Arnel P. David

A huge honor to publish in the latest issue of NITECH14 issuu.com/globalmediapar… via @issuu "Delivering Machine Speed Capability with Task Force Maven"

One day, all the Palantir haters will have to come to grips with the reality that the disinformation surrounding the company was deliberately created by our adversaries who feared its potential to strengthen and embolden the ability of free and democratic societies.

People keep saying there is no way the US and Israel can bring about regime change without boots on the ground. Well, if a ground force is the problem, there is no problem at all. I know a ground force. Highly motivated, completely fearless, and carrying an absolute hatred for this system. If out of ninety million people, just thirty million step out together at the exact same moment, the regime will be crushed in under six hours. You want boots on the ground? Perfect. Choose the Iranian people. For just one week maximum, do not change your tactics. Just strike the repression forces in the streets and their barracks day and night. Level the playing field and watch while we throw this entire regime into the dustbin of history where they belong.

Never-before-seen footage of how Palantir’s Maven Smart System actually works: “It gives us the ability to take classified, unclassified, and commercial data—and you can aggregate it all together to help you make all the decisions that you have to in warfare.” Via @Channel4

Palantir recently became the military's primary software system for "targeting," and increasingly other aspects of the fight. Since the scary "targeting" OS used scary "AI," we were never going to have a sane conversation about how this works. This story is my best shot at a sane conversation about how this works. First of all, "targeting" isn't shooting. "Targeting" is the exhaustive, bureaucratic process by which we plan, execute, and *assess* shooting. How our planes will get the right munitions. Where they’ll refuel. Cloud coverage. The literal illumination of the moon. Matters of physics. Matters of contingency: the AC-130 gunship needs to be in an overwatch position before the ground assault can happen, but the gunship can’t move into place until the air defenses have been taken out. A “scheme of maneuvers” is determined. Only then does the strike proceed. ^That is only a small snippet of the "targeting" process, btw. As of the start of the conflict with Iran this year, "targeting" was still heavily manual. The glue between disparate processes, even if they featured automation, was: PowerPoint, email, chat, and Excel files. Target lists were relayed in spreadsheets. Sequenced maneuvers sat in Gantt charts in PowerPoint. That bottleneck deepened a relationship with Palantir that started decades ago. Now, hundreds of AI agents in the "Maven" software system do stuff like: make sure there's nothing in the military's historical intelligence that might disqualify a target before a strike. Sources believe AI could've prevented the U.S. strike on a school in Iran, which killed more than 100 children, as it was based on "outdated data." Palantir has been called a lot of things. Evil, dystopian. I've been a tech reporter for almost 10 years, and among my travels, nothing is more dystopian than dysfunctional, manual tech. It literally makes people want to die. It literally causes death. The Pentagon has wanted war AI since Vietnam, for good reason. This is the definitive story of how Palantir built it. piratewires.com/p/how-the-mili…

🚨 BREAKING: Former CENTCOM commander Ret. Gen. Frank McKenzie just said it PERFECTLY “It takes a year to build an aircraft — and it takes 200 YEARS to build a military tradition where you don't leave anybody behind!” 👏🏻🇺🇸

LOLOLOL

🚨“WE GOT HIM! My fellow Americans, over the past several hours, the United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History, for one of our incredible Crew Office Members, who also happens to be a highly respected Colonel, and who I am thrilled to let you know is SAFE and SOUND!” - President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸

What Europe gets wrong: Nearly every major international organization and multilateral body has been captured by China and its CCP proxies. Trump is responding by building a parallel system to bypass them altogether. Many Europeans interpret this as destabilization, when it is better understood as adaptation to institutional failure.

Great meeting with @UnderSecE Jacob S. Helberg and our Allies to advance the Pax Silica declaration. Allies like 🇬🇷🇸🇪🇬🇧 have already joined the efforts to build a secure AI ecosystem and high-end manufacturing. By linking markets across the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific, the United States, under @POTUS, is leading the free world in reducing dependence on authoritarian suppliers and hardening supply chains. This is how we preserve our technological edge and ensure peace through strength. @EconAtState

“The US is building two Apollo programs a year. Europe is building excellent regulation.” That’s not my line—it’s from the co-founder of @MistralAI, Arthur Mensch (@arthurmensch). On Monday, Mistral announced an impressive $830 million financing round to build a cutting-edge data center in France. For an independent lab, securing 44 megawatts of power and 13,800 Nvidia GPUs is a massive, incredibly difficult achievement. But it also highlights the reality of the global CapEx gap. Mistral is raising nearly a billion dollars to secure European AI sovereignty. Meanwhile, US hyperscalers are on track to spend $700 billion this year alone. To put that in perspective: Elon Musk’s (@elonmusk) @xai is scaling Colossus in Memphis to 500,000 GPUs with 2GW of power. Watch the full video here: youtu.be/87ctrQefN7w?si…

