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It is, on its face, a question about money. It is, in practice, a question about strategy, risk appetite, organizational maturity and conviction. How a CIO answers it will shape the company's competitive position for the next five years.

The Two Failure Modes

Two common themes that lead to failure:​

Overcommitment

The temptation to declare an "AI-first" strategy, allocate hundreds of millions, restructure the org chart and announce a transformation program is real, particularly when peer companies are doing the same. But capability is moving faster than any eighteen-month plan can absorb. Large, rigid bets made today are frequently obsolete before they ship. The cost is not only financial. It is the credibility lost when ambitious programs underdeliver.

Strategic Timidity

Running endless pilots, funding a small innovation team off to the side and waiting for the technology to mature before committing real capital feels prudent. It is not. The organizations winning right now are not the ones with the cleanest pilots. They are the ones who have rewired actual workflows, retrained actual people and accepted that the learning happens in production. Caution, beyond a point, becomes its own form of risk.

The CIO's job is to find the disciplined middle. Enough investment to build real capability and real momentum, structured in a way that absorbs change rather than resists it.

A Framework For Sizing The Bet

Rather than choosing a single number, the most effective CIOs are thinking about AI investment in three distinct horizons, each with its own funding logic, time frame and tolerance for ambiguity.

Horizon One: Operational Leverage

This is the near-term layer, where AI is applied to existing workflows to make them faster, cheaper or higher quality. Coding assistance, document automation, customer service augmentation, knowledge retrieval. The investment should be steady, the return measurable and the bar for funding low.

Horizon Two: Capability Building

This is the platform layer consisting of the data infrastructure, model governance, security architecture, integration patterns and the people who run them. The return is indirect and the case is harder to make, but skimping here is what causes horizon-one wins to plateau and horizon-three ambitions to collapse. Investment should be deliberate and protected from quarter-to-quarter pressure.

Horizon Three: Strategic Reinvention

This is the longer bet of new products, new business models and fundamentally rethought operating models. The investment here should be focused, not sprawling. One or two well-resourced initiatives owned by senior leaders, with clear hypotheses, defined kill criteria and the patience to let them develop.

Step By Step Not The Same As Slow

There is a common misreading of incrementalism that equates measured pacing with low ambition. It is not the same thing. The organizations moving step by step most effectively are also moving quickly. They have simply rejected the idea that speed requires a single dramatic bet.

Step by step done well looks like this. A new workflow is shipped every few weeks. Each one builds on the last, both technically and culturally. Lessons compound. The platform matures because real systems are running on it. People learn because they are doing the work, not attending a workshop about it.

The trap to avoid is the incremental version that is really just delay. Endless pilots, perpetual proofs-of-concept and the quiet conviction that next quarter will bring more clarity. It will not. Clarity comes from shipping.

What This Means For The CIO This Year

Translating this into actual decisions requires four commitments.

Commit to a funding posture.

Tell the organization clearly that this is what we are spending on operational leverage, this is what we are spending on capability, this is what we are spending on bigger bets and here is why. Predictability of investment is itself a strategic asset. It allows teams to plan and reduces the political friction around every individual decision.

Build the discipline to kill things.

A serious AI program will generate failed experiments. The maturity of the program is measured by how cleanly it ends them. Define kill criteria in advance. Without this, the portfolio fills with zombie projects that consume budget and oxygen.

Invest ahead of the curve on talent.

The single most important variable in whether an AI investment pays off is whether the people running it know what they are doing. This is not a place to defer. Hire, partner, retain and reskill aggressively.

Communicate the pace deliberately.

If the strategy is measured, say so, and say why. If the strategy is aggressive, the same. The worst position to be in is one where the board thinks the company is moving fast, the teams think it is moving slow and the CIO is privately uncertain which is true.

The Judgment That Defines The Role

There is no formula for the right AI investment level. It depends on industry, balance sheet, talent, competitive dynamics and leadership's appetite for genuine change. The CIO's job is not to find the formula but to exercise judgment, defend it clearly and adjust as evidence comes in.

