The NDAA: A Key Vehicle for AI Governance

Summary

• The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is one of the few “must-pass” bills in Congress every year, which makes it a key opportunity for AI legislation. 
• The Fiscal Year 2026 NDAA (FY26 NDAA) contained nearly two dozen artificial intelligence-related provisions. 
  • While many of those provisions focus on accelerating adoption, others require DOD^1[1] to develop standards, frameworks, and other policy measures to govern its AI use. 
• Among the most notable AI-related provisions from the FY26 NDAA are its requirements: 
  • To create an AI Futures Steering Committee, through which senior Pentagon officials will formulate DOD policy for the evaluation, governance, and risk mitigation of advanced AI and artificial general intelligence (AGI); and
  • To develop a standardized assessment framework for AI models currently used by DOD, along with department-wide guidelines to facilitate procurement of future AI models. 
• The Fiscal Year 2027 NDAA (FY27 NDAA) markups include provisions related to autonomous weapons policy, AI procurement, and the AI capabilities of adversaries.

Introduction

The National Defense Authorization Act has quietly become one of Congress’s most powerful tools for shaping AI policy, and the FY26 NDAA featured many key AI provisions. This commentary compiles all the major AI provisions from the FY26 NDAA and analyzes the most significant language in detail. With some of the initial deadlines imposed by the FY26 NDAA now having passed—and with negotiations around the FY27 NDAA underway—it’s useful to take stock of the potential and pitfalls of these provisions.

The NDAA is not just restricted to the nuts and bolts of defense operations. It has also been used to achieve broader policy goals, sometimes by limiting the executive branch’s actions. For example, one of the most important and successful nonproliferation programs in history, the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, was originally proposed as an amendment to the NDAA and was subsequently expanded through the NDAA.^2[2] More recently, the FY19 NDAA effectively banned the government from using certain Chinese telecommunications companies such as Huawei and ZTE; likewise, the FY26 NDAA bans certain foreign AI products like DeepSeek.

As the government increasingly prioritizes AI use in warfighting and military operations, the NDAA has a key role to play in shaping AI policy.

AI Governance in the FY26 NDAA

Notable Provisions

Several provisions stand out as particularly important for the government’s broader interest in overseeing and fostering the responsible development of secure AI systems: 

• The Artificial Intelligence Futures Steering Committee;
• The AI Model Assessment and Oversight framework;
• Digital Sandboxes for AI;
• Physical and Cybersecurity Procurement Requirements for AI Systems; and
• The Autonomous Weapons Waiver Policy.

Section 1535: Artificial Intelligence Futures Steering Committee

Section 1535 requires DOD to create an Artificial Intelligence Futures Steering Committee (Steering Committee) to prepare DOD for advanced AI and AGI. The Steering Committee will be co-chaired by the Deputy Secretary of Defense and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (VCJCS). It will primarily be composed of principal deputies of the military services, relevant under secretaries (e.g., the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD(R&E))), and others responsible for AI (e.g., the Chief Digital and AI Officer (CDAO)).^3[3]

By January 31, 2027, the Steering Committee must submit a report to Congress covering what can be described as two main focus areas. First, the committee must help prepare DOD for advanced AI and AGI by creating: 

1. A proactive policy for the evaluation, adoption, governance, and risk mitigation of advanced AI systems, including systems that approach or achieve AGI. 
2. An analysis of the forecasted trajectory of advanced AI models and enabling technologies that could lead to AGI such as AI agents, neuromorphic computing, cognitive science applications, infrastructure needs, new microelectronics, etc.
3. An analysis of the potential operational effects of integrating advanced AI or AGI into DOD networks and systems from a technical, doctrinal, training, and resourcing perspective to better understand effects on operational commands. 
4. A strategy for the risk-informed adoption, governance, and oversight of advanced AI and AGI including ethical, policy, and technical guardrails to maintain appropriate human decision-making and prevent misuse. 

