{"id":324,"date":"2026-07-17T16:13:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=324"},"modified":"2026-07-17T16:13:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:13:44","slug":"how-the-u-s-military-learned-to-embrace-ai-warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=324","title":{"rendered":"How the U.S. Military Learned to Embrace AI Warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Editor\u2019s note: This piece reflects work completed during the author\u2019s Tarbell fellowship at Lawfare and does not represent the views of the Center for AI Safety.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Ransomware Uses AI to Amp Up Negotiations<\/a><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Since 2017, the U.S. military has been working on \u201cProject Maven,\u201d arguably its most significant artificial intelligence (AI) project to date\u2014and easily its most famous. The CEO of Palantir, a company that was instrumental in building Maven\u2019s flagship AI-enabled software platform, boasted in December 2024 that the project has \u201creally changed the history of the world.\u201d This framing is surely corporate hyperbole, but recent news suggests Maven is already influencing U.S. military operations: In the first half of 2026 alone, Maven\u2019s software has reportedly supported the U.S. in waging war against Iran and capturing the president of Venezuela. Give the underlying AI systems a few years to improve, and what now reads as boastful may read as merely premature.<\/p>\n

The tale of Project Maven is now public with Katrina Manson\u2019s new book. Despite her extensive experience as a journalist covering related matters, it is hard to fathom how Manson managed to acquire so much information about the project. It has been exempt from reporters\u2019 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for years, beginning not long after Google\u2019s involvement prompted national news and controversy in 2018. The program\u2019s budget is classified. Yet through hundreds of interviews and doubtlessly time-consuming research, Manson has uncovered enough details to walk through Maven\u2019s history in depth, ranging from early mishaps battling Somali terrorists to genuine contributions in defense of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

This history is unavoidably technical, but Manson makes it personal as well. The book offers detailed profiles of key figures in the project, especially Marine Col. Drew Cukor, who ran Project Maven from its inception in 2017 until late 2021. One person who worked on the project describes Cukor as \u201cElon Musk-esque,\u201d adding that \u201c[e]ven if you hated him, you still saw the brilliance and you wanted to learn.\u201d Another early Mavenite calls Cukor \u201ca psychopath … in the best way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that leaders of military projects generally seek to control information about their efforts, readers might wonder whether Manson sometimes received a curated view of Maven. Nonetheless, her tone is consistently neutral and journalistic; she often spells out conflicting perspectives, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. This fact-finding, even-handed storytelling makes her work stand out. It is rare to find a book that unpacks a U.S. military project with such depth and neutrality, particularly when the project involves fundamentally shifting America\u2019s approach to war.<\/p>\n

One similar example is Fred Kaplan\u2019s \u201cThe Insurgents,\u201d which describes efforts led by Gen. David Petraeus to adapt to modern conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Kaplan recently published his own review of Manson\u2019s book in the New York Times.) But \u201cThe Insurgents\u201d does not revolve around a weighty new technology, as \u201cProject Maven\u201d does with AI. With that distinction in mind, the closest historical analogue may be Richard Rhodes\u2019s \u201cThe Making of the Atomic Bomb,\u201d especially the sections focused on the history of the Manhattan Project.<\/p>\n

Project Maven\u2019s Capabilities and Impact<\/strong><\/p>\n

To understand the impact of Project Maven, it\u2019s important to consider prior efforts to leverage software for military intelligence purposes. Manson begins her story 25 years ago in Afghanistan, only a few months after 9\/11, when U.S. forces moved to seize the Kandahar airport. During that operation, Cukor used a computer loaded with Google Earth, Microsoft Office, and in-house military software. Excel tables collected the names of al-Qaeda targets, while PowerPoint diagrams illustrated connections between people. These systems weren\u2019t very helpful.<\/p>\n

A decade later, in 2011, Cukor helped the U.S. start using Palantir\u2019s data management platform in Afghanistan. It was \u201cimmediately a hit,\u201d according to Cukor, garnering 250 users within eight weeks. For example, Palantir\u2019s system helped track information with potential relevance to the Taliban\u2019s creation of improvised explosive devices, including fingerprints and weather patterns. By synthesizing data from different sources, it revealed at one point that U.S. forces had raided a single location no fewer than 20 times.<\/p>\n

