JD Vance speaks about AI in warfare

Ajouté : 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]You know, this is the only commencement speech that I'm giving this year and so I've watched a few highlights of graduation speeches where this or that corporate leader will discuss artificial intelligence, AI, and be met with literal boos.

[00:00:17]Now, you can't boo me. I'm the Vice President of the United States.

[00:00:23]But, your fellow Americans are understandably they're worried about AI, about how it will affect the way people work it, how it will distribute resources, and how it has fundamentally changed how we interact with one another, our social lives.

[00:00:40]But, the thing I worry about most with AI is how it will change warfare.

[00:00:46]Now, Pope Leo the 14th in a recent document encouraged us as human beings not to outsource the most important moral decisions to digital technology.

[00:00:59]And I want to endorse that sentiment and make it more specific to each and every one of you.

[00:01:07]AI will inevitably change warfare. And of course, as you've learned over the last 4 years, it already has.

[00:01:15]But, one of the things that makes Americans unique, that makes you as warfighters unique, is that we wage war justly.

[00:01:26]But, when I say that we, all of us, wage war justly, I mean fundamentally that you must do so.

[00:01:36]Because you are the ones who execute.

[00:01:39]You are the ones who lead on the battlefield.

[00:01:42]You are the ones who ensure that our lethality in war, which is amazing and necessary, it also coexists with our heart and with our conscience.

[00:01:53]It is an incredible burden to put on your shoulders, but it is one that we entrust to you with full confidence.

[00:02:01]And if the warfare of the future is to live up to the moral values of our ancestors, decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines.

[00:02:24]So as AI transforms the battlefield in some ways positively and some ways not, I ask that you be jealous and selfish about your role as the decision maker in warfare.

[00:02:38]Use technology to make you better, but never submit to it.

[00:02:44]You are the masters of warfare and both your minds but also your hearts are the opposite of artificial.