Tell Me Your Deepest, Darpest Secrets

An Anduril Lattice Modular Heli-Drone. Via U.S. Marines

Three secret projects once known only to D.C.’s darkest corner booths have been made public in the last week, revealing the U.S. government’s plans for moonshot pet AI projects, warfighting, and surveillance.

1. Darp Horse: The Pentagon’s deep-pocketed brain trust, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), opened up to Nextgov Friday about its $2 billion, five-year AI Next Program. DARPA’s vision for the future of AI: common sense computers, human-machine collaboration, more self-learning abilities, and less data usage.

2. Oculus Arms Dealer: The Intercept revealed that Anduril Industries (founded by Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey) will sell a system linking VR tech, sensors, and drones to the Pentagon for use in Afghanistan. Anduril has a pitch deck touting swarms of autonomous attack drones, and it’s working on a remote control tank in an Oakland, CA, warehouse.

3. Smile for TSA: BuzzFeed News reviewed documents that show Customs and Border Protection wants to roll out facial recognition systems in the U.S.’ top 20 airports by 2021.