AI entered the picture several years later, while Cukor was working at the Pentagon. He conceived of a project to use AI for processing and analyzing video footage from drones. The deputy secretary of defense at the time, Robert Work, expressed enthusiasm and asked for a demo. A colleague of Cukor\u2019s subsequently visited San Francisco and paid $120,000 for a startup to train an AI model on unclassified drone videos; this enabled a demo in which the AI system could \u201cput a white dot on the screen every time a specific object showed up.\u201d Though rudimentary by today\u2019s standards, the model\u2019s capability impressed the audience, including Deputy Secretary Work. With his in April 2017, Project Maven officially commenced.<\/p>\n

Cukor began hiring early employees and enlisting help from both Silicon Valley startups and tech giants, including Google and Microsoft. Work wanted Maven to field AI in the real world by the end of 2017, and the team succeeded, deploying algorithms in Somalia to identify different kinds of objects in drone footage. Yet the special operators found Maven\u2019s software useless and disconnected it\u2014\u201c[i]t may as well have been in a closet,\u201d writes Manson. Over time, with help from a Maven contractor, the operators found that the AI models could sometimes help them by detecting people and vehicles. One early sign of Maven\u2019s promise came during a live U.S. raid, when an algorithm noticed someone hiding in the bushes that none of the human screeners had seen. Even so, Maven\u2019s AI-powered detections were incorrect more than half the time.<\/p>\n

Maven\u2019s usage grew in 2018, reaching over 60 sites, including at least eight in Afghanistan. Many potential users remained reluctant, but the technology improved: Besides drone data, Maven algorithms were analyzing text, photos, security camera feeds, and even blimp balloon footage.<\/p>\n

Despite this progress, Project Maven also experienced a major setback: In a widely publicized 2018 incident, Google employees protested strongly once they discovered their company\u2019s involvement. Eventually, Google decided against renewing its Maven contract. It also announced its new AI principles, including a promise not to use AI for weapons or surveillance (less than seven years later, it dropped that commitment). Despite the employee uproar, Google\u2019s algorithms did support Maven\u2019s efforts in Afghanistan through the end of its contract in 2019. After that point, the Maven team continued using these algorithms, just with a different company maintaining them\u2014until that company was acquired in early 2020 by Apple, which put a stop to the Maven work.<\/p>\n

Early military users typically incorporated Maven\u2019s AI-powered object detections into whichever platform they were already using to view drone footage. Cukor began working with a few organizations in 2018, including Palantir and Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Applied Physics Laboratory, to create a Maven-specific platform for displaying data, videos, Maven\u2019s detections, and more. Over time, Palantir largely won out with its prototype, which eventually became the \u201cMaven Smart System.\u201d This success was much-needed for the company, whose business relationship with the Pentagon had appeared to be winding down\u2014Maven\u2019s support \u201cbrought Palantir back to life,\u201d according to one Mavenite.<\/p>\n

In 2020, the Army\u2019s 18th Airborne Corps began testing how Maven Smart System could directly assist with military targeting. Maven also began training AI models to process satellite photos\u2014unlike drones, satellites are less likely to be shot down or electromagnetically jammed.<\/p>\n

Maven\u2019s breakthrough moment arguably arrived when the U.S. came to Ukraine\u2019s defense against Russia starting in February 2022. By May, after resolving some early technical difficulties, the 18th Airborne Corps was frequently passing \u201cpoints of interest\u201d to the Ukrainians. These packages\u2014named euphemistically to avoid implying that the U.S. was directly fighting against Russia and thereby entering the war\u2014often included the elevation, time stamp, and slightly imprecise location data for potential targets to strike. After the U.S. gave Ukraine high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS), which can fire GPS-guided missiles, it became even easier for Ukraine to strike Maven-identified targets. On some days, the 18th Airborne Corps shared 70 targets with Maven\u2019s help; on a record-setting day, they passed along 267.<\/p>\n

Read more Lawfare Daily: Consent in the Age of AI<\/a><\/p>\n

From that point forward, Maven spread throughout the U.S. military. Maven is now used by the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. It supports combatant commands focused on Europe, Africa, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, homeland defense, special operations, and space. In the spring of 2025, NATO acquired its own version of Maven Smart System from Palantir.<\/p>\n

