Data is the Hard Part | Building AI Tools for the Military

Everyone wants AI that wins wars. Very few people want to collect, label, store, and test the data it runs on. Bharat Patel is currently Accenture’s AI and data lead for its defense portfolio, a former enlisted Navy sailor, and a veteran of the Army acquisition world, with experience at MITRE and across the Department of Defense. We’re here today to talk about why data is the hard part in making AI work to win wars for you — and what standards, integration processes, and governance you need to turn fun tech and cute little language models into things that can actually serve the warfighter. We’re also going to talk about the dark side of data — how poisoning can happen, the enemy’s vote in the datasets you build to find things on the battlefield, and what it’s like to be a civil servant trying to make big programs happen inside the acquisition bureaucracy. Our conversation covers: Why data is the real bottleneck for military AI, why “AI-ready data” is a myth, and why autonomous tanks are further off than you might think, Ukraine’s autonomous systems as a case study: how years of collecting, labeling, and learning from battlefield data created the foundation for autonomy, The boring side of AI: how pipelines, standards, governance, and testing and evaluation determine whether models ever make it into the field, The adversary’s AI toolbox — including camouflage, deception, electronic warfare, and poisoned data — and how to test against those threats. The 4D chess game of building programs inside the Pentagon: navigating requirements, funding, acquisition rules, and the people who make or break a program. Thank you to Accenture Federal Services for bringing us this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices