WASHINGTON, March 7 (Reuters) – The Pentagon on Friday named as Chief Data Officer Gavin Kliger, a computer scientist who aided billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts to overhaul the government last year and who has boosted white supremacists and misogynists online.
Reuters reported last year that Kliger had reposted content from white supremacist Nick Fuentes and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate and made some controversial comments.
Kliger said in an email that he was honored to take on the new role and disputed allegations about his social media posts. “The suggestion that I support ‘bigots,’ ‘extremists,’ or white supremacists is categorically untrue,” he said.
In a social media post, the Pentagon said Kliger’s new role “places him at the center of the Department’s most ambitious AI efforts,” focusing on “day-to-day alignment and execution of the Department’s AI projects, working directly with America’s frontier AI labs to support the warfighter.”
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for more comment.
The Pentagon’s use of AI has taken center stage after a heated weeks-long dispute with Anthropic over guardrails on how the military can use its AI tools led to last week’s decision by the Trump administration to drop the company and replace it with OpenAI.
On Thursday, the Pentagon gave Anthropic a formal supply-chain risk designation – an extraordinary rebuke by the administration against a U.S. tech company that began working with the Pentagon earlier than its competitors and was more aggressive in courting U.S. national-security officials. But the company and the Pentagon have been at odds for months over how the military can use its technology on the battlefield. This conflict erupted into public view earlier this year.
Anthropic has refused to back down on bans for its Claude AI to power autonomous weapons and mass U.S. surveillance. The Pentagon has pushed back, saying it should be able to use this technology as needed, so long as it complies with U.S. law.
(Reporting by Alexandra Alper and Raphael Satter; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Louise Heavens and Tomasz Janoski)