$142 million AI drone warfare contract from 'Project Maven' was silently erased from public record

The U.S. government erased all record of both a $142 million 'Project Maven' drone warfare contract involving Microsoft and Amazon, codenamed 'Pavement,' and a related $52 million contract.

An MQ-9 Reaper, armed with GBU-12 Paveway II laser guided munitions and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, piloted by Col. Lex Turner flies a combat mission over southern Afghanistan. Credit: U.S. Air Force / Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt

November 5, 2024: A spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary of Defense shared legal justification for the contract deletions through Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) provisions 4.606(c) and 4.606(d), which respectively provide exemptions for national security-related information and for agencies which are not subject to the FAR.

In the most prominent case of U.S. federal public procurement censorship known to the author, all record of a $142 million contract for the Pentagon’s controversial “Project Maven” artificial intelligence effort, codenamed “Pavement,” has been silently erased from both the Federal Procurement Data System (fpds.gov) and USASpending.gov. Further, no record of the contract’s removal exists within the official FPDS database of deleted contracts.

As exclusively reported by the author more than three years ago — more than two years ahead of, for example, Bloomberg and the Center for Security and Emerging Technology — official U.S. government summaries of contracts between the high-tech services contractor ECS Federal and the Pentagon provided a map of how Silicon Valley companies were supplying artificial intelligence to the U.S. military, including for imagery analysis from satellites and General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drones. Forbes quickly followed the author’s 2021 report, Easy as Publicly Available Information (PAI), with articles headlined “Amazon and Microsoft Scored $50 Million in Pentagon Surveillance Contracts” and “Startups Backed By Google, Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and James Murdoch Are Building AI and Facial Recognition Surveillance Tools for the Pentagon.”

The three ECS Federal contracts which were at the center of the Easy as PAI study were codenamed “Pavement,” “Avalanche,” and “Kubera,” with respective procurement identifiers of W911QX20C0019, W911QX20C0023, and W911QX18C0037 and total payouts of $142.37 million, $117.09 million, and $189.86 million. Of the three, only Pavement has been deleted from public record.

As reported by the author earlier this week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission similarly silently deleted public record of its nascent inquiry into the cellphone location-tracking data broker Venntel / Gravy Analytics on Wednesday. While public record exists of the FTC’s redaction, the Federal Procurement Data System’s feed of deleted contracts contains no trace of the removal of summaries of ECS’s Pavement contract.

A separate $52.25 million contract discussed in the Easy as PAI report, with identifier W911QX19F0086 and involving both ECS Federal and Venntel, was similarly silently deleted from public record.

Closely related to Project Maven, the contract between ECS and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (DEVCOM) is for a “Publicly Available Information enclave” in the U.S. Army’s Secure Unclassified Network (SUNet), in which Venntel was paid $60,000 on January 30, 2020 for four licenses to its products as a subcontractor. (While SUNet was briefly mentioned in Easy as PAI, journalist Byron Tau’s book “Means of Control” provides a detailed history of the project.)

In the three years since the release of the Easy as PAI report, sources with direct knowledge of the Pentagon’s work on Project Maven have told the author that the report had officials in the Pentagon “shitting themselves” and that the heads of Project Maven had internally passed around the analysis.

Beyond the Easy as PAI report, the public records analysis database maintained by the author through the nonprofit Tech Inquiry retains detailed records of the two deleted contracts, which can be found by searching for their procurement identifiers.

Ten days after publication of this article, a spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary of Defense justified the contract deletions through Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) provisions 4.606(c) and 4.606(d), which provide exemptions for national security-related information and agencies which are not subject to the FAR.