Pentagon wants $30m to build an AI-powered lie detector
The Pentagon is seeking $30.3 million over five years for Polygraph+, an AI-driven lie detector using standoff sensing that critics call misguided.
The US Department of Defense wants to spend $30.3 million over the next five years on an improved lie detector, according to a DoD budget request first reported by Inside Defense and covered by MIT Technology Review.
The programme, called Polygraph+ or Polygraph Next, would focus on scoring algorithms that use artificial intelligence and machine learning, plus a technique called standoff sensing — taking physiological readings from a subject without attaching a device to them. The document says the project would modernise federal polygraph and credibility assessment technologies to improve their accuracy and reliability.
It would be run by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, which conducts federal background checks, for vetting prospective employees and insider threat detection. The budget document has not yet been approved by Congress, and the agency did not respond to requests for comment.
The push comes amid rising tension: under Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon has increasingly used polygraphs to hunt alleged press leaks, and the New York Times reported around 50 officers on the Joint Staff were polygraphed after coverage of depleted US weapons stockpiles in the war with Iran.
Critics are sceptical. Kyri Kotsoglou, a Northumbria Law School professor who studies polygraphs in the justice system, told MIT Technology Review: “It’s a misguided effort to reduce the complex to something that is tangible.”
Sources
More on this topic: all Technology stories
