Meta Expands AI Access to US Defense Agencies to Strengthen National Security

Social media and technology giant Meta (nee Facebook) announced it is providing its open-source Llama AI models to U.S. defense agencies and contractors, to support national security and strengthen America’s position in the AI race.

Llama will be available to U.S. government agencies focused on defense and national security applications, and private partners supporting their missions, wrote Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, in a blog post.

By opening Llama to the public sector, Meta aims to contribute to U.S. technological leadership while ensuring ethical standards in artificial intelligence. “This is about supporting the safety, security, and economic prosperity of America—and of its closest allies too,” said Clegg on Monday.

Launched by Meta AI in February 2023, Llama is a series of large language models (LLMs)  designed to understand and generate human-like text. These models can process vast amounts of information, making them valuable for tasks such as data analysis, language translation, and content generation.

Meta’s decision to provide the Llama to the arrives amid growing competition with countries like China, where researchers linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were recently reported by Reuters to have adapted Meta’s previous Llama 2 model for defense purposes.

Clegg pointed out Meta’s alignment with U.S. interests, noting: “We believe it is in both America and the wider democratic world’s interest for American open source models to excel and succeed over models from China and elsewhere.”

As part of Meta’s mission to collaborate with the U.S. defense agencies, companies such as Oracle, Lockheed Martin, and Amazon Web Services are working with Llama to amplify processes across logistics, cybersecurity, and operational planning.

Oracle is using the AI model to streamline aircraft maintenance and enabling technicians to diagnose and address issues more quickly, as per the blog post.

Lockheed Martin has reportedly integrated Llama into its AI Factory, boosting data analysis and code generation capabilities for defense applications. Similarly, Scale AI is fine-tuning the model for national security missions focused on adversarial assessment.

Meta’s initiative extends Llama’s capabilities to public sector applications, with partners like Deloitte deploying the model to assist government agencies and nonprofits across areas such as education, energy, and small business.

The tech giant believes these responsible and ethical uses of open-source AI models like Llama will not only “support the prosperity and security of the United States but will also help establish U.S. open-source standards in the global race for AI leadership.”

This rollout follows Meta’s recent launch of Llama 3.2, an upgraded model featuring text and image processing capabilities, with smaller versions optimized for mobile devices. Meta partnered with Qualcomm and MediaTek to ensure Llama 3.2’s compatibility with mobile chips, expanding the model’s accessibility.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.