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Posted on 10/04/2025 1:33:49 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Summary
WASHINGTON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The much-needed modernization of the U.S. Army's battlefield communications network being undertaken by Anduril, Palantir (PLTR.O) , opens new tab and others is rife with "fundamental security" problems and vulnerabilities, and should be treated as a "very high risk," according to a recent internal Army memo.
The two Silicon Valley companies, led by allies of U.S. President Donald Trump, have gained access to the Pentagon's lucrative flow of contracts on the promise of quickly providing less expensive and more sophisticated weapons than the Pentagon's longstanding arms providers.
Military drone and software maker Anduril boasted it had a prototype of the NGC2 communications platform working during a battlefield test just eight weeks after winning the contract award. But the September 5 memo provides fodder for critics who argue that Silicon Valley’s move-fast, break-things ethos may not be the best approach for vital military equipment.
The memo from the Army's chief technology officer about the NGC2 platform that connects soldiers, sensors, vehicles and commanders with real-time data paints a bleak security picture of the initial product. "We cannot control who sees what, we cannot see what users are doing, and we cannot verify that the software itself is secure," the memo says.
Those concerns have been addressed already as part of the "normal process" of development, Anduril said. "The recent report reflects an outdated snapshot, not the current state of the program," the company said in a statement emailed to Reuters.
A Palantir spokesperson said, "No vulnerabilities were found in the Palantir platform."
However, the Army internal memo written by Gabriele Chiulli, the Army chief technology officer authorizing official on the NGC2 prototype, said,...
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
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IOW - not made by my ‘friends’ in the MIC that kickback to my pockets.....?????
I take what Reuters reports, as being more likely to be made up BS, than honestl reporting.
If your chain of command is wrapped around the axle controling "who sees what" and busy micromanaging what everyone is doing, it seems like you may moving too slow.
Maybe we should just have IT inflict multifactor authentication, every five minutes, on the enemy and paralyze them too!
“battlefield”
Absolute BS. “Domestic Surveillance” in our military police state is the reality...
Palantir has its fingers in many areas of our government.
They run the immigration database.
They run the Covid-19 vaccine database.
They run the entire healthcare database including individual medical records for UK.
They are the link between the FBI, CIA, and many other security databases.
They run a worldwide financial transaction database.
And most important, Peter Thiel who owns Palantir, also owns JD Vance, and is former business partners and friends with Elon Musk as they started PayPal together.
Bkmk
ICE partnership (since 2014)
Palantir has come under criticism due to its partnership developing software for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Palantir responded in 2018 that its software is not used to facilitate deportations. In a statement provided to the New York Times, the firm implied that because its contract was with HSI, a division of ICE focused on investigating criminal activities, it played no role in deportations.
But documents obtained in 2017 by The Intercept show that this is not true. According to these documents, Palantir’s ICM software is considered ‘mission critical’ to ICE. Other groups critical of Palantir include the Brennan Center for Justice, National Immigration Project, the Immigrant Defense Project, the Tech Workers Coalition, and Mijente.
In one internal ICE report Mijente acquired, it was revealed that Palantir’s software was critical in an operation to arrest the parents of children residing illegally.
In 2025, Palantir was reported to be working closely with ICE to enable deportation in the second presidency of Donald Trump.
Project Maven (since 2018)
After employee protests in June 2018, Google chose not to renew its contract with the US Department of Defense to work on Project Maven, a program to develop artificial intelligence that can analyze video feeds from aerial drones; Palantir took over the project in December 2019.
Google employees were concerned that the technology could lead to lethal autonomous weapons that choose targets without human input.
Project Maven Scarlet Dragon exercises
The 18th Airborne Corps is the main tester of Project Maven. With collaborating arms organization in US and UK, it has used Maven and weapons systems connected to it to strike targets from bombers, fighter jets and drones.
Beginning in 2020, Maven was used for live-fire exercises (”Scarlet Dragon exercises”). The first took place at Fort Bragg. An AI system identified a tank in satellite images, the human approved, and the AI system signaled an M142 HIMARS to strike the target (in this case, a decommissioned tank). It was the first AI-enabled artillery strike in the US army.
There are 6 steps in the kill chain: identify, locate, filter down to the lawful valid targets, prioritize, assign them to firing units, and fire. Of these 6 steps, Maven can perform 4. A senior targeting officer estimates that with Maven, he could decide on 80 targets per hour, vs 30 targets per hour without Maven. The efficiency was comparable with the targeting cell used during Operation Iraqi Freedom, but whereas the OIF used a targeting cell with roughly 2000 staff, the 18th Airborne used a targeting cell with 20 people.
Use in actual conflicts
In the 2021 Kabul airlift, Maven was used to display the situation on the ground. It could simultaneously display data feeds, such as aircraft movements, logistics, threats and locations of key personnel such as Chris Donahue.
In the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US has used satellite intelligence and Maven Smart System to supply the locations of Russian equipment to Ukrainian forces.
In February 2024, Maven was used for narrowing targets for airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. It was also used for locating rocket launchers in Yemen and surface vessels in the Red Sea, some of which were destroyed in February 2024 according to CENTCOM.
Yep... And with Erik Schmidt, former CEO of Google/ Alphabet.
“Those concerns have been addressed already as part of the “normal process” of development, Anduril said. “The recent report reflects an outdated snapshot, not the current state of the program,” the company said in a statement emailed to Reuters.”
sounds like a disgruntled Pentagoner whose pet project didn’t get funded leaked an outdated memo to get Reuters to stir the pot for them ...
Palmer Lucky is the Elon Musk of drone warfare and him and his companies are a true treasure ...
Reuters!
For goodness’ sake, when has Reuters ever produced anything but BS propaganda?
Kamalalala is smarter than Reuters personnel, and she is dumber than whale poop...
AI targeting is the future. Yes, AI has identified and killed humans. There is a “man in the loop”, but his job isn’t necessarily to designate or approve targets, but to “wave off” attacks he or his chain of command deem inappropriate, such as non-combatants or friendlies. AI will be playing a much larger role in future conflicts.
Totally agree.
Soon our domestic police will be using AI with traffic light cameras, the DMV database, on board vehicle location devices and cell phone location indicators.
I take anything written by Reuters with a giant grain of salt, plus there are still enemies to this nation still in the military.
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