War is a never-ending race for technical superiority. Better missiles, tanks, and guns have decided conflicts in the past. Now, AI is part of the race, and the Pentagon is moving to ensure the U.S. leads the way.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon, through its Office of Strategic Capital, was close to providing a $5 billion loan to AI neocloud startup Fluidstack.

The Pentagon and Fluidstack didn't immediately respond to a Barron's request for comment.

Fluidstack was founded in 2017 and operates what is essentially a GPU-as-a-service business model. Ideology is featured prominently in its description: "The most important mission of our generation is to imbue AI with democratic values: error-correcting institutions, freedom of speech, individual liberties.... AI trains and runs on massive compute clusters. Whichever ideology builds the infrastructure the fastest is the ideology that will endure."

In July, Fluidstack raised $830 million, valuing the company at $7.5 billion. The new $5 billion in loan capital would help the company shore up its U.S. supply chain and manufacturing capacity for data center components, according to The Wall Street Journal. The military doesn't want any AI it uses running on foreign-built or foreign-owned machines.

The potential loan is the latest item in a string of AI-related defense news. In May, the Defense Department entered into agreements with several AI providers to deploy their AI capabilities on the department's classified networks for lawful operational use. The agreements were designed to establish the U.S. military as "an AI-first fighting force."

The military has also employed AI and machine learning tools from Palantir Technologies and others to integrate sensor data and improve tactical decision-making.

Others are using AI, too. In August, The New York Times reported that a Russian drone that killed Ukrainian soldiers was entirely guided by AI, without a human making the final kill decision.

The AI genie appears to be out of the bottle. Now the race is on to control it.