"The Pentagon needs help on A.I. from Silicon Valley because that’s where the talent is. The tech industry’s biggest companies have been hoarding A.I. expertise, sometimes offering multimillion-dollar pay packages that the government could never hope to match."

The Pentagon is going to have to come up with market compensation if they want top talent. The US spends half a trillion dollars per year on the military, they can certainly afford to pay software devs what they're worth if it is a priority.