New AI training program launches to develop national security leaders

Virginia Tech and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have teamed up to empower the next generation of national security leaders with specialized generative artificial intelligence training. 

This fall, the AWS Generative Artificial Intelligence and Amazon Bedrock Training kicked off its first semester-long course intended to teach the emerging technologies in artificial intelligence (AI) that will be critical to future defense operations. The inaugural course was offered to a combined 75 students in the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, the Defense Civilian Training Corps, and the Hume Center for National Security and Technology.

“This collaboration between Virginia Tech and AWS directly strengthens America's technological edge in national security," said David Appel, vice president of AWS Global Government. "We're proud to help develop critical AI expertise in the defense sector by providing students with the practical skills they need to lead in increasingly AI-driven environments. Together, we're training the next generation of leaders who will implement these powerful technologies responsibly and maintain our nation's competitive advantage in the rapidly evolving landscape of global security.”

The majority of the students enrolled plan to pursue careers in cybersecurity, national defense, and military service. As a comprehensive and widely adopted cloud platform, AWS is providing interactive, instructor-led training in generative AI technologies. 

The students will gain experience with the same advanced AI tools used by security professionals worldwide with the goal of preparing them for complex cybersecurity challenges, intelligence operations, and critical defense systems. The course covers fundamental concepts, methods, and strategies for implementing generative AI solutions and explores practical applications such as prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, and building agent-based applications using Amazon Bedrock. The training aims to prepare students to achieve certification as an AWS AI practitioner by offering attendees a discount on the AWS Certified AI Practitioner Exam. 

The program comes just months after the White House released its AI Action Plan in July. The plan outlines six specific policy recommendations, including to “grow our senior military colleges into hubs of AI research, development, and talent building” and “foster AI-specific curriculum in the senior military colleges throughout majors.” The congressional senior military college designation is given to a campus that combines higher education with military instruction through a corps of cadets.

“As one of our nation’s six senior military colleges, Virginia Tech has the opportunity to be on the cutting edge of answering this call, and the AWS GenAI training certainly supports this goal,” said Jamie Cogbill, deputy director of the university's Defense Civilian Training Corps. “Our original coordination with AWS included reserving at least half of the training slots for cadets, and in cohort one of the training, more than half of those who attended were cadets.”

Leadership and students alike agree that being fluent in AI concepts and their practical applications will benefit them as they prepare for national security careers.

“A big reason I wanted to take this course is that AI fluency is becoming essential for everyone in the modern workforce, but especially service members,” said Jackson Cummings, a senior in the Corps of Cadets and the Defense Civilian Training Corps pursuing dual degrees in national security and foreign affairs and Russian. “I already had a basic understanding of AI from my previous internships and classes, but the course gave us hands-on experience with deploying AI systems that I know will be applicable to the work I want to do after graduation.”