Maxar Technologies

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

Fortune 500

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

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Maxar Technologies Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Maxar Technologies | Fortune

Maxar Technologies Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

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

Brainstorm AI 2024: A Galaxy Of Uses For AI In Space

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Chandra Donelson, Chief Data and AI Officer, United States Space Force, Arvind Srinivasan, Chief Technology Officer, Maxar Technologies, Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media and Fortune CEO Initiative, Fortune

Chandra Donelson, Chief Data and AI Officer, United States Space Force, Arvind Srinivasan, Chief Technology Officer, Maxar Technologies, Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune

Hello. Uh Good afternoon Earthlings. I thought we should say we're going to go where no algorithm has gone before. I have two incredibly cool speakers here. And I wanted to start actually, Sandra. I want to start with um what's top of mind for me? Which is what keeps you up at night being in space? Go Diane. That is a really good question. So, and I wanna pivot this over to the, the audience. OK. Are you guys, you guys wanna interact with me today? OK. That's what I'm talking about. How many of you guys use GPS systems and navigation to get to and from where you wanna go on a daily basis. I need some energy who make them jump up? And I say that yes, how many of you depend on weather data to be able to make your plans for the week? I'm not feeling scared yet. By the way, Sandra, how many of you want the Department of Defense to be able to monitor our adversaries activities on the ground to be able to protect and defend this nation and your own activities? Oh, I'm just kidding. Never mind. Absolutely. That is space force. Um And what keeps me up at night is knowing that our adversaries, they understand our reliance on space. They understand your reliance and your family's reliance on space based capabilities. And they are taking deliberate actions to develop capabilities to grade our advantage in space. So what keeps me up at night is knowing that I cannot in the United States Space Force. We cannot let you down because you depend on our capabilities each and every day. And now I'm betting that's not what keeps you up at night. Arvin, what keeps you up at night besides the rocks coming at our spacecraft at 27,000 miles an hour there and the solar storms, there's uh uh you also the immense capabilities that generative A I has. Uh, and the ability to create uh concepts from very little information that are believable and real. Uh, Max R is in the business of providing actionable intelligence by looking at the world from space. Uh the ability to, for adversaries to pollute that just a few pixels uh, keeps us up at night. How do we prevent these attacks from, um, from suddenly altering the information that you all live by and drive is, is critical to our information infrastructure from space? Yeah, exactly. So the security, well, I feel like before we get into some of the overhyped under appreciate, which is also interesting. I want to drill down a little bit on what your jobs are you mentioned a little bit. So Chandra, you're the chief data and A I officer. Very cool and Space Force is really only five years old at this point. So what, what do you do in that context come to work every day? What is your role? So my role is very simple um but also very complex and this to ensure that there is not a day without space data. So the United States Space Force last year, we published our first data A I strategic action plan for Fy 24. And it outlined specific actions and deliverables that we were gonna do in partnership with industry um to deliver on our mission um for your awareness if you have not seen that plan and we're getting ready to release our fy 25 plan. Um We have four key line of efforts and we have a very find acronym that it's easy to remember. That acronym is Mars Ma Rs Mars. Absolutely. The first line of effort is how do we mature, mature our um enterprise data A I governance. You guys are all data A I professionals, you understand the importance of governance. Uh The second one is a, how do we advance a data driven and A I enabled culture when appropriate, understanding the importance of being data driven and all of the decisions that we make and then leveraging A I when appropriate. Um The third one is, are, how do we re optimize our data analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities to be able to deliver on our mission. And again, make sure you guys continue to have access to capabilities. And our last one, which I think I think is the most important is how do we strengthen our partnership um with the most data and A I capable organizations to the on our mission. And many of those organizations are sitting here and I'm so excited to be able to talk and engage with each of you during the conference. So um Arvin, I part of when I read about uh max, are you ground proof in real time? Of course, you've got the automated, you know, map making. What's your moat, what do you do? That's really um tell us a bit more about what differentiates you in space, which is, of course, a vast frontier. I'll stop with all of these different analogies. Go ahead. Yeah. What differentiates Macar is that we've invested in infrastructure end to end uh to deliver intelligence by looking at the earth from space to our mission critical partners like the US government and its allies with reliability, resiliency and the ability to survive uh events, both natural disasters as well as uh human made events with uh with the level of reliability that ensures that the information they are getting is accurate and fine. Um So we are going to get to questions from the audience. I I want to just do a bit of a lightning round on overhyped, underappreciated. You can say Elon Musk in both categories if you prefer that. But let me go with you