Name: Molly Solsbury
Title: Maven Smart System (MSS) Program Director for the Department of Defense
Revolver/Government Experience
- In August 2026, Molly Solsbury was appointed as Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s (CDAO) program director for the Maven Smart System. According to CDAO’s website, Solsbury helps enable “the seamless expansion and integration of the Maven Smart System within the military services.”
- Maven Smart System (MSS) is a software platform developed by Palantir as a continuation of Project Maven, the onetime Google AI program which was beset by employee protests amid concerns about collaborating with the Pentagon. MSS aggregates data from a host of sources and uses AI to allow users to conduct surveillance, identify and analyze targets, order military strikes, and evaluate the results of strikes all from one platform.
- In March 2026, the Pentagon made MSS a “program of record,” allowing all branches of the military to adopt the software and providing the project with long-term funding. As of May 2025, MSS has a contract ceiling of $1.3 billion.
- MSS was used by the Pentagon during Operation Epic Fury, the US military bombing campaign against Iran in 2026. According to the Washington Post, MSS provided “real-time targeting and target prioritization to military operations.
- Since the start of the war, over 2,000 civilians in Iran have been killed by US and Israeli strikes, including over 100 school girls that were killed by a US strike on an elementary school. Maven and other AI systems were likely used in the strike, though human error may have been ultimately responsible.
- In an interview with WAMU Radio, Solsbury defended the Trump administration’s creation of the Executive Innovation Corps, a US Army reserves unit consisting of tech industry executives, including Palantir’s Shyam Sankar, Meta’s Andrew Bosworth, and OpenAI’s Bob McGrew. Solsbury said the program was necessary to “bring people in and out of government service” because technology was “moving so fast on the battlefield.”
- Solsbury brushed off concerns about conflicts of interests, saying “We already have a lot of existing guardrails in place to ensure that the army follows ethics laws and follows ethics guidelines in a transparent way.” She went on to say the direct commission of these tech executives would ensure that “war fighters” are successful against “incredibly technologically advanced enemies.”
For more check out AI Villains and The Trump Administration
Image Credit: Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) leadership headshot