美国国防部主导的一项鲜为人知的采购计划，正在向潜在的国防承包商授予特殊地位，使其更容易让政府快速采购其人工智能产品。根据该计划，提交的产品视频时长不得超过五分钟。
An under-the-radar procurement program led by the Department of Defense has been granting special statuses to would-be defense contractors that make it easier for the government to quickly purchase their AI offerings, based on product videos that must be no longer than five minutes.
这是五角大楼试图在一个被美国军方自身摧毁的市场中引入竞争的迫切努力之一。
It’s part of the Pentagon’s desperate bid to inject competition in a market the United States military itself destroyed.
这项名为“Tradewinds”的倡议由美国国防部首席数字与人工智能办公室（CDAO）负责管理。企业可以提交视频，说明其人工智能产品如何满足政府定期更新的多个“战略重点领域”之一。至少每月一次，评审委员会会审核提交材料，并决定是否将其纳入“Tradewinds解决方案市场”，届时政府官员便可观看这些视频。
The initiative, known as Tradewinds, is managed by DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO.) Companies can submit videos describing how their AI products address one of several different “strategic focus areas” that the government periodically updates. At least once a month, a panel of judges review submissions and decide whether to accept them into the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace, where the videos can then be viewed by government officials.
如果产品被接受，则被视为“非竞争性采购”。许多采购法规都包含竞争要求，而这种特殊地位可让政府采购方跳过该步骤，并可能将合同授予时间缩短数月。一位国防部官员表示，在多个案例中，该部门通过“Tradewinds”计划在一周内就完成了合同授予。OpenAI、Anthropic和谷歌均被列为参与者。
If accepted, the pitched products are considered “post-competitive.”Many procurement regulations include competitive requirements. The status can let government buyers check off that box and potentially help shave months off of award timelines. A DoD official says that in several instances, the department has been able to make awards using Tradewinds in less than a week. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are all listed as participants.
OpenAI、Anthropic和谷歌均未就本报道发表评论。
OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google declined to comment for this story.
尽管“Tradewinds解决方案市场”自2022年底就已存在，但特朗普政府比以往任何一届政府都更公开地强调军方采购和部署人工智能的问题。此外，政府还希望获得比以往更多的资金：作为向国会提交的2027年预算申请的一部分，白宫要求为国防部拨款1.5万亿美元，并将对人工智能的“历史性投资”列为优先事项。
Though the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace has been around since late 2022, the Trump administration has been far more vocal than its predecessors about the military buying and operationalizing AI. It also hopes to have more money than ever to throw around: As part of its 2027 budget request to Congress, the White House asked for $1.5 trillion for the Department of Defense, citing “historic investments” in AI as a priority.
今年，军方正在寻求有关人工智能技术的视频提案，这些技术能够“提升部队的杀伤力”，以及能够“释放”具备人工智能能力的智能体，以协助联合目标锁定流程，包括所谓的“杀伤链执行”。
This year, the military is seeking video pitches for AI tech that can help “enhance force lethality” and those that can “unleash” AI-enabled agents that can assist in the joint targeting process, including so-called kill chain execution.
这些需求是否已不再重要？在拜登政府主导的最后一轮“贸易风”（Tradewinds）项目提交周期中，军方曾提出希望获得能够推广“负责任的人工智能文化”、并为人工智能的开发和使用提供约束机制的产品提案。美国国防部一名官员表示，2026年的主题选择是为了与2026年1月发布的人工智能战略备忘录保持一致。
No longer as relevant? Pitches for products that promote “a culture of responsible AI” and provide guardrails for AI development and use—requests made during the final Tradewinds submissions cycle under the Biden administration. A DoD official says that the 2026 topics were selected to align with a January 2026 AI strategy memo.
