Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth spent years questioning whether Project Maven - the Pentagon's flagship AI targeting initiative - was worth its billion-dollar price tag. A former SEAL Team 6 intelligence director who sat on the military targeting committee for nearly two decades, he worried about accountability, record-keeping, and whether AI was skipping crucial steps in the targeting process. Then he became the program's most powerful backer.

Whitworth's transformation is detailed in journalist Katrina Manson's investigation published in WIRED, drawing on her forthcoming book about Project Maven's origins and evolution, "Hvylya" reports.

The confrontation between Whitworth and Maven's founding leader, Marine Colonel Drew Cukor, became legendary inside the Pentagon. In a meeting so tense that some present squirmed, Whitworth drilled Cukor on what would happen when things went wrong. "Tell me about what happens after the bad drop when we go through a congressional [hearing] and we're getting hard questions?" he demanded. When Whitworth took charge of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in June 2022, he still considered Maven overpriced, overhyped, and reckless. "We were all very concerned," Cukor recalled. "Trey was not a friend."

But after seeing how easily Maven integrated into combat scenarios, Whitworth changed course. "I started really believing in it," he told Manson during a visit to NGA headquarters. Rather than shutting Maven down, he began personally calling combatant commanders to promote the platform's latest features. By September 2024, he was publicly describing Maven as his agency's "marquee targeting program of record."

The reconciliation came at a private retreat for tech investors and defense leaders. Whitworth approached Cukor and told him: "Drew, this is important work." Cukor described the moment without sentimentality: "It wasn't an apology as much as a formal recognition. We didn't hug, but it was an important conversation."

Under Whitworth's leadership, Maven expanded to nearly 25,000 users across the military. By his retirement in November 2025, NGA had accredited two AI models for targeting and was producing machine-generated intelligence reports that "no human hands" had touched.

Also read: From Washington to Hegseth: Two Centuries of Military Neutrality Now Under Threat.