We have been waiting for this announcement, but anyone rooting for a startup to snag this DARPA contract will be disappointed. Digital Battlespace reports, “DARPA Awards Machine Learning Analytics Contract to BAE Systems.” Yes, they went with the big, established, and experienced firm. The machine learning analytics services project is part of the agency’s Geospatial Cloud Analytics program. The brief write-up informs us:
ROBERT STEELE: BAE won a $400M OSINT contract with NGIC that causes me to wonder if the Army has lost its intelligence, integrity, and imagination all at once. Just when I thought it could not get any worse, I read that BAE is also getting the AI contract and going to — wait for it — combine its renditions of AI and OSINT so that humans don't have to do anything. OSINT is HUMINT. Not only is 90% of what we need to know not digital and not in English, but we still do not process more than 1% of what we collect digitally and we still do not have sense-making tools for analysts or for meta data. Stuff likes this makes me ashamed to be an intelligence professional. This is not right.
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