Why agentic AI is a catalyst for modernizing national security operations

As national security threats grow in speed, scale, and complexity, defense and intelligence agencies are under mounting pressure to modernize how they manage mission workflows, operational data, and rapid decision-making cycles. Increasingly, leaders see agentic AI — systems capable of learning, reasoning and autonomously taking action — as a critical capability for bringing much-needed agility to national security operations.

Paul Tatum, executive vice president for global public sector at Salesforce, says the pace of global threats is forcing a fundamental shift in the way organizations approach security. “The threats and this velocity of things going on in the world out there require the very best technology for our defense partners,” he said during a recent Scoop News Group podcast, noting that AI advances are beginning to align with the tempo at which defense missions now operate.

Why agentic AI matters for defense

Tatum emphasized that the promise of agentic AI goes well beyond analytics. These systems are designed to take action directly inside mission workflows — a significant departure from earlier generations of AI. With emerging capabilities, he said, “it can now take action inside of the workflows, it can learn, it can adapt, it can reason, and it can navigate.”

That shift, and Salesforce’s rollout of Missionforce, tailored for national security demands, are significant for defense organizations struggling with persistent backlogs, growing compliance obligations and ever-expanding volumes of mission data. While many processes are well documented, they remain heavily dependent on manual intervention. The result is that valuable personnel spend a substantial amount of time on repetitive tasks instead of focusing on higher-priority mission objectives.

Agentic AI offers a path to relieve that pressure. By automating activities such as personnel support, case management, document validation, outreach workflows and policy compliance checks, these systems can help agencies reduce operational drag. “You free up this very valuable personnel to go take care of much more strategic and impactful parts of the mission stack,” said Tatum.

What readiness hinges on

Asked whether defense agencies are prepared to adopt agentic AI, Tatum didn’t hesitate: “I think they’re 100% ready.” However, he emphasized that readiness requires more than just the availability of advanced technology.

First, agencies must unlock mission data trapped in longstanding silos so it can effectively train and fuel AI systems. Second, they need to identify practical, high-impact use cases that can demonstrate early wins and build confidence across leadership teams. And third, the workforce must be prepared to collaborate with AI agents as a new class of “digital employees.”

Tatum noted that defense and intelligence agencies have already laid critical groundwork through infrastructure modernization, improved data quality initiatives and secure cloud adoption. Together, he said, those efforts have created the environment needed for agentic AI to deliver meaningful gains in mission speed and readiness.

“If you are part of the Department of War, you’re looking for anywhere and any place that you can take kind of the routine work and hand it off to technology so that you can focus on more strategic, impactful mission objectives,” Tatum said.

Learn how Missionforce empowers defense and national security organizations to increase IT operational efficiency, enhance productivity, create decision advantages and safeguard sensitive data.

This is part of FedScoop’s Agentic AI Advantage podcast series, sponsored by Salesforce. Explore more expert perspectives on Agentic AI in government here.

This video podcast was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and underwritten by Salesforce.