US Department of Defense

In a March 2026 directive, Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg set AI-enabled decision-making, built around Palantir's Maven Smart System, as 'the cornerstone' for the Pentagon's Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) program, and moved oversight of Maven from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to the Pentagon's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, with the Army handling future contracting. Maven's user base more than doubled from roughly 10,000 to over 20,000 active users across 35+ military tools between January and May 2025, deployed across five combatant commands, and DoD's Maven contract with Palantir was raised past $1 billion. Congressional and defense-press observers raised concerns about the lack of public detail on how the AI targeting and decision-support system is governed and about Palantir chairman Peter Thiel's close ties to the Trump administration.