As vice president of AI-first transformation, Plumb will spearhead IBM’s Next-Generation Transformation Strategy and work across the company’s core business lines to foster adoption of AI, automation and hybrid cloud computing throughout the global organization and with its clients and partners.

Plumb started in the role July 14.

A key part of her job, Plumb told DefenseScoop, will be serving as IBM’s “Client Zero,” meaning she will internally operationalize AI technologies and concepts to test them before deploying to clients.

“The approach is really taking AI solutions and embedding them in the company’s own processes and then using that to prove out how AI solves problems, drives agility, creates efficiencies, which IBM then can use to help demonstrate that value for its customers, right? So, this is an internal transformation role, but with an eye towards building out concrete examples of execution for external consumption,” Plumb told DefenseScoop.

That’s not so dissimilar from her role leading the CDAO, which serves as a central hub for accelerating and spreading the adoption of AI, data and analytics capabilities across the U.S. military. She likened it to the work of CDAO’s Rapid Capabilities Cell, which has been responsible for ushering in major contracts with frontier AI models.

Likewise, IBM is very focused on “scaled adoption at the enterprise level,” Plumb said.

“So how can you get AI tools into the hands of your workforce, and do it in a way that, rather than AI as a substitute for all the humans, you team AI with the humans to drive efficiency and productivity?” she said.

Plumb explained: “IBM’s big bet is … how can we do this as an enterprise transformation and really kind of drive the AI transformation vision in concrete ways through businesses.”

In particular, she sees an opportunity for IBM in working with her former employer, the Pentagon, and the federal government at large on the business side with applications, for example, managing supply chains, logistics, contracting and more.

“That’s where I think there’s a lot of potential for rapid movement of things we find that work in IBM and applications to the federal sector,” Plumb said.

Since Plumb’s departure from the CDAO in January, the office was led by Margie Palmieri, the deputy CDAO, until DOD leadership named Douglas Matty as the new leader in April. Matty previously founded the Army AI Integration Center under Army Futures Command, which he led between 2020 and 2022. Last week, DefenseScoop reported that Palmieri, one of the CDAO’s longest-tenured leaders, is the latest to depart the organization amid a raft of others who’ve left.

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Anthropic, Google and xAI will join OpenAI on the CDAO’s nascent effort to partner with industry on pioneering artificial intelligence projects focused on national security applications. Under the individual contracts — each worth up to $200 million — the Pentagon will have access to some of the most advanced AI capabilities developed by the four companies, including large language models, agentic AI workflows, cloud-based infrastructure and more.

“The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” Chief Digital and AI Officer Doug Matty said in a statement. “Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our Joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems.”

OpenAI received the first contract for the effort June 17 and will create prototypes of agentic workflows for national security missions. According to CDAO, work with all four vendors will expand the Pentagon’s experience with emerging AI capabilities, as well as give the companies better insights into how their technology can benefit the department.

The contract with CDAO is also another win for xAI, which is owned by Musk — who previously led the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts but recently had a falling out with President Donald Trump over legislation and other issues — and develops the generative AI tool called Grok. The company announced Monday that it was launching a new suite of AI tools for U.S. government users known as “Grok for Government.” The platform is now available to purchase by federal agencies through the General Services Administration, according to a post on X, which Musk also owns.

In a blog post published Monday, Jim Kelly, Google Public Sector’s vice president of federal sales, noted that the company will provide the Pentagon its Cloud Tensor Processing Units for training AI models, AI-powered agents via Google’s Agentspace, and access to the company’s infrastructure based in the contiguous United States.

“These advanced AI solutions will enable the DoD to effectively address defense challenges and scale the adoption of agentic AI across enterprise systems to drive innovation and efficiency with agile, proven technology,” Kelly wrote.

The announcement is the latest step the Defense Department has taken in recent months to accelerate adoption of AI-enabled capabilities developed by commercial companies — many of which have recently announced new business ventures focused on national security.

