Under Secretary of War Emil Michael defended the Department of War’s massive budget request, arguing that the U.S. military’s arsenal is largely a relic of the Cold War and ill-suited for the modern battlefield, where drones and robotics dominate.
Speaking at a Breitbart News policy event titled “AI is Here: What to Fear, What to Embrace,” held in coordination with Innovation Council Action, Michael said the proposed increase — reported to be around $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon — is a necessary one-time investment to transition to future technologies.
“Most of the systems we have today were designed and built for the Cold War,” Michael said, according to a transcript of the event published by Breitbart News.
The annual defense budget typically hovers around $1 trillion, making the request a historic jump. Michael acknowledged the scale of the ask, noting that it was framed as a “one-time ability to invest in the new because you can’t leave the country defenseless.”
Cold War Assets vs. Modern Battlefields
Michael, who serves as Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, pointed to the legacy hardware — big airplanes, aircraft carriers, tanks, and stealth aircraft — as impressive demonstrations of American technological might.
“Those things are not always — like if you were to fight a battle like Ukraine and Russia are fighting — not all those things would be usable in the same way,” he said.
He referenced the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, where drone warfare has created what he called a “robot-on-robot front line,” a shift that renders many traditional platforms less effective. The question, he said, is how to adapt to this new reality while still building the kind of “exquisite weapons” the U.S. has relied on for decades.
Funding the Transition
Michael said the solution is not to abandon existing systems overnight but to maintain current capabilities while investing in new ones, allowing the “mix” of what the military builds to shift over time.
“You keep the old stuff, you build the new stuff, and then the shift, the mix of what you build in the future shifts,” he explained.
The increase, he said, would “eventually” allow the military to “build your stockpile inventory, and you get to more normalized budget.” In other words, the surge is meant to be temporary, with spending expected to level off once the transition is complete.
Michael also suggested that AI could help make defense more affordable in the long run, a point he had made earlier in an interview on CNBC, which was referenced by the event’s host, Matthew Boyle.
The event underscores the administration’s push to frame the massive defense spending as a strategic necessity in an era of rapid technological change, rather than a simple expansion of the military-industrial complex.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/08/25/under-secretary-of-war-emil-michael-dows-budget-request-necessary-to-modernize-defense-most-of-the-systems-we-have-today-were-designed-and-built-for-the-cold-war/