"An Army Marches on its Stomach" takes new meaning as the USS Abraham Lincoln deployment exposes critical military supply chain vulnerabilities.
Page A7From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 31 August 2026
Pentagon can't keep troops supplied, so it's considering AI-led nuclear launch decisions
As it ran on the front
Here's the euphemism of the week: 'resupply challenges.' That's what they call it when the country that spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined can't get bullets to the people holding the guns. Munitions shortage. Not enough shells, not enough parts, not enough of the boring stuff that actually wins wars, because — and this is the part that should stop you cold — we are running too many wars at once out of a Pentagon that one of its own longtime critics is calling, on the record, dysfunctional. Not enemy sabotage. Not supply chain black magic. Dysfunction. Homegrown.
Now, you'd think the fix for 'we can't keep our own troops supplied' is more supply. Boring, unglamorous, more trucks, more shells, more people counting inventory. Instead, what's floating around the building is letting artificial intelligence into the nuclear chain of command. Read that again slow. The same institution that cannot reliably get bullets from the warehouse to the war is being pitched a system where a piece of software gets a vote on the biggest button in the world. That's not an upgrade, that's a company that can't keep the lights on installing a smart thermostat.…
…(cont) And this is the part nobody says out loud: we're being told, in the same week, that we're already losing the resupply race to China — that they can restock faster, out-logistics us — and the answer coming out of the five-sided building isn't 'let's fix the trucks,' it's 'let's automate the decision that ends the world.' You don't hand the keys to a system you can't audit when you've already admitted you can't count your own inventory. That's not a defense strategy, that's a bar bet nobody sober would take.
Here's the stakes part, stated flat because it doesn't need dressing up: whoever is in that room, human or otherwise, has the nuclear codes. Right now the argument in Washington isn't whether that's a good idea. It's a live question, in print, this week. Sit with that the next time someone tells you the government's broke and there's no money for anything you'd actually use.
“Here's the euphemism of the week: 'resupply challenges.' That's what they call it when the country that outspends the next ten militaries combined can't get shells to the people holding the guns. So naturally the fix on the table isn't more trucks, it's letting a chatbot into the nuclear chain of command. Whoever's in that room, human or otherwise, has the codes.”
“The Pentagon's posture remains the most lethal and ready force in the world, and any conversation about artificial intelligence in the command structure is purely exploratory, a hypothetical, nothing anyone's actually — well, it's in a policy paper, but policy papers aren't decisions, they're just the things decisions come from.”
The receipts
Top U.S. military leaders have reportedly advised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth against extending the war in Iran because ongoing operations in the Middle East have degraded the Pentagon’s ability to confront threats elsewhere. According…
Intelligence is one thing, and machines can be imbued with it. But wisdom, morality and intuition are the domain of humans. They should never be removed from the chain of command.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.