In June, Anthropic introduced a custom set of its Claude Gov AI models that are tailored specifically to defense use cases, ranging from operational planning to intelligence analysis. The same month, OpenAI launched a new initiative called “OpenAI for Government” that expands on its current partnerships with the Defense Department and other U.S. government agencies — including custom AI models for national security.

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As CDAO’s director of DDS, Hay takes over the portfolio — a product of the CDAO absorbing the Pentagon’s Defense Digital Service organization in 2022 — from Jinyoung Englund, who had been acting in the role since this January, when former director Katie Savage left to be the secretary of information technology for Maryland.

DDS sits under CDAO’s Directorate for Digital Service.

Hay has served in a number of roles across the Defense Department since 2002, when she worked as a senior intelligence analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency. She went on to also serve in roles as a senior adviser to the deputy secretary of defense, deputy director for intel and security programs in the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and director of defense policy and strategy for the National Security Council. Prior to rejoining DOD this year, she held senior leadership roles at DataRobot in the private sector.

Englund will stay with CDAO but move from her previous official role as chief of staff for the Directorate for Digital Service to be chief strategy officer for the greater organization’s Algorithmic Warfare Directorate.

Englund penned a blog post published Monday announcing the new director and recapping CDAO’s major takeaways from attending DEF CON in Las Vegas last week.

“Jennifer Hay will be taking the helm as the fifth Director of the Defense Digital Service (DDS) in the Directorate for Digital Services (CDAO-DS),” Englund wrote. “She brings to DDS nearly 20 years of experience in the Department, including being on the ground floor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense when DDS was founded. I am confident her recent experience in the private sector ensures DDS will continue to lead with industry best practices while her experience in navigating the Department will ensure we impart lasting institutional change.”

As for Englund’s new role, she wrote that she will “work with CDAO directorates, DoD at large, and the industry to develop and align a strategy for the successful implementation of CDAO’s data, analytics, and AI platform components to deliver quality data and responsible and secure AI capabilities for the warfighter.”

Editor’s Note, Aug. 16, 2023: This story has been updated to reflect that CDAO is still recruiting for a deputy chief digital and AI officer to oversee the organization’s Directorate for Digital Service.

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The Pentagon’s new Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) has met weekly with service counterparts, like the Department of the Air Force’s Chief Data and AI Office, since its formation, according to Brig. Gen. John Olson, the chief of AI and data for the Air Force.

“We’ve been having weekly meetings for quite a period with the folks leading and standing up the CDAO office at [the DOD],” Olson said during a conference co-hosted by AFCEA and George Mason University on Wednesday. “And we’ve been doing so in a joint environment … Our brothers and sisters in the Department of the Navy, with both the Navy and Marine Corps, as well as Army — we’ve all been having these weekly CDO small group meetings and CDAO planning activities. So there’s a lot of cross flow.”

The Pentagon’s CDAO reached full operational capability last week and, with it, announced a slew of new leaders for different sections of the office. And this week, the new office hosted a public symposium, during which it revealed much more about the organization, mission and challenges associated with launching.

At the symposium Wednesday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said she wants to see meaningful progress with the CDAO’s key initiatives such as Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) within the next year.

“What I will say is that we have to be able to deliver. We have to advance and advance quickly on the challenge set that the warfighter faces,” she said. “The CDAO has to be seen a year in as delivering on that and that it is the go-to place for talent and technical expertise to get after that problem” of JADC2 and scaling artificial intelligence across the department.

But one question that hadn’t been largely addressed is how the Pentagon’s CDAO will interface with similar components at the military service level.

Olson said for the Air Force, his office “implements and amplifies the national and Department of Defense direction that comes down from the White House and the laws driven by Congress and Title 44.”

Olson didn’t go into great detail about what specifically the services have been working on together regarding AI coordination and projects, but he did offer that the Air Force and Navy, in particular, have made strong progress together to support the department’s JADC2, data-driven, connected warfare concept — developing synergy between each of their contributions: the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) and the Navy’s Project Overmatch.

“I would say the synergy of the … Department of Navy and Department of the Air Force has never been better and it’s growing,” Olson said.