The Ethics of Autonomy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The book\u2019s AI coverage extends beyond Maven alone; it also discusses other military efforts to advance AI and autonomy, which sometimes operated independently from Maven. These include enabling over 30 boats to \u201call \u2018talk\u2019 to each other autonomously,\u201d developing an aerial drone that selects and fires at maritime targets, and producing autonomous weaponized personal watercraft. \u201cAmerica has a lot of jet skis, so it\u2019s neat that we can weaponize them,\u201d noted a person familiar with that project.<\/p>\n

Creating lethal autonomous weapons is controversial. Manson devotes a chapter to the political resistance against them\u2014and the lack of serious policy results, including even a consensus definition for \u201cautonomy,\u201d after over a decade of efforts\u2014at the United Nations. These so-called killer robots operate differently than Maven Smart System\u2019s assistance with targeting in Ukraine, since Maven keeps a human in the loop. But Manson\u2019s reporting highlights how Maven\u2019s detections allow for humans to take a smaller role in the targeting process, thereby shrinking the gap between AI-assisted targeting and fully automated targeting. One officer described \u201cconcurring with the algorithm\u2019s conclusions in a rapid staccato: \u2018Accept. Accept. Accept.\u2019\u201d Gen. Chris Donahue, who expanded Maven\u2019s early Ukraine support as commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, later agreed wholeheartedly that Maven was a weapons system, adding that \u201c[u]ltimately all this stuff will become automated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the strongest reason for the United States to automate war is to remain globally competitive. This argument gains force if major conflict could erupt at any moment\u2014a prospect that recurs throughout the book, with the phrase \u201cWorld War III\u201d appearing 10 times. An undated draft analysis of future threats for the Marine Corps to address, commissioned from Stratfor by Cukor, argued that \u201c[a] nation not prepared to wage existential war because it is rare faces catastrophe.\u201d Donahue, speaking with Manson after returning from Ukraine, put it more fatalistically: \u201cYour adversaries are going to choose for you that you have to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The adversary that remains top of mind throughout Manson\u2019s book is China. She spends a chapter examining the notion of an AI \u201carms race\u201d between the U.S. and its chief technological competitor. This high-stakes framing of AI development is grounded partly in a genuine sense of Western vulnerability: According to one U.K. defense official, U.S. counterparts sometimes whispered in private briefings that \u201c[w]e\u2019re not ready\u201d for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. When Manson asked a Chinese official about Beijing\u2019s plans for AI warfare, his cryptic reply offered little reassurance: \u201cIt is very difficult to know what\u2019s in the mind of your enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some believe that, beyond enabling the U.S. to stay competitive with adversaries, AI-enabled tools can help empower the U.S. military to do good in the world. In the early days of Project Maven, Cukor would give some algorithm vendors a book about civilian-led efforts to rescue Yazidi women who had been abducted and abused by ISIS. He believed that if AI had been providing better intelligence insights at the time, a U.S. rescue mission might have been possible.<\/p>\n

Similarly, when a U.S. drone strike tragically killed 10 civilians during the U.S. withdrawal from Kabul\u2014without any assistance from Maven\u2014one Maven team member blamed Google\u2019s resistance. \u201cThose ten Afghan civilians would have been alive if the effort led by Project Maven to deploy AI on military drone camera feed[s] had not been delayed,\u201d he asserted in a LinkedIn post. In other words, by providing more accurate intelligence, stronger AI models might lead to fewer civilian casualties.<\/p>\n

They also might help reduce incidents of \u201cfriendly fire,\u201d in which the U.S. mistakenly attacks its own forces and those of its allies. Fourteen years after witnessing this sort of fratricide in 2011, a key Maven team member argued to Manson that \u201c[a]n algorithm would never have taken that shot\u201d because it could have recognized patterns that humans failed to notice at the time. \u201cThe machine can\u2019t be worse than a human,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n

Not everyone is convinced. \u201cPeople always say it will save lives. And they don\u2019t really specify how,\u201d said one Google engineer who had opposed the company\u2019s early partnership with Project Maven. Taken literally, her complaint is easy to dispute: AI can save lives by rapidly spotting civilians and warning signs that humans might miss. But it is true that the broader net impact of warfare automation on civilian deaths is unclear.<\/p>\n

