The Pentagon wants $30 million to build an AI-powered lie detector
The US government wants to spend $30.3 million over the next five years on an improved form of lie detector, according to a Department of Defense budget request. The program, called Polygraph+ or Polygraph Next, will focus on scoring algorithms that use artificial intelligence and machine learning and on a technique called "standoff sensing" — the ability to take physiological readings without attaching a device to a subject's person. According to details of the budget document first reported by Inside Defense, the project will "modernize federal polygraph and credibility assessment technologies" to improve their accuracy and reliability.
The effort may be just the latest in a long line of failed attempts to use technology to detect lies. "It's a misguided effort to reduce the complex to something that is tangible," says Kyri Kotsoglou, a legal scholar at Northumbria University in the UK who studies the use of polygraphs in the justice system. The move comes at a time of high tension within the department: under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon has been increasingly turning to polygraph tests in an attempt to find the sources of alleged leaks to the press. In September, the New York Times reported that around 50 officers on the Joint Staff had been given polygraph tests after news coverage reported on the depletion of US weapons stockpiles in the war with Iran.
Polygraph+ will be run by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA), which conducts background checks for the federal government. According to the budget document, which has not yet been approved by Congress, the new technology will be used for vetting prospective employees and "insider threat detection." It is not yet clear which specific technologies will be used, and the DCSA did not respond to a request for more information.
Other Pentagon efforts offer potential clues. In 2023, the department's Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) ran an open submission process to find companies with products usable for deception detection, selecting two to build prototypes: Presage Technologies, which claims to measure heart rate and breathing rate using standard cameras, and Altec Research, a medical sensor company now branching out into non-contact sensing technologies. A screenshot of Altec's prototype released by the DIU shows it tracks head movement, facial skin temperature, and pore activity. Presage Technologies and Altec Research did not respond to requests for comment, and the DIU declined to comment.
Current lie detection technology has barely changed since the polygraph was invented in the 1920s. Examiners rely on blood pressure, pulse, breathing, and sweat measurements to determine whether someone is lying, then make their own judgments about the veracity of respondents' replies — a human-in-the-loop process that the new AI-driven program aims to replace or augment.