Why It Matters
The Defense Department and intelligence community are racing to deploy artificial intelligence at "wartime speed" while confronting a critical vulnerability: legacy systems designed decades ago that cannot keep pace with modern threats or new technology.
A House Intelligence Committee hearing on Persistent Competition and Legacy Architectures scheduled for Wednesday, September 2 will examine how the military and intelligence agencies can shed outdated infrastructure without sacrificing security.
The Pentagon's 2026 AI Strategy explicitly directs the military to reject "the legacy linear model" and adopt AI-first approaches to maintain technological advantage. But that modernization push collides with a persistent security crisis: legacy, internet-facing systems remain prime targets for state-sponsored actors.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has identified organizations in energy, water, manufacturing, and communications sectors as facing immediate risk from adversaries like Volt Typhoon, which specifically target operational technology systems to compromise and maintain access. The agency released guidance calling out legacy constraints in operational technology environments as a primary vulnerability. In July, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) urged the Office of Management and Budget, CISA, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to mandate the phase-out of insecure, legacy remote-access systems.
The Hearing
The committee has scheduled no formal witnesses for the hearing to date. Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR-1) is the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT-4) is the ranking member.
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