Chandra Donelson, Chief Data and AI Officer, United States Space Force Arvind Srinivasan, Chief Technology Officer, Maxar Moderator: Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media and Fortune CEO Initiative, Fortune
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00:00Hello, good afternoon earthlings. I thought we should say we're gonna go where no algorithm has gone before I have two incredibly cool
00:08Speakers here, and I want to just start actually Shandra. I want to start with
00:14What's top of mind for me, which is what keeps you up at night?
00:17Being in space go Diane. That is a really good question
00:21So and I want to pivot this over to the the audience. Okay, are you guys guys want to interact with me today?
00:26Okay, that's what I'm talking about
00:28How many of you guys use GPS?
00:30System and navigations to get to and from where you want to go on a daily basis. I need some energy
00:35whoa
00:36Make them jump up and I say that
00:39Yes, how many of you depend on weather data to be able to make your plans for the week?
00:44I'm not feeling scared yet. By the way, Shandra. Yes
00:47How many of you want the Department of Defense to be able to monitor our adversaries?
00:52Activities on the ground to be able to protect and defend this nation and your own activities. Oh
00:59Never mind
01:00Absolutely, that is Space Force
01:03And what keeps me up at night is knowing that our adversaries they understand our reliance on space
01:08They understand your reliance and your family's reliance on space-based capabilities
01:13And they are taking deliberate actions to develop capabilities to grade our advantage in space
01:19So what keeps me up at night is knowing that I cannot in the United States Space Force
01:23We cannot let you down because you depend on our capabilities each and every day
01:29And now I'm betting that's not what keeps you up at night Arvind. What keeps you up at night?
01:34Besides the rocks coming at our spacecraft at 27,000 miles an hour. There's that and and the solar storms. There's
01:43You all saw the immense capabilities that
01:47generative AI has
01:48and the ability to create
01:52Concepts from very little information that are believable and real
01:57Maxar is in the business of providing actionable intelligence by looking at the world from space
02:03The ability to for adversaries to pollute that just a few pixels
02:10Keeps us up at night. How do we prevent these attacks from?
02:15From subtly altering the information that you all live by and derive is
02:20Is critical to our information infrastructure from space? Yeah, exactly. So the security
02:24Well, I feel like before we get into some of the overhyped under appreciate which is also interesting
02:29I want to drill down a little bit on what your jobs are. You mentioned a little bit
02:33So Chandra, you're the chief data and AI officer. Very cool. And and Space Force is really only five years old at this point
02:40So what what do you do in that context you come to work every day? What is your role?
02:45So my role is very simple, but also very complex and it's ensure that there is not a day without space data
02:51So the United States Space Force last year
02:53We published our first data AI strategic action plan for FY 24 and outlined specific actions and deliverables that we were going to do
03:00in partnership with industry
03:02To deliver on our mission for your awareness if you have not seen that plan and we're getting ready to release our FY 25 plan
03:09We have four key line of efforts and we have a very fun acronym that is easy to remember in that acronym is Mars
03:15M-a-r-s
03:18Absolutely, the first line of effort is how do we mature mature our
03:22Enterprise data AI governance. You guys are all data AI professionals. You understand the importance of governance
03:27The second one is a how do we advance a data-driven and AI enabled culture when appropriate?
03:33Understanding the importance of being a data-driven and all of the decisions that we make and then leveraging AI when appropriate
03:40The third one is the R. How do we reoptimize our data analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities to be able to deliver on our mission?
03:49And again, make sure you guys continue to have access to capabilities and our last one
03:53Which I think is the most important is how do we strengthen our partnerships with the most data and AI capable?
03:59Organizations to deliver on our mission and many of those organizations are sitting here
04:03And I'm so excited to be able to talk and engage with each of you during the conference. So
04:08Arvin I part of when I read about max, are you ground truth in real time? Of course, you've got the automated, you know
04:14Map making what's your moat? What do you do? That's really tell us a bit more about what differentiates you in space, which is
04:21Of course a vast frontier. I'll stop with all of these different analogies. Go ahead
04:26Yeah, what differentiates max are is that we've invested in infrastructure end-to-end
04:31to deliver intelligence by looking at the earth from space to our mission critical partners like the US government and its allies with
04:40Reliability resiliency and the ability to survive
04:43events both natural disasters as well as
04:47human main events with with the level of reliability that ensures that the information they are getting is accurate and
04:55So we are gonna get two questions from the audience
04:58I want to just do a bit of a lightning round on overhyped under appreciated
05:03You can say Elon Musk in both categories if you prefer that, but let me go with you first Chandra
05:08What would you put as?
05:10overhyped
05:11Overhead we are at an AI conference. I would say what is overhyped is that artificial intelligence is this little solution?
05:18I'm sorry to all things. I think we need to kind of change the conversation to ask ourself
05:22What is the problem to be solved start with the problem work backwards?