The second focus area is U.S. adversaries. Though not specifically named, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which is actively pursuing AI capabilities that rival those of the United States, is likely the primary focus. The committee must assess the possible technological, operational, and doctrinal trajectories of U.S. adversaries with respect to AI capabilities, including the pursuit of AGI. Additionally, the committee must analyze the threat landscape associated with the use of advanced AI and AGI and develop options to counter these threats. 

Within the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy, there’s often fierce competition between different programs and priorities for funding and attention from leadership. In this sense, the Steering Committee could be a valuable forcing function for the department to prepare for advanced AI, reinforced by the requirement to report its findings to Congress by early 2027. There’s precedent for DOD using these sorts of committees as a way to spur action on issues such as software modernization and autonomous systems.

However, such committees sometimes serve more as a signaling mechanism for Congress than as a catalyst for serious action. Unless chairs or members of the committee invest their time and professional capital to drive it forward, it can easily devolve into a box-checking exercise. While the Steering Committee’s substantive mandate is broad, its required procedural actions, as set by Congress, are fairly minimal: meet at least once every three months, and submit a report on its findings to the relevant congressional committees by January 31, 2027. That means that depending on when the committee is actually established and how quickly it first convenes, it may meet only three or four times before its report is due. 

On top of that, the NDAA provision does not allocate any dedicated staff or budget for the Steering Committee. Any resources must be drawn from existing reserves, which could further limit its capacity. Given those constraints and their already-full plates, the Steering Committee’s principals might be tempted to delegate their roles and responsibilities down the chain of command to other, typically less-empowered subordinates, whose remit might be narrower—i.e., drafting a report that satisfies Congress’s requirements while potentially tabling thornier policy disagreements or implementation details for later.

Congress should remain attuned to these possible failure modes and use its oversight power to solicit information about the Steering Committee and its progress, in the hopes of helping it gain and maintain momentum. There are some encouraging signs on this front. In March, Senator Jim Banks sent a letter to Secretary Hegseth requesting a staff-level briefing within 60 days to discuss DOD’s plans for the Steering Committee. The letter suggested areas of focus with respect to U.S.-PRC AI competition. Even just one or a few members of Congress taking specific, sustained interest in the Steering Committee could keep it high enough on DOD’s long list of priorities to increase its odds of success. 

Congressional oversight can be particularly valuable in two ways. First, it can keep pressure on the committee if it fails to meet the report submission deadline of January 31. Second, and perhaps more importantly, Congress can help ensure that the Steering Committee doesn’t waste the 11 months between its reporting deadline and its termination date of December 31, 2027. 

While the report is the Steering Committee’s most tangible required deliverable, Congress provided that the committee will continue to exist for nearly a year beyond the report submission deadline. This time would allow the committee to refine or update its policies and to work on implementing and disseminating the findings throughout DOD. Because the Steering Committee lacks deliverables or other measurable benchmarks throughout most of 2027, it’ll likely be incumbent on Congress to use tools like letters, hearings, and requests for briefings to push forward that updating and implementation work. These efforts could ultimately have a much greater impact on DOD operations in the long term than just the drafting of the report itself.

As of June 30, 2026, no public materials indicate whether the Steering Committee was established by the April 1 statutory deadline, or whether it has held its first meeting. That’s not necessarily cause for concern, as DOD is not required by the NDAA to report those actions to Congress or the public. But it does make it harder to predict which of these paths the AI Futures Steering Committee will ultimately follow. Overall, this provision could pay dividends by prompting DOD to proactively prepare for major threats and opportunities raised by AGI—planning that might otherwise get neglected—though its success is far from assured. 

