The AI Policy Podcast Inside Project Maven and AI-Powered Warfare with Katrina Manson
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Mar 26, 2026 
Katrina Manson, Bloomberg journalist and author of Project Maven, walks through the rise of AI in modern warfare. She recounts Project Maven’s origins, industry pullback and Pentagon politics. She explains how Maven evolved to aid Ukraine, sped targeting, and later supported CENTCOM in the Iran conflict, including the role of LLMs in accelerating targeting workflows.
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Drew Kukor's Afghanistan Experience Sparked Maven
- Drew Kukor, a Marine colonel, drove Maven after wartime frustration at lacking usable front-line intelligence in Afghanistan.
- His Palantir work in 2011 delivered better field tools, shaping his ambition to bring data and software to operators.
Maven Started As A Data-Overload Fix
- Project Maven began as a practical fix: drones produced far more video than analysts could watch, so AI could direct analysts' attention.
- They repurposed commercial computer vision ideas to detect military objects despite limited labeled military data.
Kukor Persuaded Commercial AI By Selling Lives Saved
- Kukor personally courted startups like Clarifai and Google Cloud, persuading founders by framing AI as lifesaving for deployed units.
- Clarifai's founder shifted from wedding-photo algorithms to military computer vision after Kukor's visits.
