They wanted to get a jumpstart on AI, and the aim of this was autonomy, to take humans off the battlefield and deliver overwhelming US power.

The problem with war has always been the humans. We humans are inefficient. We get tired. We get killed. That's the view of a

Marine Corps colonel named Drew Kukor, who arrived at the conclusion that humans do better when

machines help us, and that AI will completely change, maybe already is changing, the way America fights wars.

I'm Mary Louise Kelly. This is sources and methods from NPR.

The story of that Marine Corps colonel is at the heart of a new book about the Pentagon's campaign to incorporate AI into combat, a campaign

known as Project Maven.

Project Maven is also the title of the book.

The author is Katrina Manson.

And Katrina is our guest for today's special episode.

As always, we'll be back here again Thursday with our regular episode to talk through the week's biggest national security news.

Katrina, welcome to sources and methods.

Thanks so much.

So we're going to get to newsy stuff.

I want to ask you about how the Pentagon is using AI today, like in the Iran war and so forth.

But start just by introducing us to the human, who, as I noted,

is it the heart of your story? Tell me about Drew Kukor, like the first time you met him.

Oh, the first time I met him, I was already a year into trying to meet him. And by then he was a retired Marine Colonel, but he'd run

Project Maven for five years. And everyone who I spoke to about Project Maven said,

you need to meet this person in order to tell Project Maven's story. So I was in the middle of

trying to do this. and I finally got to meet

him after work. By then, he was working in a bank in New York, trying to deliver AI for finance,

...