Key Dates

• 4/1/2026: Deadline to establish the Steering Committee
• 1/31/2027: Steering Committee’s report due to Congress 
• 12/31/2027: Steering Committee terminates 

Section 1533: AI Model Assessment and Oversight

Section 1533 instructs DOD to create a Cross-Functional Team (Team) for AI “model assessment and oversight.” The Team must develop a standardized assessment framework for AI models currently used by DOD, as well as guidelines to facilitate procurement of future models. The Team is led by the CDAO and composed of other DOD technology leaders, such as CIOs, CAIOs of the combatant commands, service acquisition executives, and USD(R&E). The Team must: 

• Develop a “standardized assessment framework” for AI models currently used by DOD, including: performance standards, development documentation, testing procedures, compliance with ethical principles, assessment and validation methodologies, and security and compliance requirements under FedRAMP.^4[4]
• Establish department-wide “guidelines” for evaluating future AI models being considered for use. 
• Create “governance structures” for the development, assessment, testing, and deployment of models. 
• Determine assessment levels for models based on “ultimate use case-based risk.” 
• Establish “mechanisms” for intra-agency collaboration regarding the development, testing, assessment, and deployment of AI models. 
• Develop processes for the submission, review, and approval of use cases for AI models.

This provision allows DOD to retain a lot of discretion over how it evaluates current and future AI models. Congress has mandated that DOD establish a framework and protocols, but didn’t set substantive thresholds for performance. That’s understandable to some degree, given the risk of setting standards via legislation, which might quickly become outdated and then prove difficult to adjust. And it’s similar to the approach that states like California and New York have taken in enacting frontier AI transparency reporting requirements. But some key requirements in the provision, such as the creation of “governance structures” and assessing “ultimate use-case-based risk,” use terms that are undefined and open to interpretation, and could have benefited from a bit more congressional guidance about the elements that should at least be considered or addressed.

That vagueness, combined with the long timelines the provision establishes, could make it hard for Congress to assess the Team’s progress. Congress notably gave the Team an extended timeline to develop its model assessments and oversight, which may be in tension with the pace of AI progress. The standardized assessment framework isn’t due until June 2027—a year and a half after enactment—and no actual assessments of DOD’s major AI systems are required until January 2028. Meanwhile, new frontier AI models are released many times a year. 

To be sure, the Team’s task is difficult. And Congress sometimes errs by giving agencies unrealistically short deadlines. But a failure to keep up with the pace of AI development risks undermining the Team’s purpose. To frame that risk, consider the events that have transpired since the FY26 NDAA passed six months ago. First, there was the blow-up over contract terms between the Pentagon and Anthropic in February. More recently, the June 5 National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) 11 ordered Secretary Hegseth, ODNI, and IC elements to “review and update procurement processes to ensure the rapid onboarding of the most advanced AI models from multiple vendors” within 120 days. It’s unclear how or whether this review will be coordinated with the procurement guidelines that the Team is tasked with developing on its longer timeframe.

Here, again, Congress can deploy its oversight tools to steer DOD in the direction of consistent and streamlined guidelines for AI procurement. It should aim to ensure that standards are applied uniformly and transparently, not reactively, to AI developers. Helpfully, this provision requires DOD to provide a briefing to congressional defense committees within 30 days of hitting significant statutorily prescribed milestones, starting with its establishment of the Team on or before June 1, 2026. That offers a natural opening for Congress to probe the Team’s trajectory, and potentially to spur a course correction if needed. Congress might consider incorporating that sort of regular briefing requirement into future AI-related NDAA provisions; it’s particularly beneficial in this area due to rapid and sometimes unexpected jumps in capabilities and risks, and might also have been helpful for similar initiatives like the Steering Committee discussed above.

Finally, it’s worth a closer look at the provision’s definition of “major [AI] system”—one of only a few terms that the provision does actually define—buried near the end of the provision. That definition limits coverage to systems used annually by at least 500 users within DOD, and excludes systems used solely for research, development, testing, or evaluation that have not been deployed for operational use. Elsewhere, the provision specifies that DOD must assess all major AI systems using the standardized assessment framework, leaving it somewhat unclear when or to what extent that framework also governs assessment of other AI models used by DOD. In other words, for models used by less than 500 employees per year, or those involved only in R&D, how will DOD assess performance, security, and “compliance with ethical principles”? 