“现在从未像这样适合为陆军开发技术。”时任美国陆军部长的丹尼尔·德里斯科尔（Daniel Driscoll）在一份提案中写道。该提案旨在鼓励更多国防科技初创公司加入Y Combinator 2026年秋季拟资助企业名单。（德里斯科尔此后已辞去职务，重返私营部门。他未回应置评请求。）通过“贸易风”市场平台进行的不透明交易，以及随之而来的特殊“非竞争性”地位，使政府采购方能够更轻松地通过特殊合同类型达成协议，例如“其他交易”协议（OTs），这类协议不受某些联邦采购法规的约束。
“There has never been a better time to build for the Army,” wrote then-sitting US Army secretary Daniel Driscoll as part of a pitch for more defense tech startups included in Y Combinator’s Fall 2026 wishlist of companies to fund. (Driscoll has since resigned from his position and returned to the private sector. He did not respond to a request for comment.) Opaque Transactions Acceptance onto the Tradewinds marketplace—and the special “post-competitive” status that comes with it—lets government buyers more easily cut deals using special types of contracts such as “other transaction” agreements, or OTs, which aren’t subject to certain federal acquisition requirements.
根据法律规定，五角大楼可以在不通知国会的情况下，将一笔“其他交易”的支出上限设定为5亿美元。
By law, the Pentagon can spend up to $500 million dollars on a single OT without having to notify Congress.
采购专家认为，“其他交易”协议具有快速且灵活的特点，这对那些不愿冒险等待数月采购流程能否最终促成合同的初创公司而言颇具吸引力。然而，并非所有机构都会公开报告其“其他交易”的支出情况；即便有公开信息，在诸如USASpending.gov和SAM.gov等追踪联邦支出的政府网站上，也很难找到相关数据。
Procurement experts say that OTs are considered fast and flexible, which can be appealing to startups that don’t want to gamble on whether a months-long procurement process will result in a contract. However, not all agencies publicly report their OT spending, and even when they do, they’re difficult to find on government-run sites that track federal spending, like USASpending.gov and SAM.gov.
“虽然OTA为吸引新的采购合作伙伴和减少繁文缛节提供了机会，但多项审查已经敲响了警钟，”来自爱荷华州的美国参议员乔尼·埃恩斯特向《WIRED》表示。“这些问题包括可疑的成本、对受限信息的管理不当、缺乏监督、问责和透明度下降，以及无法追踪和获取OTA的成果。”埃恩斯特最近致力于推动《2025年停止秘密支出法案》的通过，该法案将要求美国国防部和其他机构向公众报告OTA。这些机构将有三年时间达到合规要求。
“While OTAs offer opportunities to attract new procurement partners and reduce red tape, numerous reviews have raised red flags,” US senator Joni Ernst of Iowa tells WIRED. “These include questionable costs, mishandling of restricted information, a lack of oversight, reduced accountability and transparency, and an inability to track and access OTA outcomes.”Ernst recently worked to pass the Stop Secret Spending Act of 2025, which will require the Department of Defense and other agencies to report OTs to the public. They’ll have three years to get into compliance.
根据公开记录，谷歌、Anthropic和OpenAI都与五角大楼的CDAO签订了OTA。据一名国防部官员称，Tradewinds作为国防部人工智能采购战略的一部分，与市场分析研究一同被利用，但这三家公司并未确认Tradewinds是否被用于《WIRED》所识别的具体协议中。
According to public records, Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI all have OTs with the Pentagon’s CDAO. According to a DoD official, Tradewinds was leveraged along with market analysis and research as part of the department’s AI acquisition strategy, but the three companies did not confirm whether Tradewinds was used for the specific agreements WIRED identified.
武装部队与市场力量相遇：Tradewinds的关键目标之一是将“非传统”参与者引入国防行业，联合人工智能中心（CDAO的前身）的前采购负责人威尔·罗伯茨表示，他曾帮助启动这一计划。从某种意义上说，这是试图将钟摆拨回过去的状态。
Armed Forces Meet Market Forces One of the key goals of Tradewinds is to bring “nontraditional” players into the defense industry, says Will Roberts, a former acquisition lead for the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, CDAO’s predecessor, who helped launch the effort. In some ways, it’s an effort to swing the pendulum back to where it was in the past.
