Did the State of Indiana help strike an Iranian girls' school?

Here's how the targeting system being used in Iran was rubberstamped by Indiana's Applied Research Institute.

On February 28, a Tomahawk Missile descended on the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Iran. This was one of thousands of strikes carried out by the United States in the opening salvo of the war in Iran. The 156 school girls murdered by the United States military has gained widespread condemnation, but how is it that this target was selected, and who helped create the selection process?

A web of tech companies, nonprofits, and public-private partnerships helped to construct the targeting software used in the strike know as Maven Smart Systems, with multiple being based in the inconspicuous state of Indiana.

Since 2017, the Department of Defense has targeted the integration of artificial intelligence into the military’s arsenal. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work initiated this search through the creation of a new initiative known as Project Maven, which seeks to combine private sector innovations in surveillance and targeting into military operations.

The program is part of a larger push for increased drone warfare in the 21st century. It’s well in line with President Obama’s record number of 542 drone strikes during his tenure, which was referred to by the pro-interventionist Council on Foreign Relations as a “targeted killing program” which killed thousands covertly.

Now however, the push is to automate not only the actual strikes, but also the targeting method through use of artificial intelligence.

Project Maven has evolved into the Maven Smart Systems program, which is largely a Palantir and Anduril creation, with Palantir receiving a $99 million contract in 2024. In the mean time, other companies involved such as Google and Anthropic have dropped out of the project.

However, private companies are not the only players in bringing Maven together.

Indiana’s Applied Research Institute (ARI), which receives massive amounts of funding from the state, has had a hand in the increasing automation of military activities. The ARI also has both Purdue University and Indiana University Presidents Mung Chiang and Pamela Whitten on its board. As I’ve written about before, they’ve contracted out Anduril to the tune of $21 million in the span of only 2 years, with no indications as to what for.

The drone manufacturer has been an important mover in automated military tech, with their Altius drones being deployed in Ukraine as part of the US military aid to the country. And, coincidentally, the company has been manufacturing automated naval vehicles similar to a mysterious explosive laden jetski that washed ashore in Turkey.

Credit: x.com

The Applied Research Institute has done more than simply contract out to Anduril, as they have constructed a new process by which AI focused defense companies can become eligible for contracts.

The system is known as the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace, and functions to reroute defense tech companies away from the regular 12-24 months required to set up a military contract, and instead, reduces that timeline to only a few weeks. The process is shockingly informal, with companies only required to submit a 5-7 minute video to Tradewinds, which is then approved or denied based on whether the proposed product provides a solution to a military issue. Then, the contractor is deemed “awardable” by Tradewinds, and the military can then contract them out formally.

The program, as a part of the military’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) which also houses Project Maven, is specifically designed to integrate AI into modern warfare.

The Applied Research Institute deemed two of Palantir’s products awardable for contracting through its Tradewinds Marketplace in April 2024. Only a few months later they received their $99 million contract through the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office in September. The contract is even titled “Tradewinds Maven Smart System (MSS)”

Today, Project Maven has become an endeavor almost entirely by Palantir. In March of this year, Cameron Stanley, head of CDAO, gave a presentation in which he entirely credits Palantir for Maven Smart Systems, standing beside a banner reading “THERE ARE NO SECRETS”. Palantir’s gigantic role in the project has been rubber stamped by the Applied Research Institute and its board of university presidents and state officials.

Maven Smart Systems today operates as a tool to consolidate surveillance techniques and striking mechanism into a single platform, by which hundreds of targets can be selected in minutes. A single soldier can destroy a school or other critical infrastructure literally at the press of a button. Essentially, the program reduces the time needed to strike a target, meaning death for civilians is only a click away. All of this rests on a foundation of constant surveillance in as many places as possible.

CDAO’s head put it well in his presentation, “…we developed some of the best computer vision models possible… [they] were deployed on our systems everywhere in the world [where] we could possibly integrate it, we integrated it”.

Indiana’s institutions, whether public-private partnerships, state universities, or government offices have bent over backwards assisting companies, intelligence agencies, and the military to create a world of near universal surveillance so that targeted killing can be accelerated to break neck speeds, regardless of the consequences.

The data being collected and used does not only spell death for children in Iran, but also a landscape of complete surveillance at home in the United States. Palantir has collected data from Hoosiers before, the question is simply who will use it, and for what.