A Pentagon AI program called Project Maven is at the center of the US offensive against Iran and potentially one of the most consequential transformations of modern warfare.
What is it?
Project Maven is the Pentagon’s flagship artificial intelligence program, launched in 2017 as a narrow experiment to help military analysts make sense of the flood of drone footage pouring in from conflict zones.
Operators were drowning in images, searching frame by frame for objects of interest that might only appear for a moment before disappearing. The stomach was built to find the needle in the haystack.
Eight years later, the program has evolved into something far more expansive: an AI-assisted targeting and battlefield management system that has greatly accelerated what is known in warfare as the kill chain — the process from initial detection to destruction.
How does it work?
The belly acts as both air traffic control in combat and its cockpit.
Aalok Mehta, director of the CSIS Wadhwani AI Center, described the system as “essentially an overlay” that fuses sensor data, enemy troop intelligence, satellite imagery and troop deployment information.
In practice, this means quickly scanning satellite feeds to detect troop movements or identify targets, while also “taking a snapshot of the operating room” to determine the best course of action to hit a specific target.
In a recent demonstration posted online, a Pentagon official described how Maven “magically” turns an observed threat into a targeted course of action, weighs available assets and presents a commander with options.
The advent of ChatGPT was another leap forward, expanding the use of the technology to a much larger range of users who can interact with Maven in natural language.
So far, that capability has been provided by Anthropic’s Claude — though that arrangement is coming to a bitter end after the Pentagon bristled at the AI lab’s demands that its model not be used for fully automated strikes or tracking US citizens.
Why did Google say no?
The ethical issue was a factor in Maven’s early years, as Google was the program’s original AI vendor.
In 2018, more than 3,000 employees signed an open letter protesting the company’s involvement, arguing that the contract crossed a line. Several engineers resigned.
Google declined to renew when the contract expired and subsequently published AI principles that explicitly excluded participation in weapons systems.
The episode revealed a fault line in Silicon Valley between engineers who saw autonomous targeting as an ethical red line and defense officials who saw it as essential.
Recently, Google removed its AI policy restrictions, saying it is leaning further into national security work. The Pentagon has said that Google, along with xAI and OpenAI, are in the mix to replace Claude in Maven.
What is Palantir’s role?
In 2024, Palantir—founded in part with CIA seed funding and built from the ground up around government intelligence—stepped into the space vacated by Google.
The company has reportedly become Maven’s primary technology contractor, and its AI now forms the operational backbone of the program.
Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp frames the effort explicitly.
“This is a have, have-not world,” he said at a recent Palantir event, arguing that it was important for the West to acquire capabilities that the rest of the world lacked.
A system that compresses a kill chain from hours to seconds renders an adversary obsolete, he said.
How has it been?
The Pentagon and Palantir declined to comment on Maven’s performance in the current war with Iran.
American attacks have been carried out at a sustained pace, and it can be assumed that Maven’s ability to speed up the targeting and firing process has played a central role.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, after three weeks the US strike campaign was falling at a rate of between 300 and 500 targets per day.
In the first 24 hours of Operation Epic Fury, US forces hit over 1,000 targets, including a school in a building formerly used as a military compound, according to various media outlets. Iran has said the attack killed 168 children aged seven to 12 and injured many other people.