Go big and you risk overreach. Go steady and you risk irrelevance. The work is calibrating between them with honesty about where the organization actually is, not what it wishes it were.

The CIOs who get this right won't be the ones with the largest budgets or boldest announcements. They'll be the ones whose pace matched their organization's capacity to absorb change, and whose conviction held steady when everyone around them wanted either more drama or more delay.

That calibration is the job. And it's the question worth answering before any other.​

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One of the Air Force's major commands, or MAJCOMs, the Air Mobility Command was activated in 1992 and serves four core missions: airlifting, air refueling, air mobility support, and aeromedical evacuation.

The Air Mobility Command Museum, located on Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, displays over 35 aircraft that carried out these missions.

"All the cargo planes and inflight refuelers, humanitarian, medevac, presidential support — all that stuff falls under AMC," Michael Hurlburt, operations manager at the Air Mobility Command Museum, told Business Insider.

I visited the Air Mobility Command Museum in May. Here are the coolest things I saw.

The Air Mobility Command Museum is located on Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Even though it's on an active base, the museum has its own entrance and is open to the public. Admission is free.

My first stop at the museum was the cab of Dover Air Force Base's old air traffic control tower.

The 103-foot-tall air traffic control tower, in service from 1956 to 2009, was staffed 24 hours a day.

By the 2000s, the aging tower was operating near its capacity, handling over 40,000 operations each year. A new $16.2 million tower with improved equipment and increased capabilities was completed in 2009, and the old one was turned into a museum display.

The tower exhibit, which is 39 feet tall, overlooked the museum's outdoor display of historical aircraft and provided views of the active base in the distance.

A case at the bottom of the stairs displayed the key to the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Dover Air Force Base was an alternate landing site for the space shuttle.

"The fire department here at Dover kept that on hand all the time just to help get the astronauts out if they ever landed here, but they never did," Hurlburt said of the key, which opened the shuttle's hatch.

The actual Space Shuttle Discovery is displayed at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.

This VC-9C flew as Air Force One and Air Force Two during multiple presidencies.

The VC-9C, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32, primarily served as the vice presidential plane from 1975 to 2011. It also transported other VIP passengers, including first ladies and Cabinet members.

It occasionally flew as Air Force One when Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush needed a smaller aircraft.

Measuring 119 feet and 5 inches long with a wingspan of 93 feet and 5 inches, the plane featured a communications compartment and a spacious stateroom with a fold-out couch.

The C-141B Starlifter, known as the "workhorse" of the US Air Force, carried troops, vehicles, and cargo from the Vietnam War through Operation Iraqi Freedom.

C-141 Starlifters operated from 1965 to 2006, when they were replaced by the C-17 Globemaster III. The C-141B could carry up to 68,000 pounds of cargo, including up to 13 290-pound 463L pallets, and fly at up to 500 miles per hour.

I also got to see a C-130 Hercules, the military aircraft with the longest continuous production run in history.

Dozens of countries use the C-130 to transport cargo, troops, and humanitarian aid, as well as to conduct aeromedical evacuations, natural disaster relief, and aerial firefighting. They can also be configured as gunships and outfitted with skis to land in icy conditions. It's no wonder that Lockheed Martin has been building C-130s for over 70 years.

The Air Mobility Command Museum is the only place in the world with a C-5A Galaxy, the largest aircraft in the US Air Force, on permanent public display.

C-5s are strategic lifters that haul tanks, missiles, helicopters, and other cargo.

The C-5A Galaxy, which entered service in 1970, measures 247 feet long and has a wingspan of over 222 feet. It could carry enormous amounts of weight — up to 264,440 pounds of cargo plus 73 passengers. There's room for seven UH-1 Huey helicopters, or two M-1A1 Abrams tanks.

The museum's C-5A Galaxy was also the first and only aircraft to launch an ICBM in flight.

The C-5A was retired in 2017 and modernized into the C-5M Super Galaxy and other C-5 models.

Before the C-5A Galaxy, there was the C-133B Cargomaster, the Air Force's largest turboprop aircraft built to carry missiles.