first, Chandra, what would you put as um overhyped over? We are at a A I conference. Um I would say what is over hyped? Is that artificial intelligence is the solution? I'm sorry to all things. I think we need to kind of change the conversation and ask ourselves what is the problem to be solved? Start with the problem, work backwards. And if artificial intelligence happens to be the capability solution and not do that, if not, let's have real conversations about each other about alternate pathways and a solution. OK. How about yourself? For the overhyped? And I do think talking about the role of A I, of course, in this environment is something we're very curious about. Absolutely. Um space, you know, you've all heard space is hard. Um Unfortunately, it's also uh while being hard, it's also a playground for the computer scientists and for the for just any scientist in all of us, what's not to love about it, right? You have this autonomous robot that's flying around taking pictures, you have every opportunity to do cool things with those pictures and use A I. Um what has uh been overhyped is how uh is the perception that it's easy to make money in space? It's easy to turn it into a profitable business. Uh At the same time, the ability for space to transform your world is also underappreciated. If you ever looked at a moving map, either in your car or uh or any other hand held device, chances are it came from an image that max or, or one of its partners? So it's hard to make money, but there's opportunities to make money. So that's, that's a good message to have. Um So I, we have Mike Runners. If you have a question, please raise your hand. Um I do want to ask, I'd be remiss not to ask about, let's say Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, maybe not proactively with the incoming administration, but retroactively, what impact do you think that um he's had in this play? I'm going to go to you first, Arvin. Um The impact has been very positive to the industry. Uh And, and the reason I say that is that a decade ago, space was not accessible today, we can think about starting a business that gives us access to space on a predictable well-defined schedule. You can get on a launch calendar at a cost, that's a fraction of what it was a decade ago. Um And so it's created this ecosystem where space is democratized for uh for the right players who know how to turn it into a profitable business. So that ability didn't exist anything you'd want to add. I would just say for the United States Space Force, we're going to partner with the most innovative companies that can deliver the capabilities we need regardless of who they are. Ok. Good answer. I think the good answer, any questions that anybody wants to ask, I have so many questions but um just raise your hand, we have micro is just the one back there. No. OK. That's good because I have lots of questions and my next one is basically, I love the idea of um in any conference like this, there's the blue sky element. So the next say 12 to 24 months, what tell us a little bit about what's around the corner. Of course, we're talking in the context of A I but technology writ large. What can we look forward to? Can you give us a preview, Chandra I would say from the United States Space Force. Earlier this year, we did publish our commercial space strategy. If you have not seen it, please go take a look at it. But it really gets to what the Space Force wants to partner with industry and academia about uh to get off their specific problems. Um One of the things I would say, kind of a Moonshot uh thing, but I, but I do see coming online is our ability to leverage more commercial satellite imagery. Um that is going to be huge, it has the ability to truly change how we operate um and how we make decisions. So I imagine a world where uh a guardian or airman um can have a specific question about something that is taking place on the ground and being able to log into if it's a portal and ask that question, be able to get the energy back to enable them to make a real time decision making. I also see that time shortening down. So some of these capabilities, it takes, it takes weeks, sometimes we've gotten things down uh hours, but I see us getting down to minutes and seconds uh very soon. And again, we have the brightest minds in the world sitting in this room right now. And I would love to talk to you and your organizations about how you can help us get after that. How about yourself? Give us some of the sense of what's exciting to you in the next year or two. Yeah, this is A A I conference. So it would be remiss if I didn't use the word A I at least once. Uh the uh but we're at Max, we're excited about the potential for A I uh to change how decisions are made from looking at space. Uh What we found in, in the last five years or so. We've been in the A I business for a while. Is that more images are discarded because they were manually looked at by humans and filtered for information and, and our partners were missing critical information. Uh We see the advances in the ability to apply concepts like object detection and automated correlations between events as making that much more actionable in real time for, for our customers. As we talk about the evolution here from um you know, generative A I toward agentic A I, some people call it identic A I as well. Um How does that impact the thinking? I mean, when we have agents in space again, I think about some of the things that may keep me up at night. Um How does that work? Is it, is it, is it fair to talk about it in that context? So I'll say that we leverage artificial intelligence and a variety of space capabilities, but I will say that when it comes to high stake things and, and missions, we will continue to leverage a human in the loop. Um I do think there are a lot of opportunities in the United States based for us to leverage um agents to be able to help with business operation processes. One thing I think about in particular is travel, traveling. We do a lot of traveling. It would be great to be able to leverage um artificial intelligence to go out and book flights and understand