Pentagon names former DOGE employee Gavin Kliger as new chief data officer

The Pentagon has tapped Gavin Kliger, a former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee, to lead the DOD’s growing adoption of artificial intelligence capabilities as its new chief data officer.

“We are in a global competition for military AI dominance, and America must build on its leadership to extend our advantage over adversaries,” Kliger said Friday in an announcement posted by the Pentagon’s research and engineering directorate, which is led by Emil Michael.

Kliger was previously involved with the Trump administration’s DOGE cost-cutting efforts at the Defense Department, which were inspired by Elon Musk. According to the Pentagon, he also played a critical role in helping the department launch its enterprise AI platform known as GenAI.mil and had a hand in the ongoing Drone Dominance Program. 

As CDO, Kliger will continue to oversee the Pentagon’s AI adoption strategy, focusing on ensuring the execution of projects across the department and working with frontier artificial intelligence labs.

“My mission is to integrate the unparalleled innovation of America’s private sector with the Department’s operational expertise to rapidly deliver advanced AI capabilities to our warfighters,” he said in a statement. “By driving pace-setting projects with wartime urgency, we will ensure cutting-edge technology translates into decisive battlefield advantages for the United States.”

A software engineer by trade, Kliger also worked as senior advisor to the director for technology and delivery at the Office of Personnel Management. Prior to joining public service in 2025, he spent five years working at Databricks.

Kliger enters the role at a tumultuous time for the Defense Department and industry, as the Pentagon is currently involved in a high-stakes dispute with Anthropic over the U.S. military’s use of the company’s generative AI tools.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodai announced Feb. 26 that the firm would not acquiesce to demands that would allow the department to deploy the Claude AI for “all lawful use cases” without limitations — largely due to the company’s ethical concerns about the technology’s potential use with autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Afterwards, the Pentagon named Anthropic and its products as a supply chain risk. Both President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also accused the company of threatening national security.