The cargo compartment of the C-133B Cargomaster measures 13,000 cubic feet and could hold 110,000 pounds of cargo.

At 97 feet and 4 inches long, it was also large enough to transport fully assembled Thor, Jupiter, or Atlas ballistic missiles.

The museum showed off the plane's spacious cargo bay by displaying a 1972 Ford Custom used by wing commanders at Charleston Air Force Base and a 1956 International Harvester fire truck parked inside the aircraft.

The C-133B Cargomaster entered service in 1957 and retired in 1971. It was replaced by the C-5A Galaxy.

My tour of a KC-10A Extender, an aerial refueling aircraft, offered a rare view of a refueling operator station.

KC-10A Extenders could transfer up to 56,154 gallons of fuel to aircraft such as bombers, fighter jets, and cargo planes while flying in midair.

KC-10s entered service in the Air Force in 1981, and the last one retired in 2024. The Air Mobility Command Museum exhibits the first KC-10A Extender ever built.

Inside the plane, visitors can see the joystick used to maneuver the extended gas pump, known as a boom, at the refueling operator station.

The museum had an older version of a KC-135, which is still in use in the Air Force as an aerial refueling aircraft.

The KC-135E Stratotanker could carry 200,000 pounds of transferable fuel. It could also airlift 83,000 lbs of cargo, or up to 80 passengers. Like the KC-10A Extender, the KC-135E Stratotanker featured a boom for transferring fuel to other aircraft in flight.

The last KC-135E Stratotanker was retired in 2009, but the Air Force still uses modernized versions such as the KC-135R and KC-135T that are more fuel-efficient and less expensive to operate.

Each KC-135E Stratotanker costs $39.6 million, according to the Air Force.

I wasn't allowed to photograph some of the most fascinating things I saw.

Dover Air Force Base houses the 436th Airlift Wing, which operates C-5M Super Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster III airlifters, and Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations, which handles the dignified transfers of fallen service members.

The parking lot featured signs forbidding photos and videos of the nearby base — an indication of how closely the museum is connected to today's military. %!s()

The two men walked free from a New Delhi jail late on Wednesday, their relatives said, as India’s National Investigation Agency seeks to overturn their bail – the latest chapter in what rights groups call New Delhi’s sweeping crackdown on activists, journalists and dissidents in India-administered Kashmir since 2019 when it scrapped the region’s autonomy, granted under the Indian Constitution.

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Parvez, programme coordinator for the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), was arrested in 2021 by the National Investigation Agency at his home in Srinagar.

Mehraj, a freelance journalist who worked with the same rights group as a researcher, was arrested in 2023.

Both face charges of “funding terrorism” and “propagation of secessionist agenda” under India’s stringent “antiterrorism” laws, which in effect allow authorities to hold people without trial indefinitely.

The National Investigation Agency accuses the two of using the JKCCS to fund militant-linked activities and promote a separatist agenda. Both men deny the allegations.

A lower court granted them bail last week, but the agency appealed. The Delhi High Court refused on Tuesday to suspend the release order although it imposed tougher restrictions on the men’s movements and activities while it hears the appeal.

Under their bail conditions, the two must arrange their own stay in the capital, where they are facing trial, and cannot travel to Kashmir, according to a court document seen by the news agency AFP. Proceedings in the case will continue in the coming weeks.

Human rights violations

The JKCCS has for decades documented alleged rights violations by Indian government forces in Kashmir, including torture and unlawful killings, and has drawn attention to thousands of unmarked graves in border areas suspected of holding victims of “enforced disappearances”.

International rights groups, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, have consistently called for the men’s release, saying they were jailed for their work.

In 2023, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said Parvez’s arrest was an “act of reprisal for his human rights work, and an attempt to silence him and Kashmiri civil society as a whole”.

After their release, the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organisation Against Torture said the two were arrested on “trumped-up charges” and called on Indian authorities to drop the case, describing the proceedings as politically motivated.

