware-centric models of modernization are not sufficient to outpace threats or keep up with the rate of technology advancement.

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