00:00What the U.S. is using right now in its operations against Iran is called Maven Smart System.
00:06It emerges from this project that starts in 2017, but what it is today is if you imagine something like
00:13Google Earth, Google Maps for War,
00:16I imagine a digital screen and a map, but on it are more than 150 data feeds coming in, AI
00:25helping to sort through those feeds,
00:28computer vision, helping to identify possible targets.
00:32And what has happened particularly in the last year or so is AI tools, LLMs, large language models,
00:40helping to begin to offer courses of action, pairing even ideas for pairing a weapon to a target.
00:47And that is what is helping speed up those processes that the Admiral was just talking about.
00:52And we've used it already, and by we I mean the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, out on the battlefield.
01:01Carol mentioned 2017 and the genesis earlier from the 1990s with Drew Kukur,
01:06but I'm also wondering about where in recent years the technology has been used.
01:12The first time it was really put through its paces is in this very difficult moment in U.S. military
01:17history,
01:18in the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Kabul in Afghanistan in 2021.
01:24And at that point there was a very difficult situation.
01:29People coming into the airport, I'm sure all the viewers remember those scenes.
01:34Computer vision was used to try and count the number of crowds.
01:38Now, anyone could see with the naked eye there was a crisis unfolding,
01:41but this computer vision was able to pick up very quickly how many people were there
01:46and send it back to headquarters and help the people on the ground really emphasize how bad the situation was.
01:54It was really the first time that multiple people could be on a system without it crashing.
01:59So a lot of this is not so much about AI, but bringing data and systems together,
02:04networking and connecting people on the ground to people back in the Pentagon.
02:08I want to go back to the origin story that you get into.
02:12And like so many different things came to mind.
02:14I think about, you mentioned like 9-11, right, and the data that was missed.
02:18But it was there on government computers, but things not talking.
02:21And the role of Drew and what he wanted to do,
02:25because bringing data together to maybe make the military smarter,
02:30maybe save more lives, maybe be smarter in terms of how it does things.
02:34Tell us about Drew and who he was.
02:36He's this fascinating Marine Corps colonel by the end of his career.
02:40But at the beginning in the book, I joined him as a very young intelligence officer
02:43who is angry really from the start because he doesn't have the right tools.
02:48And he's very enterprising.
02:50He is on the Internet right at the beginning reading open source newspapers.
02:55But he manages to run up this huge bill by connecting his computer and gets in trouble.
03:00So he is constantly someone who the bureaucracy is saying,
03:04don't overspend, use the existing tools, stay in your box,
03:07and someone who is constantly refusing to do that.
03:10And he develops this grand vision to bring more intelligence to operators.
03:15Rather than just leave it within the intelligence function,
03:18he wants to get information onto the front lines where troops are risking their necks.
03:24Well, what was it about his specific experience in war that motivated him to keep pushing for this?
03:30There are a few.
03:32One is in October 2001.
03:34He is part of the Marine Expeditionary Force sent to Afghanistan.
03:39And so he is an intelligence officer.
03:41And of course, you'll remember that very quickly,
03:44the Marines are being maimed and killed by improvised explosive devices.
03:50Finding out where those were, the patterns that the Taliban were using,
03:55even the weather systems that meant that bomb layers were more likely to lay weapons,
04:00was something that really eluded the U.S. for years.
04:04And in 2011, he's back in the Pentagon,
04:07and he tries to get this company that is now very well known, Palantir Technologies,
04:12to bring their data analytic platform out into the field.
04:16Now, the U.S. already had platforms like this,
04:20but the common complaint was they weren't fit for purpose.
04:23So I find, first of all, I feel like, I think about Katrina, where we are in AI,
04:29and I think how much actually the government 10 years ago,
04:33like either working with Palantir or understanding how valuable data AI specifically could be in warfare.
04:42And I just think about how that maybe got everything rolling.
04:45And, like, go back to their reach out for Silicon Valley and how Palantir came into it.
04:50Like, was Palantir just, I know it came through a certain individual,
04:54but just kind of at the right place at the right time?
04:57It's actually even more happenstance than that.
05:02Drew Kukul wants Google.
05:03Everyone knows that Google is great from a sort of access to the mapping facility and the CIA.
05:09Which the government was already, right, involved in.
05:11Yes, and In-Q-Tel, the CIA's investment arm, had invested in the company that becomes Google Earth.
05:19So they had a real sense that this was the platform they'd want to use.
05:22But when Project Maven started in 2017 and Drew Kukul becomes the chief of this project
05:28to bring AI computer vision to drone footage to pull out data that they couldn't currently get,
05:33what's been publicly well covered is that Google protesters found out that they were on this project
05:41and were not keen to work with the Pentagon.
05:44When Google responded to this crisis, they decided not to renew the contract.
05:51They decided that they wouldn't work on weapons.
05:55And Drew Kukul has a problem.
05:57He needs a cutting-edge technology company to deliver his vision for war.
06:03And he rings up Palantir.
06:04And he says, hey, have you got a minute?
06:06And he flies over and meets with a team and says, this is my vision.
06:12And actually, Palantir doesn't want it.
06:14They are not an AI company.
06:16They are one of the AI skeptics at this time.
06:19And they also don't want to make a user interface.
06:22They don't see themselves as the sort of fancy, frilly, nice-looking bit.
06:27They want to do the data crunching.
06:29They concede because Drew Kukul is a very compelling, convincing person who makes his case.
06:35And slowly, this partnership develops really between Aki Jain, a senior official at Palantir,
06:42and Drew Kukul working late nights to develop this platform to deliver what is now being used in the future
06:51of war today.
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