Debates over artificial intelligence in military targeting have intensified across Washington and Silicon Valley for years — and the tool at the center of those debates is no longer theoretical.
According to the report, Maven Smart System, the AI-powered software platform built by Palantir, is currently being used in US operations against Iran. That operational reality is the endpoint of a years-long internal struggle inside the Pentagon — one involving deep skepticism, billion-dollar contracts, and a Marine colonel who made enemies on the way to being proven right.
The story begins with Colonel Drew Cukor, a Marine intelligence officer whom one senior official described as “a one-man wrecking ball.” Cukor founded Project Maven, then a nascent Pentagon effort launched to apply computer vision to drone war footage. He spent five years as its chief, pushing AI into military targeting while absorbing resistance from within the institution he served.
That resistance had a name: Vice Admiral Frank “Trey” Whitworth.
Whitworth, a former SEAL Team 6 intelligence director who sat on the military targeting committee for nearly two decades, spent years as the Pentagon‘s top military official for intelligence. He was not persuaded by Maven’s promise. In an earlier meeting described as so tense that some present physically squirmed, he pressed Cukor hard on accountability — specifically, what happens “after the bad drop when we go through a congressional [hearing] and we’re getting hard questions.” He worried about record-keeping, about process, about whether AI was bending rules that governed one of the military’s most sensitive functions: deciding who gets targeted.
Whitworth also questioned the money. Congress had already spent a billion dollars on the program, much of it flowing to Palantir, and Whitworth was openly skeptical of the return. When he took charge of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in June 2022 — inheriting responsibility for Maven’s future after Cukor’s departure — he could have shut it down. “We were all very concerned,” Cukor said. “Trey was not a friend.”
He didn’t shut it down.
By September 2024, at a private retreat for tech investors and defense leaders, Whitworth sought Cukor out during cocktail hour. His message had changed entirely. “Drew, this is important work,” the vice admiral told him. More than two years into Russia‘s war against Ukraine, Whitworth had reasoned his way — methodically, Cukor said — to endorsing Maven. The system’s ability to integrate disparate battlefield data onto a single digital map, display AI detections usable in targeting, and update continuously with new software had apparently answered enough of his concerns.
Palantir chief executive Alex Karp has referred to Cukor approvingly as “crazy Cukor” and called him “the founding father of AI targeting.” Cukor himself, after his earlier confrontation with Whitworth, told others: “I will either be famous or live in infamy.”
The next step is already underway — Maven Smart System is active in current US military operations.
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