The Senate voted today to approve the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) today by an 85-14 vote, sending the annual defense policy bill to President Biden’s desk, where he is expected to sign it into law.
With the Senate’s last working week of the year underway, the vote on the bill came just in time.
The House approved the bill last week with a 281-140 vote.
A handful of Democrats, including Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., voted against the bill today.
On Dec. 7, the House and Senate unveiled the 1,800-page compromise version of the NDAA for fiscal year 2025, with a topline of $895.2 billion that comes in just under the congressionally mandated budget caps imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
The compromise bill includes several tech-related provisions from AI to cybersecurity. Among the included amendments are initiatives to educate service members on AI and measures to expedite the technology’s adoption.
For example, one provision mandates the secretary of defense, working with the Pentagon’s chief data and artificial intelligence officer, to facilitate the swift adoption of large language models. The bill also includes a provision to define, identify, and plan the Defense Department (DoD) AI workforce, as well as modifications to the department’s AI education strategy.
Notably the bill includes an amendment suggesting that the DoD employ AI to achieve a clean audit of its financial statements, a task that has historically been challenging for the DoD.
The bill also includes a number of bipartisan provisions, including a 14.5 percent pay raise for junior enlisted service members and a 4.5 percent raise for all other military personnel.
