Vance Echoes Pope Leo’s Message on AI in AF Commencement Address

Vice President J.D. Vance delivered a speech about morality in advanced war technology to the 931 candidates at the U.S. Air Force Academy commencement May 28, but he cloaked it with humor, including a quip about the weather, a reference to being a former Marine surrounded by members of the Air Force, and a chest bump with a newly graduated officer.

While Vance urged the candidates for graduation not to avoid new technologies, he also echoed Pope Leo’s concerns about maintaining moral clarity when utilizing the power of artificial intelligence, warning that AI will affect warfare.

“Members of the class of 2026, you’re graduating into one of those eras where that reality, that unpredictability of warfare is becoming impossible to ignore,” Vance said. “Now your nation, your vice president and the president of the United States, who sends his very best, we ask you to apply that same adaptability, that same innovation that you learned at this academy, to an entirely new era of warfare, one shaped by autonomous systems, AI, and cyber operations.”

He noted that although the jobs some of them will hold in the future may sound like something out of science fiction, these jobs are “dead serious.”

Vance cited recent U.S. operations such as the 38-day campaign against Iran, the extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and counter-narco-terrorist missions, telling candidates that they will have to use their military skills.

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“One of the defining facts for this particular class is that nobody can tell you that the skills that you learned over the last four years will remain theoretical,” Vance said. “They will become very practical and very real, very soon. Airmen and Guardians are serving their nation overseas right now. Across Operation Epic Fury, Absolute Resolve, Southern Spear, and Midnight Hammer, they’ve excelled in executing unimaginably challenging missions under real world combat conditions.”

The newly commissioned officers will have a 60-day leave before they enter service for the next eight years. Vance said the graduates are joining the ranks of the military branch that the president relies on to enforce his promise that Iran will not possess nuclear weapons.

“Now, because you will keep your end of the bargain with bravery and skill and dedication, you should expect some things out of your civilian leadership, out of the president, the vice president, the secretary of war,” Vance said. “This is why we’ve pushed forward with the F-47 and the Golden Dome and any number of new and advanced technologies.”

Although Vance encouraged the graduates to utilize modern innovations, he reminded them they must uphold morality when they do so. 

“Now, Pope Leo XIV, in a recent document, encouraged us as human beings not to outsource the most important moral decisions to digital technology,” Vance said. “And I want to endorse that sentiment and make it more specific to each and every one of you. AI will inevitably change warfare. And, of course, as you’ve learned over the last four years, it already has. But one of the things that makes Americans unique, that makes you as warfighters unique, is that we wage war justly.”

As AI becomes more prevalent in warfare, it must always remain subject to human judgment.

“Use technology to make you better, but never submit to it,” Vance said. “You are the masters of warfare, and both your minds, but also your hearts, are the opposite of artificial.”

The ethics of war depends on these men and women, according to Vance.

“You are the ones who lead on the battlefield. You are the ones who ensure that our lethality in war, which is amazing and necessary, it also coexists with our heart and with our conscience,” Vance said. “It is an incredible burden to put on your shoulders, but it is one that we entrust to you with full confidence.”