05:25And if artificial intelligence happens to be the capability and the solution then let's do that
05:29If not, let's have real conversations about each other about alternate pathways and solutions. Okay, how about yourself for the overhyped?
05:37And I do think talking about the role of AI of course in this environment is something. We're very curious about
05:44absolutely
05:45Space, you know, you've all heard space is hard
05:48Unfortunately, it's also while being hard
05:51It's also a playground for the computer scientist and for this for just any scientist in all of us
05:57What's not to love about it, right? You have this autonomous robot that's flying around taking pictures
06:02You have every opportunity to do cool things with those pictures and use AI
06:07what has
06:08Been overhyped is how?
06:10Is the perception that it's easy to make money in space. It's easy to turn it into a profitable business
06:15At the same time the
06:18ability for space to transform your world is also underappreciated if you ever looked at a moving map either in your car or
06:26Or any other handle held device chances are it came from an image
06:31That max are to or one of its partners, so it's hard to make money, but there's opportunities to make money
06:36So that's that's a good message to have
06:38So I we have mic runners if you have a question, please raise your hand
06:42I do want to ask I'd be remiss not to ask about let's say Elon Musk Jeff Bezos
06:48Maybe not proactively with the incoming administration, but retroactively. What impact do you think that?
06:55He's had in this plague. I'm gonna go to you first Arvin
07:00The impact has been very positive to the industry and and the reason I say that is
07:05That a decade ago space was not accessible
07:09Today we can think about starting a business that gives us access to space on a predictable well-defined schedule
07:17You can get on a launch calendar at a cost. That's a fraction of what it was a decade ago
07:23and so it's created this ecosystem where
07:26Space is democratized for
07:29For the right players who know how to turn it into a profitable business so that ability didn't exist
07:34Anything you'd want to add I think that's a good point
07:37Anything you'd want to add I would just say for the United States Space Force
07:40We're gonna partner with the most innovative companies that can deliver the capabilities. We need regardless of who they are
07:46Okay, good answer. I think the good answer practically any questions that anybody wants to ask
07:51I have so many questions, but just raise your hand. We have microphones. There's no one back there. No
07:57Okay, that's good because I have lots of questions and my next one is basically I love the idea of
08:03In any conference like this, there's the blue sky element
08:07So the next say 12 to 24 months what tell us a little bit about what's around the corner?
08:13Of course, we're talking in the context of AI but technology writ large. What can we look forward to?
08:19Can you give us a preview Chandra? Yes, I would say from the United States Space Force earlier this year
08:23We did publish our commercial space strategy if you have not seen it, please go take a look at it
08:28But it really gets to what the Space Force wants to partner with industry and academia about to get off their specific problems
08:35One of the things I would say kind of a moonshot thing
08:39But I do see coming online is our ability to leverage more commercial satellite imagery
08:44That is going to be huge. It has the ability to truly change how we operate
08:49And how we make decisions so I imagine a world where a guardian or airmen
08:55Can have a specific question about something that is taking place on the ground and being able to log into
09:01It was a portal and ask that question be able to get the energy back to enable them to make a real-time decision-making
09:07I also see that time shortening down. So some of these capabilities it takes it takes weeks
09:12Sometimes we've gotten things down hours
09:15But I see us getting down to minutes and seconds very soon
09:18And again, we have the brightest minds in the world sitting in this room right now
09:22And I would love to talk to you and your organizations about how you can help us get out of that
09:26How about yourself give us some of the sense of what's exciting to you in the next year or two?
09:30Yeah, this is a AI conference. So it would be remiss if I didn't use the word AI at least once
09:35the
09:37But we're at Maxar. We're excited about the potential for AI
09:42To change how decisions are made from looking at space
09:47What we found in in the last five years or so
09:50we've been in the business for a while is that more images are discarded because they were manually looked at by humans and
09:57filtered for information and
09:59And our partners were missing critical information
10:03we see the advances in the ability to apply concepts like object detection and automated correlations between events as
10:11Making that much more actionable in real-time for for our customers as we talk about the evolution here from
10:18You know generative AI toward a gentic AI some people called identic AI as well
10:23How does that impact the the thinking mean when we have agents in space again?
10:28I think about some of the things that may keep me up at night
10:31How does that work? Is it is it a fair to talk about it in that context?
10:36So I'll say that we leverage artificial intelligence and a variety of space capabilities
10:41but I will say that when it comes to high stake things and
10:45Missions we will continue to leverage a human in the loop
10:47I do think there are a lot of opportunities in the United States Space Force to leverage
10:52Agents to be able to help with business operation processes. One thing I think about in particular is travel traveling
10:58We do a lot of traveling
10:59It would be great to be able to leverage
11:01Artificial intelligence to go out and book flights and understand because many times in the in the Department of Defense we have to move very
11:07Quickly, it's not uncommon to have 72 hours notice to be able to go somewhere. So, how do we leverage?
