New Army PCA wants more AI-enabled cyber at the edge for offensive, defensive ops

TECHNET AUGUSTA 2025 — The Army’s new principal cyber advisor came into his role ready to align with the service’s overarching transformation initiative, and as part of this he’s set on enabling artificial intelligence for defensive and offensive cyber operations, he told Breaking Defense in an interview Wednesday. 

Brandon Pugh, an Army reservist who formerly served as the director and a resident senior fellow for the R Street Institute’s Cybersecurity and Emerging Threats team, started in his role as PCA about eight weeks ago. The top advisor to the Army’s secretary and chief of staff on all things cyber, Pugh is the third person to serve in this congressionally mandated role, following Michael Sulmeyer who left his post in March 2024 to become the assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy in the Pentagon. Pugh is also the first in his role to be appointed by the president. Previously, those who held this role were appointed by officials within the service.

After meeting with various leaders across the service and the joint force, Pugh said what he’s come to realize is that the service needs to better leverage AI for cyber at the operational level instead of just at the enterprise level like the Pentagon and the services have been doing for a few years now. 

“I think our CIO [chief information officer] is doing an exceptional job when it comes to AI at the enterprise level. Where I’m passionate about is, how do we leverage AI for cyber defense and offense? And in fairness, that is happening, Cyber Command is doing some of that. ARCYBER [Army Cyber Command] is doing some of that,” Pugh said. “But how do we take what they’re doing now and amplify that and continue to invest in it. I think that’s key, especially as threats continue to evolve. 

“I think where the narrative and the conversation needs to go is if there is an operational use of AI, like bringing it to the warfighter, that’s where I think we should be,” he later added. But he emphasized that he doesn’t want this happening at the expense of utilizing AI at the service’s enterprise level. 

One example of using AI for cyber at the edge is to detect malicious code, which can disrupt network operations or steal sensitive information, Pugh explained. But he added that while this can save the warfighter time, it’s important to still keep a human in the loop. 

“This is more of my personal take than an Army take. I think AI is a huge supplement for an individual. I don’t think AI should be replacing individual people yet. I think it can streamline their tasks, potentially automate something that a person would traditionally have to do on a keyboard. I think that’s all helpful, but I think it’s at some point, like a human should be the actual decision maker,” Pugh said. 

“There is a potential risk if you don’t have any type of human involvement or human oversight, perhaps you could have AI that would look for these vulnerabilities in code and flag them for an operator on keyboard before they patch, because you can envision it going the wrong way,” he added. 

One of the obstacles preventing the Army from enabling AI at the operational edge is that there are so many offices within the service that have their own AI programs, which creates silos that can hinder innovation and adoption, Pugh said. This also causes some ideas and programs to get buried or lost. 

“I think the only challenge that becomes, and it’s all well intentioned, is everybody is doing something when it comes to AI. It’s a challenge just understanding what everybody is doing and making sure we drive resources to the right AI investment,” Pugh said. “So having a holistic understanding of where AI funds are being spent, who is doing the research, who is doing the testing, and driving it to specific types of uses, I think that’s key, because it’s a big Army.” 

And with the Trump administration’s focus on AI in cyber operations and scaling such capabilities at speed, Pugh said he’s confident the service can get AI enabled cyber tools in the hands of soldiers faster than it’s been done previously. 

“I think the administration’s actually been a huge help on two fronts. I mean, one cyber more broadly, there was a lot of conversation among the administration of how cyber is a key enabler for our actions, but then also the importance of defense and seeing White House officials really discuss that, talk about that publicly, I think is exceptional,” Pugh said.

“There’s been this temptation to see cyber as a niche capability — something as standalone. In reality, cyber should be infused across all of our domains of warfare, and this is something that the average military unit should be considering and leveraging.”