While this sort of line-drawing exercise is almost always difficult but necessary for administrability, in this instance the exclusions arguably represent the frontier of DOD’s own AI development and deployment in what could end up being the highest-stakes and hardest-to-monitor situations. At minimum, it’s plausible that some of the most powerful systems, deployed in potentially highly consequential cases, might be available to only a small number of users. Congress should ask DOD how it plans to assess AI systems that fall into those categories and potentially require the development of standards for such systems in future legislation.

Key Dates

• 6/1/2026: Deadline to establish Cross-Functional Team
• 1/1/2027: Deadline to designate Functional Leads for specialized functional, operational, or subject-matter areas within DOD
• 6/1/2027: Deadline for Cross-Functional Team to complete development of standardized assessment framework and governance structure
• 1/1/2028: Deadline to complete assessment of major AI systems used by DOD
• 12/31/2030: Cross-Functional Team terminates^5[5]

Section 1534: Digital Sandbox Environments for AI

Section 1534 requires the CDAO to create a task force to promote AI sandbox environments supporting “experimentation, training, familiarization, and development.” The task force should “identify, coordinate, and advance” DOD efforts to develop and deploy AI sandboxes, with an eye toward accelerating AI adoption across the department. The provision defines an “[AI] sandbox environment” as a “secure, isolated computing environment that enables users with varying levels of technical proficiency to access [AI] tools, models, and capabilities for the purposes of experimentation, training, testing, and development without affecting operational systems or requiring specialized technical knowledge to operate.” The provision requires that the task force be established by April 1, 2026, and that the CDAO provide a briefing to congressional defense committees by August 1 on the task force’s goals and objectives.

One noteworthy aspect of this provision is the emphasis that Congress has placed on using sandboxes to facilitate training and familiarization with AI by DOD employees—“from personnel with little technical proficiency to personnel with expert technical proficiency.” Congress should be commended for devoting at least as much attention to that purpose as to how sandboxes are used to develop and test AI tools and models, which is often the main or even exclusive focus of sandboxing. In an organization as large and varied as DOD—and in which the stakes are matters of national security—giving employees a dedicated environment in which to try (and fail) so as to ultimately gain a level of comfort using novel and quickly evolving AI systems is critical to the widespread adoption that Congress is after.

One area where both DOD and Congress might focus some more attention during the required briefing is how the task force can facilitate a pipeline between successful AI development that occurs in sandboxes and the actual implementation of those systems, tools, or methods in the real world of DOD operations. That’s a topic that the provision as written doesn’t address as squarely, but it’ll be key to ensuring that DOD can fully capitalize on its investment in AI sandbox environments. DOD can be a process-heavy place at times; the task force will need to plan for how to judge when AI experiments are ready to graduate from sandboxes, and to efficiently move those successful innovations from sandboxes to the rest of the department.

Key Dates

• 4/1/2026: Deadline to establish Task Force on AI sandbox environments
• 8/1/2026: Deadline for Task Force to brief congressional defense committees on goals and objectives
• 1/1/2030: Task Force terminates

Section 1513: Physical and Cybersecurity Procurement Requirements for Artificial Intelligence Systems

Section 1513 requires DOD, in collaboration with industry and academia, to develop a framework for the implementation of cybersecurity and physical security standards and best practices for AI systems, “to mitigate risks to [DOD] from the use of such technologies.” The framework must cover enumerated concerns like insider threats, data poisoning, and adversarial tampering. The provision also instructs that the framework must be “risk-based,” drawing on existing reference documents, including NIST’s SP 800 series, and augmenting existing cybersecurity frameworks, including DOD CMMC. 

To implement the best practices developed under the framework, DOD must amend the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) “or take other similar action” ensuring that those practices apply to contractors who engage in AI development, deployment, storage, or hosting. In carrying out that function, DOD must weigh the costs and benefits of imposing security requirements on contractors—and specifically, the costs of “slowing down” AI development and deployment against “the benefits of mitigating national security risks and potential security risks” to DOD.

