Pentagon to spend $30.3M on AI lie detector for security clearances

DCSA has requested $30.3 million over five years for Polygraph Next, a contactless camera-based AI lie detector. The system would train on polygraph data whose reliability the National Research Council deemed "weak at best" in 2003, and apply it to roughly 2 million clearance checks a year.

• Budget: $6.42M in FY2027, $30.3M total through 2031
• Research partners: ARLIS and Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Prototypes built by Presage Technologies and Altec Research since 2023
• DCSA processes about 2 million background checks per year