Let’s be real here. Europe has spent decades freeloading on American security. Even now, with every NATO member finally hitting the 2% GDP target in 2025. But beyond the financial contributions, the real rupture is philosophical and the Iran crisis has shown a spotlight on it. Europe worships process. Endless committees, consultations, and “predictability.” Macron actually calls it a virtue. For Trump, this is paralysis as his style is to articulate a threat, fix a target, and act. The Americans are men of conviction and purpose. Europe on the other hand lives by bureaucratic liturgy and in high-minded abstractions. Sure, Americans might make mistakes when acting. But Europe never considers what the costs of not acting actually are. Just look at how their nations are doing on various fronts, especially on the border crisis, and you see the same cancerous rot that undergirds their foreign policy approach play out domestically. It's the same problem on a different scale. Iran is currently holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage, choking 20% of global oil and spiking prices past $100 a barrel. Meanwhile, the regime is bleeding from strikes, its nuclear ambitions are still alive despite degraded capability, and its proxies are firing missiles at allies and oil tankers. If this isn’t a clear and present danger to the global economy - of which Europe is a part - then I don’t know what is. Yet when Washington asked to use European bases to finish the job - bases the US has defended for generations, the response was hesitation and hand-wringing. The US did strike from RAF Fairford, but only after warnings that British soil could become a “legitimate target.” If you cannot agree that a theocratic regime with eschatological ambitions who have shown no restraint in hitting out at Gulf countries and threatening the world’s energy jugular is an enemy worth confronting, then what, exactly, are we allies about? Europe loves to preen about being tough on Russia. They issue condemnations and speeches and slap sanctions that hardly work to cripple the Russian economy. Now here was a chance to do something concrete: let the Americans use the bases they already pay for, help clear the Strait, and actually degrade the Iranian war machine that arms Moscow’s proxies. Turmp didn’t ask for boots on the ground or any kind of more offensive action. All he wanted was permission to operate from the infrastructure America has underwritten for decades. They couldn’t even manage that. So can you blame the Americans for seeing NATO for what it is? A paper-tiger alliance that expects Washington to bleed and pay while Brussels and London convenes and deliberates. If Europe refuses to treat Iran as the threat it is while happily letting American power keep the Strait open and the lights on, then the alliance is already dead. Trump is simply stating the obvious and the Americans are becoming very reluctant to subsidize the European delusion any longer.

Why Europe is Wrong to Think Iran is ‘Not Our War’ Europe will have to take on global threats alone if it doesn’t support America in Iran. politico.com/news/magazine/…

When Islamists and Islamic terror take over Paris this will be a moment to remember.

We were pleased to host Stuart Lyle yesterday to explore how urban tactics have evolved over the past 80 years. It's important to recognise both continuity and change. Watch the live replay here: youtube.com/live/Pt3jlve49… (the full recording will be uploaded shortly)

I'm trying to imagine the alternative history of WW2 if it looked like this war, and what the coverage might look like "It's January 11th, 1942, one month after Hitler declared war on the United States. Hitler, Goering, Bohrmann, and Himmler were all killed in an allied bombing attack on Hitler's headquarters, along with fifty other members of the German High Command. 95% of entire German navy is resting at the bottom of the North Sea. The Luftwaffe is no more. Allied aircraft achieved complete air superiority over Germany within 48 hours of the war's start. Still, many sophisticated commentators are saying that the Third Reich has the upper hand, because they have shut down travel through the Danish straits."

Pete Hegseth said this morning that U.S. is doing dynamic targeting. In other words, that U.S. has infiltrated the regime so much and so fast that they can update their list of targets in real time. IRGC can come on X and make posts about how smart they are all they want, but military situation doesn’t lie.

It was a privilege to conduct this interview with @DefenceIQ prior to the International Armoured Vehicles Conference. Touched on: 1. Speed of Crisis 2. Art of Command 3. Use of AI and Prototype Warfare defenceiq.com/armoured-vehic…

"This internal cultural resistance is arguably more dangerous to the Army’s future than any near-peer competitor." mwi.westpoint.edu/how-to-kill-a-…

🔴 Britain has been forced to borrow a warship from Germany to fulfil its Nato obligations after Sir Keir Starmer sent HMS Dragon to the eastern Mediterranean 🔗: telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/2…

Innovation keeps our warfighters safe and capable. The U.S. leads, but all Allies must bring cutting-edge tech to the table. President Trump’s 5% Allied defense spending target ensures we out-innovate every adversary. By creating and adopting the best technology, we secure peace through strength.