The Department of Defense has launched a procurement initiative that grants special status to AI vendors who submit product videos under five minutes long.
This move aims to inject competition into a market the US military effectively dismantled through consolidation.
How Tradewinds Works
The program, called Tradewinds, is managed by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office. Companies submit clips describing how their tools address specific strategic focus areas. A panel reviews these pitches at least once a month to decide if they enter the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace.
Accepted products receive “post-competitive” status. This label allows buyers to bypass standard competitive bidding requirements and potentially shorten award timelines by months. Officials say the department has awarded contracts in less than a week using this method. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are listed participants.
Those three firms declined to comment.
While the marketplace existed since late 2022, the Trump administration has been louder about buying and operationalising AI than previous leaders. The White House requested $1.5 trillion for the Department of Defense in its 2027 budget, citing “historic investments” in the technology as a priority.
This year, the military seeks pitches for AI that “enhance force lethality” and enable agents to assist in joint targeting and kill chain execution.
Requests for products promoting a “culture of responsible AI” and providing guardrails, which were part of the final submissions cycle under the Biden administration, are no longer the focus. A DOD official says the 2026 topics align with a January 2026 AI strategy memo.
“There has never been a better time to build for the Army,” wrote Daniel Driscoll, then-US Army secretary, in a pitch to include more defense tech startups in Y Combinator’s Fall 2026 wishlist. Driscoll has since resigned and returned to the private sector.
Opaque Transactions
Entry into the Tradewinds marketplace grants access to “other transaction” agreements. These contracts are not subject to certain federal acquisition rules. By law, the Pentagon can spend up to $500 million on a single agreement without notifying Congress.
Experts say these deals are fast and flexible, appealing to startups wary of long procurement processes. However, agencies do not always report OT spending publicly. When they do, the data is hard to find on sites like USASpending.gov and SAM.gov.
“While OTAs offer opportunities to attract new procurement partners and reduce red tape, numerous reviews have raised red flags,” says US senator Joni Ernst of Iowa. She lists questionable costs, mishandling of restricted information, a lack of oversight, reduced accountability and transparency, and an inability to track outcomes.
Ernst recently helped pass the Stop Secret Spending Act of 2025. This law requires the Department of Defense and other agencies to report OTs to the public within three years.
Public records show Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI hold OTs with the Pentagon’s CDAO. A DOD official says Tradewinds was used alongside market analysis in the department’s AI acquisition strategy. The three companies did not confirm if Tradewinds was used for the specific agreements identified.
Armed Forces Meet Market Forces
Will Roberts, a former acquisition lead for the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, says Tradewinds aims to bring “nontraditional” players into the defense industry. In some ways, it attempts to swing the pendulum back to a previous era.
After the Cold War, the Pentagon encouraged companies to merge during a meeting known as the Last Supper. Congress was preparing to slash budgets. Roberts says having only a few large companies made things easier but hurt market competition.
At the same time, the personal computer boom allowed Silicon Valley to fund its own research priorities without relying on military money. Roberts and other professionals note the military’s historic role in shaping technologies like the Internet and GPS. Those investments gave the Pentagon leverage.
“We’ve sort of lost that leverage because there’s billions of dollars in AI being invested by companies themselves,” says Roberts.
Sharon Weinberger, a national security reporter, says this has given tech titans immense 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 dynamic plays out in confusing ways. Weinberger points to the legal battle over Anthropic’s status as a supply chain risk as an example of the government trying to figure out how to flex its authority over AI firms.
Silicon Valley sensibilities have also been a roadblock. Roberts recalls how Google employees became “super paranoid” in 2018 about the company’s involvement with Project Maven, leading Google to withdraw. Roberts says the Pentagon spent years trying to “appease” Google with less politically charged projects focused on humanitarian aid and veteran health.
Google declined to comment on whether that account was accurate. One solution listed on the Tradewinds site is called “Google for Military Health – Tradewinds.” In July 2025, the company announced a $200 million deal with CDAO to use its frontier AI technology. Jim Kelly, a vice president at Google Public Sector, said the company was “committed to advancing the deployment of innovative technology across the defense ecosystem.”
What it means
For people building AI tools, the change is simple: if you want a contract, make a video. The rules of engagement have shifted from writing lengthy proposals to pitching in under five minutes. This lowers the barrier to entry for new players but concentrates the decision-making power in the hands of a few government buyers who can bypass standard oversight.