Journalists in Indian-administered Kashmir say they have faced harassment and arrests since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government annulled the region’s partial autonomy.

From 2019 to 2023, more than 3,600 people were arrested there under “antiterrorism” laws, more than half of whom remain in prison, according to government figures.

Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947. Both countries claim the territory in full.

Rebel groups have fought the Indian government since 1989, demanding independence or a merger with Pakistan. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians. %!s()

The first three episodes of “Gone” debut July 23 on BritBox, with the remaining episodes airing weekly on Thursdays.
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The prime minister ordered an urgent review into the proposed early release of about 6,000 prisoners, due to begin in September with an initial group of about 700, saying he wanted to “minimise risk to the public” and would not hesitate to make changes.

But with government officials accepting that the prison system remains near capacity, and no appetite to use alternatives such as police cells beyond emergencies, it is unclear what options exist beyond continuing with the plan, even in a different form.

Victims groups had objected to the proposal for 6,000 people to be freed early under the new Sentencing Act, with Debbie Adlam, the mother of the police officer Andrew Harper, saying the proposed inclusion of two of her son’s killers – Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers – was “another letdown” for their family.

In the latest of a flurry of policy announcements since he took over in No 10 on Monday, Burnham said: “I am working closely with the new justice secretary and have instructed my team to put a pause on the changes that were due to start in September.

“No prisoners will be let out under this policy until we have conducted an urgent review and done everything we can to minimise risk to the public. Where changes are needed, we will not hesitate to make them.”

With officials warning that without the scheme, prisons in England and Wales will run out of capacity by November, the most likely outcome appears to be a tweak to the early release system, with some offenders held back.

Officials have refused to say if the plan could be amended to block early release for people convicted of offences against emergency workers, such as Harper’s killers, or against women and girls.

Alex Norris, the new justice secretary, told reporters on Thursday the government needed “time to get it right”. He said: “We’ve put an important pause on this policy. It gives us a little bit of time to look at this, to make sure we do our best by you.”

Probation officers have warned that a “sense of chaos” had descended across the Prison Service, with staff unable to make preparations for the mass release. Tania Bassett, Napo’s national officer, said that after the trade union asked the Prisons Service if staff should continue with preparations for the early release scheme, it was now informing them it has been paused.

She said: “Napo’s concern is this will mean probation staff stop doing pre-release work. Whatever the prime minister’s final decision is, he has created a delay as well as confusion amongst the staff tasked with dealing with this.

“He needs to be more decisive about critical public protection issues and we urge him to treat this situation with the upmost urgency.”

According to the union, preparations for release require probation staff to carry out extensive work that usually takes at least six to eight weeks.

This includes reviewing risk assessments, making referrals for accommodation, carrying out home visits, coordinating with victim liaison officers and domestic abuse support officers and developing multi-agency safeguarding plans.

It can also take several weeks to ensure that tagging measures are in place before an offender is placed in accommodation. Unless probation staff received “imminent, concrete direction” about who will be considered, established release plans could collapse, a union official said.

The review has caused chaos in prisons, where managers are responsible for calculating release dates over several weeks from 2 September.

The Sentencing Act 2026 introduced an “earned progression model” that replaces automatic halfway release for prisoners serving standard determinate sentences in England and Wales with a tiered, behaviour-based system.

It will allow most prisoners to be released after serving a third of their sentence behind bars rather than 50%, with the rest of their sentence served under strict supervision in the community with the help of electronic tagging.

Prisoners serving time for sexual or violent offences where the automatic release stage is set at two-thirds will become eligible for release at the halfway point, provided they have not committed serious breaches of prison rules.

This applies to Bowers and Cole, two of Harper’s killers who were jailed for 13 years in 2020 for manslaughter. Burnham confirmed that Henry Long, the main perpetrator, “will not be subject to any early release” under the scheme.

After news of the pause emerged, Debbie Adlam told ITV News that this was “not enough”. She said: “It’s a good start, and it really is a good basis to begin working on some sensible alternatives and looking at options for going forward, because there’s so many people this affects, it’s not just us.” %!s()