He also revealed that some major acquisition awards will be coming soon for ABMS.

Similarly, Olson pointed to the importance of bringing international allies into the mix on JADC2. Already the Air Force has worked with international exchange officers for the development of ABMS, he said, and it’s looking to increase partnerships with the U.K., Australia and Canada.

“I will be only satiated and happy when we have a truly interconnected and dynamic and synergistic ecosystem that includes all of our international partners and allies,” Olson said.

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The CDAO — a product of a major bureaucrat shakeup at the Pentagon that included the merger of several agencies — is tasked with scaling digital and Al-enabled capabilities across the massive Department of Defense enterprise. On June 1 the office announced that it had achieved full operating capability (FOC) as well as the appointment of nearly a dozen officials to fill out its leadership ranks.

“I do think it’s really important to empower the team there to first of all take a little time, as they’ve put themselves together in FOC to think through that problem set themselves and put some measures out that we can talk about. So I’m not going to get in front of that process,” Hicks said Wednesday at the DOD’s annual Digital and AI Symposium.

“What I will say is that we have to be able to deliver. We have to advance and advance quickly on the challenge set that the warfighter faces,” she continued. “The CDAO has to be seen a year in as delivering on that and that it is the go-to place for talent and technical expertise to get after that problem” of Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and scaling artificial intelligence across the department, she added.

JADC2 is the Pentagon’s vision for better connecting the U.S. military’s sensors and shooters, and creating faster and more unified networks through the application of AI and other digital tools.

“What we want to be able to do is make sure we are leveraging the state of the art in order to increase accuracy, increase speed of decision-making, increase the quality of our ability to deliver effects,” Hicks explained.  “We need to be able to access the data that’s out there.”

The Pentagon also wants to leverage artificial intelligence and big data analytics for back office and “board room” functions — not just on battlefields, she noted. That includes applying the technology to logistics, sustainment and inventory management issues, among others.

The DOD is currently “under-gunned” when it comes to analytic capabilities, Hicks said.

To address these challenges, the Department of Defense needs the help of world-class AI talent. And talent management will be one of the challenges that CDAO must tackle.

The Pentagon wants to leverage such expertise in industry and academia.

However, “we do need, you know, folks inside the system able to help us conceptualize and build out the kind of … AI enterprise that we need,” Hicks said. “I’m very hopeful that CDAO will be right up there with ideas of how we get better at both recruiting talent, but up-skilling and re-skilling and then retaining some of that talent.”

Digital experts need to be able to rotate in and out of government, she suggested.

“Some talent we need to be really comfortable with it flowing in and out [of the department]. I think that model is completely appropriate,” she said. “We’re not comfortable with that typically. So we need to get more comfortable with it.”

The CDAO is also tasked with helping the Pentagon develop “responsible AI” systems that are effective on the battlefield but are also constrained by the ethical principles that the DOD applies to the technology. The Pentagon is currently rewriting its AI policy and rethinking its guidelines for autonomous weapon systems.

“We have been a leader in responsible AI, we have set this pace for allies and partners, and certainly for adversaries who have nothing like it. And I think we can be very effective in warfare, we can create an effective deterrent and [still] stick by our norms … That’s really important to me that we advance that through CDAO,” Hicks said.

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This news comes nearly six months after the Department of Defense launched a major organizational restructure to place a number of technology-driving components under this newly established office, with the ultimate aim to better scale digital and Al-enabled capabilities across its massive enterprise.

“Following a multi-step process from [initial operating capability] to FOC the CDAO has fully merged and integrated the former component organizations of Advana, Chief Data Officer, Defense Digital Service, and Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Legacy component names will no longer be recognized or used unless attributed to a product or capability specific to the department,” according to a statement from CDAO’s spokesperson.