While this provision is expressly attuned to the potential costs of slowing down AI development through unduly onerous security requirements, it’s at least equally concerned with mitigating the risks to DOD—and national security more generally—that AI systems can pose. It will be worth monitoring how the framework approaches that statutorily required balancing, not least because of how it contrasts with the January 9 AI Strategy memo issued by Secretary Hegseth, which seemingly prized speed above all else. 

Lines from that memo, like “speed wins,” and “We must accept that the risks of not moving fast enough outweigh the risks of imperfect alignment,” offer a preview of where DOD seems most likely to come down on these issues. They also suggest that Congress may have to be dogged in reviewing a required June status update and pursuing other oversight measures to confirm that the statutorily mandated cost-benefit analysis is sufficiently rigorous, with real attention to serious risks Congress mentioned, such as adversarial tampering.

Key Date

• 6/16/2026: Deadline for DOD to submit an update to the congressional defense committees on the status of implementing the requirements of the Physical and Cybersecurity Procurement provision

Section 1061: Notification of Waivers under DOD Directive 3000.09 

Section 1061 requires DOD to notify congressional defense committees when it has waived DOD Directive 3000.09 (DoDD 3000.09) relating to the use of autonomous weapon systems (AWS).^6[6] The notification must be in writing and transmitted to the relevant committees within 30 days of when the waiver was issued. The notification also must be unclassified and must include the rationale for the waiver, a description of the weapons system or technology covered by the waiver, and the anticipated duration of the waiver. DOD may include a classified annex to the waiver, as necessary.

DoDD 3000.09 states that “[a]utonomous and semi-autonomous weapons will be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force” (emphasis added). As Kelley Sayler of the Congressional Research Service has noted, that does not mean that “manual human ‘control’” of the system is required, but rather mandates “broader human involvement in decisions about how, when, where, and why the weapon will be employed”—for example, “a human must assess the operational environment and decide to deploy the weapon, which can then operate autonomously.” 

As most relevant here, DoDD 3000.09 allows for DOD to skip the traditional review and approval process for AWS when there is an “urgent military need.” Typically, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD(P)), USD(R&E), and the VCJCS must approve a system before formal development, and then it must be approved again before being deployed in operations by the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, USD(P), and VCJCS.^7[7] DoDD 3000.09 allows any of these parties to request a waiver of the policy requirements per approval of the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Section 1061 is the latest in a series of recent NDAA provisions through which Congress has sought greater insight into DoDD 3000.09, particularly whether and how it’s being applied or modified. In the NDAA for fiscal year 2024, Congress required that DOD provide a briefing to congressional defense committees within 30 days of making any changes to DoDD 3000.09, including a description of the change and an explanation of the reasons for it. In fiscal year 2025’s NDAA, Congress required DOD to submit annual reports to those committees through December 31, 2029, on its approval and deployment of lethal AWS under DoDD 3000.09, including any systems that received a waiver from the policy’s review requirement.

This is a prime example of Congress using the NDAA to iterate and build progressively on existing requirements as issues rise in salience—and the salience of DoDD 3000.09 has arguably never been greater. The directive featured prominently in the Pentagon’s dispute with Anthropic earlier this year. Furthermore, NSPM-11 issued by President Trump on June 5 orders Secretary Hegseth to update DoDD 3000.09 within 90 days, and to review it annually “to account for the rapidly evolving capabilities of AI systems” and “ensure the deliberate adoption of AI systems that respect the chain of command and operational authorities.”

In keeping with this progression, one valuable adjustment to Section 1061 that Congress might make would be an amendment that requires an update to the committees when the duration of a waiver is extended beyond the “anticipated” period previously notified, as well as regular updates for any waivers that DOD issues that don’t have a specified end date or timeframe. This would help to guard against overreliance on waivers that might be open-ended or persist for years without prompting congressional scrutiny. Otherwise, waivers issued in prior years might not necessarily show up in the annual reports required under the NDAA for fiscal year 2025.

