Craig Martell, the Pentagon’s first-ever Chief Digital and AI Officer, to depart in April – DefenseScoop

Officials in the Pentagons Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office are preparing for their nascent hubs first permanent leader Craig Martell to depart from his post on April 15, DefenseScoop has learned.

The Defense Department made a lot of buzz around hiring Martell in early 2022, when he opted to resign from his role as head of machine learning for Silicon Valley rideshare company Lyft to take the helm as the CDAOs first chief.

According to several current and former DOD officials who spoke to DefenseScoop on the condition of anonymity, Martells planned exit from the CDAO is imminent and he and the rest of the leadership team are currently getting set for a period of transition.

A CDAO spokesperson later told DefenseScoop that Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Dr. Radha Plumb will serve as the offices new permanent chief.

Four predecessor organizations the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), Defense Digital Service (DDS), Office of the Chief Data Officer, and the Advana program were combined to form the CDAO, which was announced in late 2021 and reached full operating capability in 2022.

The office falls under the direct purview of Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who ultimately steered its launch to centralize oversight and expedite the adoption and implementation of the departments data and AI initiatives.

On the heels of a long and deliberate hiring process, Martell was tapped to lead the CDAO in April 2022.

Beyond his experience in executive roles at Lyft, Martell also previously held machine learning and AI positions at Dropbox and Linkedin and as a tenured computer science professor at the Naval Postgraduate School specializing in natural language processing.

Though his tenure leading the CDAO did not unfold without some controversy, Martell also helped the organization make significant progress in its earliest years including by attempting to deepen U.S. tech ties with international partners, develop the DODs latest AI and data adoption guidance, and produce the departments first minimum viable capability for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2).

On top of those and other pursuits, Martell also spent a lot of time working to establish an overarching model to broadly guide the offices approach to AI priorities and operations moving forward, which he coined as the CDAOs hierarchy of needs.

In order to deliver analytical and AI capabilities, we really have to get our data right. So, the major wins that we have delivered to the Department of Defense involve thinking about data as a product in a database. And I think its important not to automatically jump to the top of the hierarchy to see value. If we only deliver AI, then what well be delivering is a stovepipe solution. Seriously if we only deliver AI and the data is not ready, and the talent isnt ready yet, and the governance isnt ready and the staffing isnt ready then what does that mean? We will continue to deliver stovepipe solutions, Martell told DefenseScoop during a media roundtable in February.

In a statement provided to DefenseScoop Thursday morning, Martell said: The Deputy Secretary of Defense, Dr. Kathleen Hicks, brought me on board two years ago to stand up the CDAO. We agreed early on that to stand up meant developing a strategy for the organization and the DoD as a whole, developing the right roadmaps to deliver on that strategy,andcreating the right organizational structure to support those roadmaps.With the release of the Departments Data, Analytics, and AI Strategy in November 2023, the roadmap work that each of the CDAO Directorates have done, and the organizational changes we have put in place over the last few years,thesewere achieved. We brought together four distinct organizations into one, and we accomplished so much in such a short time. Im incredibly proud of the team that made this happen.

Plumb has been right alongside me for the past year at many key senior leader meetings and working groups, and she will seamlessly step into the role, Martell added.

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Craig Martell, the Pentagon's first-ever Chief Digital and AI Officer, to depart in April - DefenseScoop