The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) is the U.S. Department of Defense's enterprise-wide AI office, chartered to set DOD AI strategy, develop joint AI capabilities, and provide AI/ML common services across the department. It was established February 1, 2022, and reports to the Deputy Secretary of Defense. On the civilian side, NIST CAISI (Center for AI Standards and Innovation) at NIST is its rough counterpart.
Leadership
The office and its predecessor have had six directors. Lieutenant General John N.T. Shanahan led the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center from December 2018 to June 2020, followed by Nand Mulchandani (June–October 2020) and Lieutenant General Michael S. Groen (October 2020 – May 2022). Craig H. Martell was the first CDAO under the consolidated office, from June 2022 to March 2024, succeeded by Radha Iyengar Plumb from April 2024 to January 2025. Andrew Mapes served as acting CDAO through the intervening year, and Cameron Stanley — a defense technology executive and Project Maven alumnus — took the post on January 12, 2026 and holds it as of August 2026 (Source: en.wikipedia.org; defensescoop.com). The office's own 2026 materials describe it as the Department of War's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, following the department's renaming (Source: ai.mil).
The near-year vacancy filled by an acting official spans the period in which the frontier-AI procurement decisions below were being prepared.
Origins
CDAO was established February 1, 2022 by consolidating three predecessor organizations:
- Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) — the DOD's prior AI focal point.
- Defense Digital Service (DDS) — described as the DOD's "SWAT team of nerds."
- Chief Data Officer function — DOD-wide data governance.
Mandate and role
CDAO is the office of record for the DOD's frontier-AI procurement and deployment decisions, positioned as the operational counterpart on the DOD side to NIST CAISI (Center for AI Standards and Innovation) on the civilian side. It is referenced in connection with DOD AI deployment and with the conceptual framing of its authority on pages including DOD — Department of Defense (AI Deployer), AI and National Security, and Procurement-Driven AI Governance.
Task Force Lima, CDAO's generative-AI evaluation and adoption task force, launched in August 2023.
Frontier-AI procurement and deployment
On May 1, 2026, CDAO served as the office of record on the DOD side for the selection of seven companies for IL5/IL6/IL7 classified-network deployment: xAI, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Reflection, Microsoft, and AWS (xAI, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Nvidia & TSMC — AI Compute Infrastructure, Reflection AI, Microsoft, Amazon). Anthropic was excluded; the dispute over that exclusion is covered on Clawed and Anthropic v. United States (Pentagon ban challenge) (Source: New Developments Log entries for the 2026-05-01 cluster). Reflection was the lone open-weight developer in the cohort, a selection that situates the open-weight question as a procurement question rather than a regulatory one (Reflection AI).
CDAO operates GenAI.mil, the DOD's enterprise generative-AI platform, which reportedly crossed 1.3 million users and "hundreds of thousands of agents" as of May 2026. The platform's first deployed AI technology was Google Cloud's Gemini for Government, selected by CDAO in December 2025 to serve roughly 3 million civilian and military personnel under a Department of War Impact Level 5 (IL5) authorization for unclassified business processes, with a contractual commitment that platform data is not used to train Google's public models (Source: googlecloudpresscorner.com). The procurement is one example of CDAO routing commercial frontier models into department-wide use through a single authorized platform rather than through agency-by-agency contracts.
Commentary tied to the Anthropic exclusion anticipated two near-term developments. Drawing on the resolution trajectory of Anthropic v. United States (Pentagon ban challenge), one forecast (issued May 2026) held that Anthropic would be added to a successor Pentagon classified-network cohort tier within 12 months, resolved by a DOD or CDAO announcement adding Anthropic to IL5/IL6/IL7-tier deployments by May 10, 2027. A second forecast (issued May 2026), drawn from dev-log discussion of the Anthropic exclusion, held that CDAO would publish formal frontier-AI procurement criteria — public CDAO guidance, an RFP framework, or a DOD-wide directive specifying frontier-AI evaluation criteria — by December 31, 2026.
Relationships
- deployed-by: OpenAI, Anthropic (disputed), Google DeepMind, Nvidia & TSMC — AI Compute Infrastructure, Microsoft, Amazon, xAI, Reflection AI — the May 2026 cohort plus the disputed-exclusion case.
- related: NIST CAISI (Center for AI Standards and Innovation) — civilian-side counterpart at NIST.
- related: DOD — Department of Defense (AI Deployer) — parent.
- related: Clawed, Anthropic v. United States (Pentagon ban challenge) — the Anthropic-Pentagon dispute that CDAO sits at the center of.
- related: AI and National Security, Procurement-Driven AI Governance — the conceptual home of CDAO's authority.
Sources
This page was created during the v4.0 broken-link cleanup (May 2026) and expanded in June 2026 with the GenAI.mil / Gemini for Government deployment record. A CDAO-specific strategy or charter document remains to be ingested as a primary source; the remaining cross-links point to pages whose own sources cover CDAO incidentally.