# The Pentagon wants $30 million to build an AI-powered lie detector

> **Publication**: aitalky (Independent AI Journalism)
> **Canonical Citation URL**: https://aitalky.vercel.app/news/the-pentagon-wants-30-million-to-build-an-ai-powered-lie-detector
> **Original Source**: [MIT Technology Review](https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/25/1145144/pentagon-ai-lie-detector/)
> **Author**: Amit Katwala (undefined)
> **Published Date**: Friday, September 25, 2026
> **Category**: RESEARCH
> **Tags**: AI, MIT Technology Review, research

## Executive Summary
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.



## Full Coverage
Polygraph+ will use new sensor technologies and AI to vet staff and hunt leakers. Experts say AI-enabled lie detection is "the worst of both worlds."

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," which refers to the ability to take physiological readings without attaching a device to a subject's person

According to details of the budget document, which were first reported by Inside Defense , the project will "modernize federal polygraph and credibility assessment technologies" to improve their accuracy and reliability. But the project 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

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