The U.S. Army has issued Palantir, the Silicon Valley software and data mining company, a $10 billion contract, the largest in the company’s history. According to the Washington Post, the contract “cements Palantir’s role as a major processor of data for the military,” and comes on the heels of an additional $795 million the military allocated earlier this year to put into its artificial intelligence targeting software, Maven Smart System (MSS). MSS evolved from Project Maven, launched by the Pentagon in 2017 “to pave the way for wider use of AI-enabled technologies that can autonomously detect, tag and track objects or humans of interest from still images or videos captured by surveillance aircraft, satellites and other means,” Defense Scoop reported in May.
According to the Post, Palantir “has been on a tear through Washington” in recent months, garnering new business at seven federal agencies. The shift is driven, in part, by the Trump administration’s focus on AI and on shifting government activities toward commercial companies, in other words, privatization.
