Meta announced a shift in its AI policy, saying it will make its Llama AI models available to US government agencies for defense and national security needs.

The White House has been working with tech companies to increase the government’s use of AI, especially in the realm of national security and defense. Meta announced it is working with a number of companies to ensure Llama can be used for such purposes.

Meta’s open source Llama models are increasingly being used by a broad community of researchers, entrepreneurs, developers and government bodies. We are pleased to confirm that we are also making Llama available to U.S. government agencies, including those that are working on defense and national security applications, and private sector partners supporting their work. We’re partnering with companies including Accenture Federal Services, Amazon Web Services, Anduril, Booz Allen, Databricks, Deloitte, IBM, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir, Scale AI and Snowflake to bring Llama to government agencies.

The company provides two examples illustrating how Llama can be used in a variety of circumstances, in support of government agencies.

Oracle, for example, is building on Llama to synthesize aircraft maintenance documents so technicians can more quickly and accurately diagnose problems, speeding up repair time and getting critical aircraft back in service. Scale AI is fine-tuning Llama to support specific national security team missions, such as planning operations and identifying adversaries’ vulnerabilities. Lockheed Martin has incorporated Llama into its AI Factory, accelerating a variety of use cases such as code generation, data analysis and enhancing business processes.

Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are also using Llama to support governments by hosting our models on their secure cloud solutions for sensitive data. And IBM’s watsonx solution is bringing Llama to national security agencies in their self-managed data centers and clouds.

Big Tech companies have previously faced backlash over national security and defense contracts, but Meta makes clear that it believes it has a responsibility to help.

As an American company, and one that owes its success in no small part to the entrepreneurial spirit and democratic values the United States upholds, Meta wants to play its part to support the safety, security and economic prosperity of America – and of its closest allies too.

In a world where national security is inextricably linked with economic output, innovation and job growth, widespread adoption of American open source AI models serves both economic and security interests. Other nations – including China and other competitors of the United States – understand this as well, and are racing to develop their own open source models, investing heavily to leap ahead of the U.S.

We believe it is in both America and the wider democratic world’s interest for American open source models to excel and succeed over models from China and elsewhere. As open source models become more capable and more widely adopted, a global open source standard for AI models is likely to emerge, as it has with technologies like Linux and Android. This will happen whether the United States engages or not. This standard will form the foundation for AI development around the world and become embedded in technology, infrastructure and manufacturing, and global finance and e-commerce.

Meta’s stand illustrates the growing importance of AI across organizations, including public, private, and government organizations.