New hires include: 

• Chief Digital and AI Officer – Craig Martell
• Deputy CDAO – Margaret Palmieri
• DCDAO for Acquisition – Sharothi Pikar
• DCDAO for Policy, Strategy and Governance – Clark Cully
• DCDAO for Enterprise Platforms and Business Optimization – Greg Little
• DCDAO for Algorithmic Warfare – Joe Larson
• DCDAO for Digital Services – Katie (Olson) Savage
• Chief Operating Officer – Dan Folliard
• Chief Technology Officer – Bill Streilein
• Chief of AI Assurance – Jane Pinelis

Diane Staheli was also recently tapped to lead the CDAO’s Responsible AI (RAI) Division.

Several of these officials have already made waves within DOD, including founder and former director of the Navy’s digital warfare office Margaret Palmieri, and Joe Larson, who previously served as deputy chief for the Pentagon’s Project Maven.

In these new roles at the CDAO, the officials will help steer the Pentagon’s strategy development and policy formulation for associated solutions; enable data access and AI adoption within appropriate institutional processes; establish a strong digital infrastructure and services to support military and department components’ AI- and digital-driven deployments, and more.

The CDAO is targeting October 1 for the full administrative alignment of personnel and resources, the spokesperson told FedScoop.

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Martell has also held machine learning and AI roles at Dropbox and Linkedin. His professional experience with the U.S. military is limited to his service as a tenured computer science professor at the Naval Postgraduate School specializing in natural language processing.

“Advances in AI and machine learning are critical to delivering the capabilities we need to address key challenges both today and into the future,” said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. “With Craig’s appointment, we hope to see the department increase the speed at which we develop and field advances in AI, data analytics, and machine-learning technology. He brings cutting-edge industry experience to apply to our unique mission set.” 

The Department of Defense announced the creation of the Chief Digital and AI Office last December to centralize oversight of data and AI initiatives under one official at the highest levels of the Pentagon. The CDAO reports directly to the deputy secretary of Defense.

The CDAO launched with initial operational capability Feb. 1 and plans to reach full operational capability by June.

The Pentagon office of the Chief Information Officer transferred the Joint AI Center to the CDAO’s leadership. The new office will also oversee the Pentagon’s Defense Digital Service and the chief data officer units.

Last month, the Department of Defense announced Margaret Palmieri as deputy chief digital and artificial intelligence officer. Palmieri was special assistant to the vice chief of naval operations and previously founded and directed the Navy Digital Warfare Office.

While the CDAO sits separately from the office of the CIO in the Pentagon’s reporting structure, the two offices will operate closely together to support the DOD’s core IT and digital mission sets.

CIO John Sherman has been serving as interim CDAO since February. He told FedScoop last month that the job of the incoming CDAO will be to “raise the waterline” for AI and digital development across the military services and commands. That will require “tapping into all of the department’s data and then leveraging that for really at-speed analytics to be able to give commanders, decision makers — all the way from Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin to a combatant commander to a leader in the field” — the capabilities needed to stay ahead of China, which is the Pentagon’s “pacing challenge,” Sherman said.

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The new chief digital and AI officer will oversee the DOD’s chief data officer, Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and Defense Digital Service and serve as an integrator for their efforts. Navy CDO Tom Sasala said that the new office will help the DOD push forward on data initiatives and be helpful to the work his team has been doing to bring data-based decision making to the Navy.

“I think that’s a really important component,” he said of the office during an webinar presented by C4ISRnet.

Sasala said he met Tuesday with DOD Chief Data Officer Dave Spirk and Jim Mitre, the official tasked with standing up the office, to offer specific recommendations on the new role.

The DOD has been shuffling its management of AI and emerging technology initiatives over the past few years. Most recently, the JAIC was moved to report directly to the deputy secretary of defense from the CIO’s office by the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. The CDAO role is being created to ensure AI and data initiatives receive more attention, given the vast portfolio of the department’s chief operating officer.

“The CDAO will serve as the Department’s senior official responsible for strengthening and integrating data, artificial intelligence, and digital solutions in the Department,” the memo creating the positions signed by the deputy secretary states.

The CDAO is expected to reach full operational capability by June 2022.

A DOD spokesperson said: “We are looking both internally and external to the Department and actively reviewing potential candidates to ensure we have the right person to drive the kind of progress we need.”

This story was updated to include comment from the Department of Defense.

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