Cameron Stanley is pushing the Pentagon to become AI-first

Cameron Stanley, a Pentagon veteran who returned to government after a stint at Amazon Web Services, is pushing to make the Defense Department an “AI-first organization,” from back-office logistics to the battlefield. Speed is the edge: “The right decision, the fastest” wins, he says. In recent months, he has overseen the launch of the Gen AI.mil platform, now used by nearly 2 million personnel, while another tool, Agent Designer, saw more than 10,000 agents built in its first three days to address tasks and workflows. Even four-star generals are fluent enough that “they’re now testing me,” he says. War has accelerated deployment. Palantir’s Maven Smart System—the flagship artificial intelligence program Stanley once managed—helped the U.S. strike more than 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours of Operation Epic Fury in Iran, while real-world combat generates training data no simulation can match. (The Pentagon is still investigating an erroneous U.S. missile strike on a school that killed 175 people and the role of AI in that targeting decision.) Instead of limited exercises, Stanley notes, systems are now used “hundreds of times a day.” Stanley declined to comment on the Defense Department’s dispute with Anthropic over model access, but he says his office is focused on rigorous testing and believes “warfighters” should be trusted to exercise lawful judgment. “We don’t ask them if they’re ethically using F-35s,” he says, referring to the Lockheed Martin fighter jet. Much of his work now focuses on removing barriers to agentic AI: data silos, incompatible ontologies, compliance-driven processes. Even as agents reshape software development, the lesson from Maven holds: Developers must work alongside users and iterate quickly. In his view, “commercial technology in the hands of warfighters” will deliver the edge. This profile is part of Fast Company’s AI 20 for 2026, our roundup spotlighting 20 of AI’s most influential technologists, entrepreneurs, corporate leader