Meet the Gods of AI Warfare
Almost a year later, on a hot day in the middle of summer 2025, I walked into NGA headquarters at the Fort Belvoir military base in northern Virginia. This was my second visit to the spy agency’s headquarters, and I wanted to find out why Whitworth had changed his mind, how widespread Maven had become, and how Maven’s new supporters saw the risks and benefits of integrating AI into military workflows.
By then, Whitworth had become such an ardent fan of AI that his agency was producing machine-produced intelligence reports for U.S. policymakers that “no human hand” had touched. And the NGA had floated a $708 million contract for data labeling in support of Maven’s computer vision models, the largest such call in U.S. history, which would ultimately go not to self-made billionaire Alexandr Wang’s Scale AI, but to Enabled Intelligence, a startup focused on hiring people on the autism spectrum who are experts in pattern recognition and comfortable with repetitive work.
My visit required the din of any meeting at a spy agency. Courteous background checks and checks; no phones, laptops or smart watches allowed; and a more curious step: noting not only the make and model, but also the serial number written on my tape recorder, which I resolved never to use again for any maintenance after the visit.
The building was a temple to geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, the research of deep analytics related to locations on a map. A mesh of reflective glass surrounded by nearly 2,000 concrete triangles covered the blast-resistant facade, as if each was trying to triangulate a different location. More than 8,500 people worked at headquarters, but I was there to meet with four NGA officials. Each, in their own way, has been deeply involved in the development, standards, and release of Maven. It was, I was told, unprecedented for them all to get together in one room to brief a reporter on Maven, and I couldn’t wait to find out what was at stake for them.
“It’s our reputation that’s on the line,” Whitworth told me in the interview. After seeing how easy it was to integrate the system into combat scenarios, he quickly changed his mind: “I started to really believe in it. » Far from being shy about ushering in a new era of AI warfare, its midwives wanted their name put on it. Some had become quite “nasty” in their pursuit of credit, an NGA official said. I wondered if NGA wanted its fair share, knowing that some advisors in the second Trump administration wanted to wrest control of Maven and AI from NGA and bring it back to the Pentagon. “No one can take credit for this thing. It’s too big.”
NGA officials explained to me the developments in Maven since the agency took over most of it two years ago. Five of eight Maven initiatives, including analysis of drone feeds and satellite imagery, resulted in NGA. Whitworth wanted to expand his agency’s reach and capabilities in line with the expansion of ubiquitous global sensors. AI relies on data, which requires global monitoring to deliver it. While the NSA could listen to the world, the NGA could monitor it. Whitworth made it clear that he wanted to do this in great detail, constantly monitoring the entire world. NGA previously gave me a demonstration showing how AI could flag military construction in China, such as the arrival of a new rail depot at a missile base. NGA tracked every movement at 49,000 airfields around the world. Whitworth even wanted to install GPS, or a similar navigation system, on the moon. And if GPS was jammed or hacked, he also wanted other ways to map space: NGA developed digital maps based on magnetism, gravity, remote sensing, celestial navigation and elevation. “From the seabed to space” was the new mantra he unveiled in 2023. The American warhorse wanted omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence.
