Army leaders push human-machine teaming for cyber defense

Lt. Gen. Christopher Eubank, commander of U.S. Army Cyber Command, and Lt. Gen. Jeth Rey, the Army’s chief information officer/G-6, discussed the Army’s use of AI, network defense and human-machine teaming at TechNet Augusta 2026 on August 19, 2026.

Eubank said the Army’s network defense is moving at “machine speed,” warning that “The network you see today will not be the network you see in 90 days.” He said the Army cannot depend only on personnel to identify and respond to vulnerabilities quickly enough across its enterprise, and is pursuing AI-enabled agents to support cyber roles including developers, engineers, host analysts and exploitation analysts.

The approach keeps humans in oversight roles while agents are trained to meet work-role standards, perform missions, learn from mistakes and feed results into future training. Eubank framed the challenge around speed, scale, information and integration, saying, “Speed without control creates risk.”

Rey said AI can help cyber professionals turn large volumes of enterprise data into actionable insights rather than replace people. He described the Army network as essential to military operations, saying, “We can’t fire rounds without it. We can’t move people without it. We can’t operate daily without it.”