(Bloomberg) — Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR) has won a $100 million contract that will expand access to artificial intelligence targeting tools to more U.S. military personnel, giving them access to the company’s digital warfare platform.
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The platform, called the Maven Smart System, can create a picture of the same battlefield on thousands of digital screens simultaneously. It draws on data from U.S. intelligence agencies and uses computer vision algorithms and artificial intelligence software from other companies to make sense of a situation and find adversaries. The U.S. military used the system to identify targets for airstrikes in the Middle East this year, Bloomberg reported.
Shannon Clark, Palantir’s chief defense growth officer, said the contract would expand access to Maven Smart System across all five U.S. military services — the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy and Space Force — extending the platform to tens of thousands of additional service members.
So far, select units in specific locations have had access to the system, she said. Palantir won a $480 million contract in May to extend the Maven intelligent system to combatant commands, which conduct military operations in specific locations.
Maven, which relies on several contractors and AI vendors alongside Palantir, began as a project in 2017 and is now an official program primarily managed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The Defense Department has released little information about how Maven is being used operationally. Bloomberg reported that the U.S. has used it to provide targeting support to Ukraine, as well as U.S. operations in Yemen, Iraq, and Sudan.
U.S. defense officials have defended the Defense Department’s use of computer vision and other machine-learning algorithms to inform these targeting decisions, arguing that humans ultimately make decisions about actions on the battlefield. But some experts say the system could encourage human operators to place undue trust in these machines. An advisory body convened by the United Nations on Thursday called on countries to limit the military use of AI to prevent human rights abuses and a potential new arms race.
The contract was announced by the Defense Department on Wednesday in a daily notice that said the Palo Alto, California-based company was awarded a five-year contract to provide licenses for its Maven Smart System AI tool and associated software and hardware support, worth up to $99.8 million, according to the announcement.
Intelligence analysts, operators and other military personnel in remote locations will now be able to access the system, simultaneously linking battlefield information to Pentagon headquarters, Clark said.
A spokesperson for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency did not comment on the contract but said the NGA is working continuously to expand Maven to all services and military commands.
Both Maven and Maven Smart System are important to a long-standing Pentagon effort to connect the military’s sensors and weapons systems around the world, which has yet to come to fruition. The NGA spokesperson said his agency is working closely with the Pentagon’s chief digital and AI office on that effort.
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