Going further, Congress could consider whether to codify all or parts of DoDD 3000.09, potentially preserving DOD’s ability to waive or deviate from aspects of the policy when warranted to avoid restrictions that might prove too rigid or become quickly outdated. Both the House and Senate FY27 NDAA markups address DOD AWS policy, though with notable differences. While the final text of any AWS-policy provision in the FY27 NDAA may differ substantially from the markups, these initial versions shed some light on possible approaches. 

The House markup requires that DOD update its AWS policy, including DoDD 3000.09, within one year of enactment—significantly longer than the 90 days DOD has to update the directive under NSPM-11. But as compared to the NSPM, the House markup provides more detail on what an updated policy must include, not least “requirements to preserve existing human command responsibility for the use of force involving autonomous systems or artificial intelligence-enabled systems, including procedures to identify the human commanders or operators responsible for authorizing, supervising, and terminating such use of force.” The Senate markup goes much further still, prescribing an AWS policy and governance regime for DOD in significantly greater detail, with an even more defined substantive floor. And while the Senate markup in multiple places incorporates DoDD 3000.09’s familiar standard of “appropriate levels of human judgment,” it does not directly address the directive’s existing waiver process, leaving it unclear whether that aspect of DoDD 3000.09 would pass muster and thus survive the substantive standards established by this provision.

If Congress opts for a more prescriptive approach, it could consider adding a sunset clause to hedge against the risks of excessive rigidity or obsolescence. A short initial timeline of 1–2 years would prompt Congress to revisit and adjust as needed, providing a short feedback loop for any DOD operational concerns or issues that emerge. 

The Road Ahead: What to Watch for in 2026 and 2027

The FY26 NDAA showed how the annual defense bill can be one of—or even the—primary vehicle for the governance and oversight of defense-relevant AI decisions. Congress can use it to spur prioritization and adoption (Steering Committee and sandboxes), mandate the development of standards and assessments (AI model oversight), prompt consideration and safeguarding against security risks (cybersecurity procurement requirements), and gather information about how the department is using AI (autonomous weapons waivers and various briefing requirements in other provisions). 

Throughout the remainder of 2026 and beyond, it’s worth continuing to monitor updates to key provisions via congressional briefings and other potential disclosures, especially regarding autonomous weapons waivers and the implementation of an AI physical and cybersecurity procurement framework and AI model assessment and oversight. At least one of these initiatives, the AI physical and cybersecurity procurement framework, expressly requires that DOD seek input from groups like industry and academia. Experts should look for opportunities to engage through requests for information or other formats. Congress also has a significant role to play in ensuring that implementation proceeds responsibly and on schedule, using oversight tools like letters, briefing requests, and hearings to supplement the reporting requirements baked into some, but not all, of the key provisions.

As negotiations for the FY27 NDAA ramp up, we can expect numerous AI initiatives to be considered and ultimately included—perhaps even more than last year, since other legislative vehicles will likely be few and far between in this midterm election year. The current House and Senate FY27 NDAA markups include provisions on AI incident and vulnerability reporting within DOD, using AI agents at scale and speed, and promoting competition in AI procurement. The FY27 NDAA could also serve as the vehicle for another attempt at federal preemption of state AI laws, which was dropped shortly before last year’s bill was passed. 

In all of these, Congress should learn from last year’s NDAA. It should craft implementation timelines for DOD that provide space for careful consideration but are not overly long relative to the rapid rate of technological development and diffusion. And it should think about where to build in briefing and other reporting requirements to fill in its knowledge gaps regarding implementation, while being sensitive to the demands they impose on personnel’s time. Doing so helps Congress not only ensure that last year’s initiatives are proceeding according to plan, but also provides valuable insight about unexpected challenges or shortcomings that can inform the coming year’s bill.