Pentagon hit by AI's 'biggest problem' after Army burns a year’s tokens for one service

Just weeks after highlighting that nearly half of its 3.5 million military and civilian personnel have been using artificial intelligence (AI) on the job, the Department of War (formerly Department of Defense) has hit a massive computational wall. The US Army has reportedly burned through its entire annual budget of AI processing “tokens” in a matter of weeks, forcing military leaders to re-impose strict usage caps across departments, a report has said. According to Wired, the shortage highlights growing concern over corporate and governmental ‘overconsumption’ of generative AI tools even as other organisations struggle to manage skyrocketing cloud computing costs.Army token pool runs emptyIn May 2026, the Army Chief Information Officer (CIO) announced that personnel would be granted virtually unlimited access to generative AI.