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Lyft exec Craig Martell will take a major role in the Pentagon’s digital world. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON: Craig Martell, head of machine learning at Lyft, has been named the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, Breaking Defense has learned. 

The hiring of a Silicon Valley persona for the CDAO role is likely to be cheered by those in the defense community who have been calling for more technically-minded individuals to take leadership roles in the department. At the same time, Martell’s lack of Pentagon experience — he was a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School for over a decade studying AI for the military, but has never worked in the department’s bureaucracy — may pose challenges as he works to lead an office only months old.

In an exclusive interview with Breaking Defense, Martell, who also worked as head of machine learning at Dropbox and led several AI teams at LinkedIn, acknowledged both the benefits and risks of bringing in someone with his background.

“I think they [DoD] really need someone from industry who knows how to bring real AI and analytical value at scale and speed,” Martell said on April 21. “One of the things that industry does well is, in a very agile way, turn on a dime and say, well, that’s not working, let’s try this and that’s not working, let’s try this. And you develop that muscle over time in industry and I think that’s something DoD really needs.

“On the other hand, coming from industry has a downside that I don’t know my ways around the Pentagon yet and I don’t know what levers to pull… So I’m also excited to be partnered up with folks who are really good at that as well.”

Notably, DoD announced last month that Margaret Palmieri, who founded and directed the Navy’s Digital Warfare Office, will be deputy CDAO. Palmieri most recently served as Special Assistant to the Vice Chief of Naval Operations and Director of the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Action — in other words, she’s very much an inside-the-department person to pair with someone coming in fresh from the outside. 

As CDAO, Martell will be responsible for scaling up DoD’s data, analytics and AI to enable quicker and more accurate decision-making and will also play an important role in the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control efforts to connect sensors and shooters. 

“If we’re going to be successful in achieving the goals, if we’re going to be successful in being competitive with China, we have to figure out where the best mission value can be found first and that’s going to have to drive what we build, what we design, the policies we come up with,” Martell said. “I just want to guard against making sure that we don’t do this in a vacuum, but we do it with real mission goals, real mission objectives in mind.”

His first order of business? Figuring out what needs to be done, and how to best use the $600 million in fiscal year 2023 dollars the CDAO’s office was marked for in the Pentagon’s most recent budget request.

“So whenever I tackle a problem, whenever I go into a new organization, the first questions that I ask are: Do we have the right people? Do we have the right processes? Do we have the right tools to solve the visions [and] goals?” Martell said.

To tackle that, Martell wants to identify the office’s “marquee customers” and figure out what’s “broken in terms of… people, platform, processes and tools” — a process that could take anywhere from three to six months, he added.

“We really want to be customer-driven here,” Martell said. “We don’t want to walk in and say if we build it, they’ll come.”

Breaking Defense last November exclusively reported the Pentagon was creating the new CDAO position. Under the new office, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, Defense Digital Service and the office of the Chief Data Officer would all report up to the CDAO, who will report directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. Martell will also engage with other officials, like Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu.

“My view in general with these partnerships is very non-territorial,” he said. “We need to figure out together what has to get done and then the right team to build it.”

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The office will be responsible for leading DoD’s strategy and policy on data, analytics and AI adoption, enabling the development of digital and AI-enabled solutions across the department and providing a cadre of technical experts to serve as a digital response force to address urgent and emerging challenges.

“I’m convinced we’re going to be able to do some great things,” he said. “But they’re going to be hard things. It’s going to be a challenge.”

A senior defense official told reporters in February the CDAO will assume responsibility for Advana, DoD’s advancing analytics platform, and other enterprise-wide platforms to create a “data-as-a-service” model that can identify authoritative data sources and incorporate them in a standardized way. Hicks has tasked the CDAO to conduct a review of authorities and governance structures associated with data, analytics and AI and provide recommendations by May 1. 

“With Craig’s appointment, we hope to see the department increase the speed at which we develop and field advances in AI, data analytics, and machine learning technology,” Hicks said in a statement today. “He brings cutting-edge industry experience to apply to our unique mission set.”