冷战结束后，由于国会正准备大幅削减国防预算，五角大楼在一次如今臭名昭著的被称为“最后的晚餐”的会议上，鼓励国防公司进行合并。尽管表面上看，只需与少数几家大公司打交道似乎会让事情变得更简单，但罗伯茨表示：“这实际上对市场竞争产生了巨大影响。”
Following the Cold War, the Pentagon encouraged defense companies to merge during a now-infamous meeting called the Last Supper, since Congress was preparing to slash defense budgets. Even though it may seem like only having to deal with a few large companies might make things easier, “it actually had a huge impact on market competition,” says Roberts.
与此同时，国家安全记者兼《死亡谷：科技巨头如何塑造战争未来》一书的作者莎伦·韦恩伯格解释说，个人电脑的兴起意味着硅谷能够自己赚钱，并借此设定自己的研究重点，而无需受制于军方的资金支持和影响力。
Around the same time, explains Sharon Weinberger, a national security reporter and author of the book Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War, the personal computer boom meant that Silicon Valley was able to make its own money and with that, set its own research priorities without being beholden to the funding and influence of the military.
罗伯茨和其他国防领域的专业人士提到了军方在资助并塑造互联网和全球定位系统（GPS）等技术方面所扮演的历史角色。罗伯茨表示，这些投资也带来了相应的影响力。“我们某种程度上已经失去了这种影响力，因为各大公司自身就投入了数十亿美元用于人工智能。”
Roberts and other defense professionals brought up the military’s historic role in funding—and shaping—technologies like the Internet and GPS. With those investments also came leverage, says Roberts. “We've sort of lost that leverage because there's billions of dollars in AI being invested by companies themselves.”
韦恩伯格认为，这使得硅谷巨头对五角大楼的技术未来拥有了巨大的控制权。“五角大楼能投入人工智能的资金，与风险资本可以投资的金额相比，简直九牛一毛，”她说，“这对五角大楼来说确实令人担忧。当他们再也无法主导技术发展的方向时，会发生什么？”在公开层面，这种情况可能以戏剧化且令人困惑的方式显现。例如，韦恩伯格指出，最近围绕Anthropic公司是否构成供应链风险的法律诉讼，可以被视为政府试图明确自己拥有哪些法律手段来对人工智能公司行使权威。
Weinberger says this has given Silicon Valley titans an immense amount of power over the Pentagon’s technological future. “The amount of money that the Pentagon can put into AI, compared to what venture capital can invest? It's like a drop in the bucket,” she says. “And that's really frightening for the Pentagon. What happens when they can't drive the direction of technology anymore?”Publicly, this can play out in dramatic and confusing ways. Weinberger points out, for example, that the recent legal battle over Anthropic’s status as a supply chain risk could be seen as the government trying to figure out what legal mechanisms it has to flex its authority over AI companies.
过去，硅谷的价值观也曾一度成为障碍，尽管时间很短。罗伯茨回忆说，2018年谷歌员工曾对公司的五角大楼“马文计划”（Project Maven）合作感到“极度不安”，最终导致谷歌退出了该项目。罗伯茨表示，五角大楼花了数年时间，试图通过那些聚焦于人道主义援助和退伍军人健康等政治敏感度较低的项目来“安抚”谷歌。
Silicon Valley sensibilities have also been a roadblock in the past, albeit briefly. Roberts recalls how Google employees got “super paranoid” in 2018 about the company’s involvement with the Pentagon’s Project Maven, which eventually led to Google pulling out of the effort. Roberts says the Pentagon spent years trying to “appease” Google with less politically charged projects like those focused on humanitarian aid and veteran health.
谷歌拒绝就上述说法是否属实置评。在Tradewinds网站上被列为“可获奖”的谷歌解决方案之一名为“Google for Military Health - Tradewinds”。2025年7月，该公司宣布与CDAO达成一项价值2亿美元的协议，以利用其前沿人工智能技术。在一份新闻稿中，谷歌公共事务部门副总裁吉姆·凯利表示，该公司“致力于推动创新技术在国防生态系统中的部署”。
Google declined to comment on whether that telling was accurate. One of the Google solutions listed as “awardable” on the Tradewinds site is called “Google for Military Health - Tradewinds,” and in July 2025, the company announced a $200 million deal with CDAO to utilize its frontier AI technology. In a press release, Jim Kelly, a vice president at Google Public Sector said that the company was “committed to advancing the deployment of innovative technology across the defense ecosystem.”