because many times in the in the Department of Defense, we have to move very quickly. It's not uncommon to have 72 hours notice to be able go somewhere. So how do we leverage uh artificial intelligence capabilities to help us more in the administrative business out of the house versus mission. And I think for the people down here on Earth Arvin, um I'd love to get your thoughts as to what are some of the advances that um have real world applications, you know, for some of the folks in the audience, some of the businesses because I think we talk about obviously satellites have a huge impact, but anything else that you think up there, it's going to transform how we do business down here? Absolutely. Uh We have some exciting new advances in how uh imagery from space uh is enabling rescue missions in enabling uh the navigation of drones in at low level uh flying uh conditions and in conditions where uh you can't send an aircraft, you can't send humans uh in areas where uh you have either denied services or the inability to actually physically send someone. Uh We have the ability to map that in near real time. Uh And so this uh has had impact in hurricanes and floods and situations that you would think that um that you can just send an aircraft. But if you have an active storm, it's uh it's extremely challenging. So, Chandra, I know we just have a few minutes left but I'd be, you know, you're the Department of Defense, obviously, um with regard to cybersecurity and nation state actors, you get a front row seat and I know of course, there's only so much you can say. But could you give me some sense of the landscape that what's happening right now that you is on your radar, you'd put on ours with regard to what's happening with some of the other nation state actors. Hey, we all get it. Cybersecurity is important. We all also understand that any adversary is going to try to exploit uh various capabilities through cyber security means. So we're trying to, we're pivoting our mindset. How do you uh secure by design? How do you make sure you're baking cyber security in from the beginning and not at the end of the process. And we're under, we're having a lot of conversations with various organizations about how to do that. We also have our uh cyber security officer at the Department of the Air Force Level um that can deep dive deeper into what that looks like uh for the department. So that's OK. So no, no specifics. That's, that's fair, that's fair enough. Um Well, let's let's go to the part where we just sort of give some of the takeaways for the audience, you know, obviously, um we can't cover the entire landscape right now, but from where you sit, give us some thoughts as to what we should be thinking about with regard to space force, what you're doing and what you're seeing. So I would say um space Domain awareness is very important. So when it comes to artificial intelligence integration in space, our top priority is leveraging artificial intelligence for Space Domain awareness you cannot protect what you cannot see. Space is huge. Um You do a quick Google search. It will tell you that space is around 93 billion light gear large. Um That is equivalent to eight octillion football fields. And I say this because I know eight all of hilly. Yes, I say this because I know Colin is getting ready to come on, but that's eight with 27 zeros, which is great if you're an investor, right? But when you think about uh people having to maintain awareness of what activities are taking place on those fields at all times, making sure that our adversaries are not doing anything that they should not be doing, making sure that we continue to maintain the GPS CAP capability, satellite communication Wi Fi, you name it. That's pretty important. Yeah, fair enough, Arvin. Uh So space has been a niche industry and uh I think we're at an exciting moment where uh there's a convergence of both A I robotics and automation that's bringing it to light. So it's a fertile ground. I think uh where I see the industry going is that we need to partner better with uh both the venture community as well as innovators uh because there's not only a lot to be done here, but it is fertile ground for uh both uh commercial uh exploration as well as growth. Um And so that's the part that I'm most optimistic about and would like to leave the audience with that technology is learned by doing right. We have to create a space for people to experiment and make sure people understand and empower our people that it is OK to fail. Right? That's the only way to get better is, is learning by doing well. And, and you know, somebody who's a sci fi fan, I'd be remiss not to at least ask you um whether it's going to mars extraterrestrial life, you know, I think we have to. Ok, I, do you, do you believe that there's extraterrestrial life? And do you think that's something we should be looking at? Let's just, just get it out there as sort of AAA palate cleanser before we move to our next one and you have 30 seconds or less to give us your summation. We are extraterrestrials for someone else out there, so I'll just leave it there. All right. Fair enough. I'm going to end with, with the Space Force, Chandra. What do you think? Hey, what I'm going to say, I'm not going to answer that, but there is a, there is a organization in the dod that handles those particular questions and um that mission area. But what I will say is that I know that there is a TV series, a funny TV series about the United States Space Force. But what I wanna leave you guys all with here today is the mission of the United States Space Force is real every day, thousands of guardians, men and women in uniform are working around the clock to ensure that you and your families and your organizations and your businesses continue to have access to space data and I am so proud um that we have the ability to serve you. Excellent. And I will point out that Andrew Nusa looks like he should be on the set of men in black today. So that helps too. Please join me in. Thanking our terrific guest. Thank you. Thank you Marvin.

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