Marine Corps Replaces AI With Super Intelligence in Official Documents

The Marine Corps just told the Total Force to swap the term “Artificial Intelligence” for “Super Intelligence” in official writing.

MARADMIN 521/26, signed Oct. 23, directs commands to use “Super Intelligence” and the abbreviation SI in place of Artificial Intelligence and AI “to the maximum extent permitted by law.”

The order covers official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents, briefing and training materials, and other non-statutory products. Content owners must update current websites and reusable templates as they revise them.

The change implements Executive Order 14434, signed Sept. 29, which told the executive branch to adopt SI terminology. Stars and Stripes covered the Navy and Marine memos as a dual-service rename. The Marine message is narrower and more useful for Marines who write for a living: who owns the policy, what products move first, and what is explicitly left alone.

What the MARADMIN Actually Requires

SI, for purposes of the guidance, means the same technologies already covered by the statutory definition of AI in Title 15, U.S. Code, Section 9401(3), except where law says otherwise. Generative systems and other machine-learning applications under that definition are included. Security, privacy, acquisition and responsible-use rules do not change with the name.

Commanders and directors are responsible for making sure military and civilian personnel who prepare, review or publish those products understand the guidance.

The message applies to the Marine Corps Total Force. Implementation that touches contractor performance will be coordinated through the appropriate contracting authority and the contract requirements already in force.

The Deputy Commandant for Information’s Chief Data and Super Intelligence Office, or CDSO, remains the Service lead for strategy, policy, governance and oversight. The message cites MCO 5231.4, still titled Marine Corps Data and Artificial Intelligence, as the governing order. The reference titles in 521/26 keep their published wording on purpose.

What Does Not Get Rewritten

The executive order does not require Marines to alter previously issued regulations, presidential actions, contracts, grants or other historical documents. Issued records stay as issued under records-management rules.

Statutory wording, accurate direct quotations and official source titles stay as written when Marines cite or reproduce them. Organization, program and product names stay current unless the responsible authority changes them.

In practice, that means a Marine quoting Title 15, pasting a contract clause that says AI, or citing MCO 5231.4 by its published title is not out of step with 521/26.

That carve-out matters for contracting officers, requirements writers, and schoolhouse staff who work with citation-heavy products. The rewrite burden falls on forward-looking writing, not on scrubbing every existing document. A historical after-action report that used AI in 2024 does not need a red pen. A new public affairs release written next week does.

Where the Work Lands

PAOs, web managers, doctrine writers, schoolhouses and anyone who owns a briefing template will feel this first. Every slide deck that still says AI, every public affairs release, every course syllabus that introduces the Basic AI Course by that name will need a judgment call: Is this a non-statutory product being issued or revised, or is it a quotation of a statutory title?

The Corps has spent the last year teaching Marines to use these tools under the old label. Military.com covered how the service framed AI as a warfighting edge in its implementation plan, and Marines are already running competitive wargames against machine opponents under MCU’s Humans vs. Machine tournament.

MARADMIN 214/26 still requires every active-duty and reserve Marine to finish the Basic AI Course by Dec. 31. MARADMIN 467/26 and its update list additional AI and data courses available through Marine Corps eLearning, Joint Knowledge Online and Navy Community College pathways. Those course titles and syllabus citations will not vanish overnight.

Expect mixed language in the near term: SI in new command correspondence, AI in materials that quote statutes or older MARADMINs by title. That is not Marines ignoring the order. It is the order working as written.

What Stays the Same

Nothing in 521/26 changes the systems Marines buy or the security rules that govern them. The same models, the same data pipelines and the same human-on-the-loop requirements apply. The message is terminology policy, not a new capability fielding plan and not a change to how Marines employ machine learning at the edge.

MCU’s extracurricular Fight Club wargaming program and the new SI vocabulary will have to share a language for a while. The practical application for any Marine writing an operations order, a public affairs release or a schoolhouse handout tomorrow: Use Super Intelligence and SI in new official products unless law, a quotation or an official title forces the older words. Leave historical records alone.