US Department of Defense—Pentagon adopted Palantir's Maven AI targeting system as the 'cornerstone' of its military command-and-control doctrine
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.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Military & Defense Contracts | +toward | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.885 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.59)
Evidence (1 signal)
Reuters: Pentagon memo sets Palantir's Maven AI as core system for US military command and control
Reuters obtained a Pentagon memo describing Deputy Secretary Feinberg's directive making Palantir's Maven Smart System the cornerstone of CJADC2, and DefenseScoop separately reported the growth in Maven's user base, the shift of oversight to the Pentagon's AI office, and congressional concerns about transparency and conflicts of interest.