I helped build the Pentagon’s AI transformation. Corporate America is making every mistake we almost made

When we were standing up Project Maven, the Defense Department’s effort to embed AI into the world’s most complex and consequential operational workflows, the skeptics inside the Pentagon were not wrong to be skeptical. The Department had a long, expensive record of technology initiatives that arrived late, cost too much, and delivered too little. There was no obvious reason AI would be different. What made Maven different wasn’t the technology. It was the decision to treat AI not as an experiment to be managed, but as an organizational transformation to be owned. Senior leaders fought for it personally and bureaucratically. Workflows were dismantled, not augmented. Outcomes, what it enabled warfighters to actually do, were the only measure that counted. That discipline is the reason it worked. I tell that story because Stanford’s 2026 AI Index, released in April, confirmed something corporate America has been quietly conceding on earnings calls all spring: the country building the world’s most powerful AI ranks 24th in using it. American adoption sits at 28.3 percent. Singapore is at 61. The UAE is at 54. Goldman Sachs noted that AI investment contributed “basically zero” to U.S. GDP growth last year. America is falling behind not because of its models or its chips. It is falling behind for the same reasons the Pentagon almost lost Maven, and the fix is the same one that saved it. America is building the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence but stumbling badly in applying it. For now, China’s edge isn’t superior technology. It’s superior integration. And in the race that matters most, integration is what wins. Beijing’s “AI Plus” initiative is explicitly aimed at embedding AI across manufacturing, logistics, scientific research, health care, education, and government operations. In manufacturing in particular, the emphasis goes beyond generic assistants toward sector-specific models, industrial datasets, intelligent agents, and large-scale workflow integra