This is John Batchel, a conversation with Patrick Tucker of Defense 1, the technology editor,

about Dan Cain, John Daniel Cain, nominated to be the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

an F-16 pilot, but also Operation Inherent Resolve against the ISIS in the Middle East,

perfecting and developing a program that called

Maven, which is an AI search of hours and hours and hours of surveillance from drones

that not much happens until it does. Here's Patrick to explain. The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is very

familiar with Maven and it's used everywhere now. AI. Right. So one of the kind of big things

to come out of operation and have resolved a tool that is a pathfinder tool that really points

the way for

all, you know, military tool making for the next, you know, 30 years at least was a project called

Project Maven.

And it used basically video feeds from drones, mostly drones.

A little bit of satellite data, some other data, but mostly drones.

And it ran them through an AI engine so that analysts didn't have to spend hours upon hours

upon hours sorting through drone footage.

A lot of people don't remember that the operations in the Middle East required folks out in places like

Creech Air Force Base in Nevada sitting in very hot little, basically tankers and just watching

drone footage for long, long periods of time.

And what Maven allowed you to do is you kind of automate the very dull part of that,

and the program would tip or cue analysts when something

of interesting would happen.

So that was now, that has become basically the model by which the U.S. military is developing

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