Last month, EdgeRunner AI shared our recommendations with the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) for the 2025 National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research and Development (R&D) Strategic Plan. As our CEO Tyler Saltsman has written previously, we’ve entered a pivotal moment in the evolution of AI—a transformative era that, while marked by incredible progress, also presents profound questions about what comes next.

Our recommendations encompass two categories: (1) prioritizing AI solutions for the warfighter that are capable of running air-gapped and offline; and (2) developing Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI technology for the DoD that are trained on fully transparent and auditable datasets.

Extremely powerful AI technology will be developed during this Administration that will transform how we fight war. President Trump, Secretary Hegseth, and this Administration have an opportunity to dramatically enhance U.S. national security by bringing these capabilities to the DoD and getting them into the hands of warfighters at the front lines. 

However, it will be critical that AI solutions for specific use cases are capable of running completely on-device for increased data privacy, security, performance, and cost effectiveness. Furthermore, it will be critical that the DoD leverages AI solutions that are fully transparent with auditable datasets to migrate potential biases.

It is essential that this Administration prioritize AI capabilities that can operate securely and safely in the Age of AI. Our adversaries are actively developing new technology to disrupt, deny, and degrade our capabilities on the battlefield. For the warfighter operating at the front lines, we must ensure their AI capabilities are both resilient and reliable. We recommend the following actions:

• The DoD should prioritize researching, developing, and acquiring AI capabilities that can run fully on-device without requiring connectivity to the cloud or network
• The DoD should encourage the service branches to leverage AI capabilities that can operate air-gapped, reducing dependency on the cloud and lowering hosting costs
• The CDAO should study and require that AI model providers selling to the DoD make their training data and techniques public for auditability and safety

EdgeRunner AI’s full OSTP submission is available here.