11:13Artificial intelligence capabilities to help us more on the administrative business side of the house versus mission
11:18and I think for the people down here on earth are then I'd love to get your thoughts as to what are some of the
11:26Advances that have real-world
11:28Applications, you know for some of the folks in the audience some of the businesses because I think we talk about obviously
11:34Satellites have a huge impact but anything else that you think up there is going to transform how we do business down here. Absolutely
11:42we have some exciting new advances in how
11:46Imagery from space is enabling rescue missions in enabling
11:51The navigation of drones in at low level flying
11:56Conditions and in conditions where you can't send an aircraft you can't send humans
12:01In areas where you have either denied services or the inability to actually physically send someone
12:08We have the ability to map that in near real time. And so this
12:12Has had impact in hurricanes and floods in situations that you would think that
12:19That you can just send an aircraft, but if you have an active storm, it's it's extremely challenging so Shandra
12:26I know we just have a few minutes left, but I'd be you know, you're the Department of Defense obviously
12:32With regard to cyber security and nation-state actors you get a front-row seat
12:37And I know of course there's only so much you can say
12:39But you give me some sense of the landscape that what's happening right now that you is on your radar
12:46You'd put on ours with regard to what's happening with some of the other
12:50Nation-state actors. Hey, we all get it. Cyber security is important
12:54We all so understand that any adversary is going to try to exploit
12:59Various capabilities through cyber security means so we're trying to we're pivoting our mindset. How do you?
13:05Secure by design
13:06how do you make sure you're baking cyber security in from the
13:09Beginning and not at the end of the process and we're under we're having a lot of conversations with various
13:14Organizations about how to do that. We also have our
13:18Cybersecurity officer at the Department of the Air Force level that can deep dive deeper into what that looks like for the department
13:26So that's okay. So no no specifics. That's that's fair. That's fair enough
13:30Well, let's let's go to the part where we just sort of give some of the takeaways for the audience, you know, obviously
13:37We can't cover the entire landscape right now
13:40but from where you sit give us some thoughts as to what we should be thinking about with regard to
13:46Space Force what you're doing and what you're seeing. Oh
13:50So I would say
13:53Space domain awareness is very important
13:56So when it comes to artificial intelligence integration in space our top priority is leveraging artificial intelligence for space domain awareness
14:03You cannot protect what you cannot see space is huge
14:07You do a quick Google search it will tell you that space is around ninety three billion light-years large
14:12That is equivalent to eight octillion football fields and I say this because I know eight
14:17Octillion yes, I say this because I know Colin is getting ready to come on
14:20But that's eight with twenty seven zeros, which is great if you're an investor, right?
14:24But when you think about people having to maintain awareness of what activities are taking place on those fields at all times
14:32Making sure that our adversaries are not doing anything that they should not be doing
14:36Making sure that we continue to maintain the GPS cap capabilities satellite communication Wi-Fi. You name it. That's pretty important
14:43Yeah, fair enough Arvin
14:45so space has been a niche industry and I think we're at an exciting moment where
14:51There's a convergence of both AI robotics and automation that's bringing it to light. So it's a fertile ground
14:58I think where I see the industry going is that we need to partner better with both the venture community as well as innovators
15:06Because there's not only a lot to be done here, but it is fertile ground for
15:10both
15:12commercial
15:13Exploration as well as growth
15:16And so that's the part that I'm most optimistic about and would like to leave the audience with that
15:21Technology is learned by doing right?
15:23We have to create a space for people to experiment and make sure people understand and empower our people that it is okay to fail
15:29Right, that's the only way to get better is learning by doing well
15:33And you know somebody who's a sci-fi fan, I'd be remiss not to at least ask you whether it's going to Mars
15:40Extraterrestrial life, you know, I think we have to okay
15:43I mean, do you do you believe that there's extraterrestrial life and you think that's something we should be looking at?
15:47Let's just just get it out. There's sort of a
15:50Pallet cleanser before we move to our next one
15:53And you have 30 seconds or less to give us your summation
15:57We're extraterrestrials for someone else out there. So I'll just leave it. All right fair enough
16:02I'm gonna end with with the Space Force Chandra. What do you think? Hey what I'm gonna say?
16:07I'm not gonna answer that but there is a
16:09There is a organization in the DOD that handles those particular questions and that mission area
16:15But what I will say is that I know that there is a TV series a funny TV series about the United States Space Force
16:22But what I want to leave you guys all with here today is the mission of the United States Space Force is real
16:28every day thousands of guardians men and women in uniform are
16:32Working around the clock to ensure that you and your families and your organizations and your businesses
16:37Continue to have access to space data and I am so proud that we have the ability to serve you excellent
16:43And I will point out that Andrew Nuska looks like he should be on the set of Men in Black today
16:47So that helps you please join me in thanking our terrific guests. Thank you