The hidden debt slowing America’s AI future

Federal agencies face a paradox: they are spending nearly 80% of IT budgets maintaining legacy systems while simultaneously being mandated to adopt transformational technologies like artificial intelligence. This is not simply a resource allocation challenge — it is a strategic readiness deficit that compounds daily.

Every day modernization is deferred, agencies accrue digital readiness debt, which widens the gap between current infrastructure and the foundational capabilities required to deploy AI responsibly and at scale. This debt is measured not in code, but in mission throughput, cyber risk exposure and the integrity of the data underpinning critical decisions. As AI becomes mission-essential, this debt now represents a mounting threat to national security, public health and citizen trust.

AI without mission discipline

The rapid push to “do something with AI” has triggered a wave of pilots across the government. Yet many efforts are not anchored to defined mission outcomes, performance measures or scaling ...