Katrina Manson: Project Maven and the Advent of Algorithmic Warfare

To truly understand the Pentagon’s approach to adopting AI and how it navigates the moral and ethical dilemmas present with the use of autonomy for lethal decisions, you really have to go back to the start. And in many ways, that was Project Maven. In this new episode of CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE, journalist and author Katrina Manson joins to discuss her new book on Maven, the secretive decade-long Pentagon program that put artificial intelligence at the heart of American warfare. Manson traces the story from a windowless government room in 2017 to AI-enabled systems now operating across every branch of the U.S. military — unpacking the bureaucratic battles, the Google employee revolt, the rise of Palantir, and the deeper question no one can fully answer yet: will AI make war more precise, or will it make catastrophic mistakes at scale?