For example, in the wrong hands, AI could help bad actors commit atrocities, similar to Russia\u2019s drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Additionally, multiple people with U.S. military experience tell Manson they suspect that waging war through screens and algorithms might desensitize combatants to the moral and mental toll of killing. Meanwhile, more efficient means of targeting could lead decision-makers to pursue a higher volume of strikes, including in places that risk civilian casualties.<\/p>\n

Some of the ethical justifications for pursuing military autonomy become less convincing when analyzing the fairly mundane motivations of some of the people leading these projects. Business executives at companies such as Palantir and Google can earn a lot of money by partnering with the U.S. military. Watching one\u2019s own company\u2019s stock climb while proving doubters wrong is often satisfying: Palantir\u2019s CEO blurted out to Manson that he\u2019s \u201calways had the fantasy of having a drone company that could take fentanyl-laced urine and spray it on short sellers.\u201d Other people might be motivated by the genuine power and influence of working on military AI, which may already be affecting the fate of nations. \u201cEveryone wants to be known as the new Robert Oppenheimer and go down in the history books,\u201d observed one former Mavenite.<\/p>\n

Other motivations seem plainly unconcerned with ethics. \u201cI want to reduce the non-American population,\u201d answered one Maven job applicant in response to the question \u201cWhy do you want to work here?\u201d The early Maven team reportedly \u201ccelebrated\u201d this answer and offered the applicant the job. An influential team member sometimes recited that \u201c[t]hose who can, build and test performant AI; those who cannot, talk about AI ethics.\u201d (In fairness, he claims he only meant to convey that he was more afraid of ill-performing AI than unethical AI.) Another Mavenite simply said the quiet part out loud, envisioning AI\u2019s contribution to warfare as a way to \u201cfucking kill people all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/strong><\/p>\n

When viewed from afar, the incorporation of AI into military operations seems as inevitable as the incorporation of AI into many other activities. After all the moral outrage at Google, the company\u2019s algorithms still ended up in Afghanistan, and Microsoft and Amazon were happy to take its place. In 2022, a pointed skeptic of Maven began leading the agency that had absorbed many of Maven\u2019s core lines of effort; within only a few years, he was fully sold on the project. Recently, when Anthropic resisted the Pentagon\u2019s push to expand how its AI models could be used in military contexts, other companies were more willing to acquiesce, including a familiar name: Google.<\/p>\n

Now, less than a decade after Maven\u2019s start, it\u2019s hard to imagine the Pentagon turning back, especially if the relevant laws remain permissive. The latest budget request from the Department of Defense\u2014also known now as the Department of War\u2014calls for a $58.5 billion investment in AI-enabled command and control, plus another $54 billion for autonomous and remotely operated systems. This small fortune could yield far stronger AI capabilities than the U.S. wields today. As Manson rightly emphasizes at the close of the book\u2019s introduction, \u201cAI warfare can go wrong. And it is already here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Responding to AI Distillation Without Panic<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of Katrina Manson, \u201cProject Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare\u201d (Norton, 2026).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armed-conflict","category-intelligence"],"yoast_head":"\nHow the U.S. Military Learned to Embrace AI Warfare - National Consumer Reports<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=324\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How the U.S. Military Learned to Embrace AI Warfare - National Consumer Reports\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A review of Katrina Manson, \u201cProject Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare\u201d (Norton, 2026).\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=324\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"National Consumer Reports\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-17T16:13:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"14 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\\\/?p=324#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\\\/?p=324\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ef6e8820a5e2e961e9b8cda481436ac0\"},\"headline\":\"How the U.S. Military Learned to Embrace AI Warfare\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-17T16:13:44+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\\\/?p=324\"},\"wordCount\":2759,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\\\/?p=324#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/90cb305beb378c4e44a3d02b9432ecb2.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Armed Conflict\",\"Intelligence\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\\\/?p=324#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\\\/?p=324\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\\\/?p=324\",\"name\":\"How the U.S. Military Learned to Embrace AI Warfare - 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