Google’s Gemini AI is being embedded across the U.S. military, cementing AI‑defense as structural policy and tying Bitcoin closer to big‑tech, liquidity‑driven macro trades.

According to a new report in Bloomberg, Google is about to wire its AI directly into the day‑to‑day machinery of the U.S. military, and markets need to treat that as structural, not cosmetic. Alphabet’s Google will roll out Gemini‑based “AI agents” across the Pentagon’s roughly three million civilian and military staff, automating routine work on unclassified systems in what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calls the start of an “AI‑driven culture change” on the digital battlefield.

These agents are not chatbots bolted onto email; they are task executors. Bloomberg reports that Gemini agents “can undertake work independently on behalf of a user who sets them tasks,” with Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, saying deployment will begin on non‑classified networks before expanding across classification levels. In a separate blog post, Google vice‑president Jim Kelly said the system will let “civilian and military personnel at the Department of Defense build AI agents using natural language,” embedding them into workflows spanning logistics, document processing, and data triage. The new platform, branded GenAI.mil, is the front end of a $200 million contract Google Cloud won last year to deliver AI capabilities to the Department of Defense; rival firms OpenAI, Elon Musk’s xAI and Anthropic have secured similar deals.

The partnership rests on two pillars: scale and doctrine. Scale is explicit – three million potential users, military and civilian, with Hegseth arguing “the future of warfare in America is upon us, and it is driven by AI,” as software helps the military “swiftly analyze video footage and imagery.” Doctrine is softer but more consequential: by standing up GenAI.mil as a system‑of‑record, the Pentagon is signalling that AI is no longer an experiment but a baseline assumption for planning, targeting, procurement and administration. That comes after years of controversy. In 2018, thousands of Google employees protested its work on Project Maven, a Pentagon program using AI to analyze drone footage, forcing the company to let the contract lapse; the new deal shows management is now willing to re‑enter defense under tighter guardrails and clearer messaging.

For crypto markets, the partnership matters as a macro and market‑structure signal, not because blockchains sit inside the deal. Bitcoin trades near $70,400 over the past 24 hours, up about 3.5%, while Ethereum changes hands around $2,059 with a roughly 2.9% daily gain, moving in tandem with large‑cap tech as investors lean back into long‑duration, AI‑linked growth stories. As defense, AI and big‑tech spending consolidate into a single policy‑backed complex, BTC increasingly trades as a high‑beta expression of the same liquidity and discount‑rate expectations, rather than a separate “crypto” narrative.

US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig has voiced support for prediction markets paired with blockchain technology, claiming they could become powerful tools for discovering truth.

Speaking at the FIA Global Cleared Markets Conference in Boca Raton, Florida, on Monday, Selig argued that prediction markets, also known as event contracts, can provide valuable signals about future events when participants put money behind their views, describing well-functioning markets as “truth machines.”

“When participants express views on future events — and back those views with capital — they create accountability, transparency and information,” Selig said. He added that highly liquid prediction markets often produce signals that the public increasingly sees as more reliable than traditional opinion polls.

“The reality is that prediction market platforms are now viewed by the public as more accurate than political polls,” Selig claimed, pointing to the 2024 US presidential election as an example where market pricing captured the scale of the outcome.

Related: Kalshi sued over Khamenei prediction market ‘death carveout’

US states take legal action against prediction markets

Selig’s backing of prediction markets comes as several US states have taken legal or regulatory action against these platforms, arguing that their event-based contracts resemble unlicensed gambling.

Last week, two US federal court rulings allowed Nevada regulators to continue pursuing legal action against prediction market platforms Polymarket and Kalshi. In February, the state sued Kalshi after the prediction market company lost its court challenge to stop the state’s regulator from taking action over its sports prediction markets.

Massachusetts has also taken action, filing a lawsuit against Kalshi over sports prediction contracts offered to residents. Meanwhile, Connecticut regulators issued cease-and-desist letters to Kalshi and Robinhood, ordering them to stop offering certain event contracts tied to sports outcomes.

The CFTC chair said the agency plans to provide clearer rules for how event contracts can be listed and traded under the regulator’s framework. He said staff have been directed to draft guidance outlining how these markets should operate while remaining compliant with existing derivatives laws.

Related: Kalshi, Polymarket eye $20B valuations in potential fundraising: WSJ

CFTC chair plans clearer crypto asset classification

Selig also said the CFTC plans to pursue a clearer classification framework for crypto assets and provide guidance on how rules apply to developers of non-custodial software such as digital wallets and decentralized finance applications.