Purpose-Built: The Story Behind DEFCON AI

This origin story was first published on March 17, 2023.

“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. ” – General Dwight D. Einsenhower

Today, the United States is a dominant world superpower backed by a fearsome military at the forefront of technological innovation. Indeed, few nations, if any, can match America’s tactical, logistical, and technical skills on or off the battlefield. But contemporary threats – from natural to man-made – pose challenges that, if not immediately addressed, could disrupt our Nation’s military and commercial operations. Events of the last few years like weather, war, and COVID-19 have exposed the vulnerabilities of global supply chains – vulnerabilities that current and future near-peer competitors are certain to exploit as they seek to enhance their own defense strategies while challenging ours. From cyberattacks and attempts to steal American intellectual property to investments by adversaries in next-generation military technologies, we have seen in recent years increasingly brazen ways that adversaries are seeking to test and exceed the capabilities of our Nation’s military. It is against this backdrop of escalating threats, that Red Cell Partners launched DEFCON AI.

Co-founded by veteran US Department of Defense leaders in 2022, DEFCON AI leadership was asked by senior Air Mobility Command (AMC) Leaders to find solutions to train operational-level planners and create a decision-augmentation tool to respond to contested logistics challenges at the speed and scale needed in conflict situations with a near-peer adversary. To achieve this objective, DEFCON AI has assembled a cadre of software and data engineers who are developing cutting-edge technology solutions for the modern military mobility environment. At the heart of the company’s mission is its goal to provide insights to decision makers and commanders with best-of-breed technologies that combine a cutting-edge simulation fabric with world-class algorithms and eventually an intelligent agent capable of playing both blue and red. The purpose of the platform is to allow military personnel to test operational concepts and train under a myriad of real-world scenarios to predict and circumvent logistical complexities and ensure that resources can be moved without interruption.

Since DEFCON AI’s founding, the company has made great strides in meeting its initial ambitious goals. In June 2022, it was awarded a Department of the Air Force (DAF) Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract through AFWERX/Agility Prime to support the development of an operational-level logistics training software for AMC. Three months later, DEFCON AI was awarded a DAF Phase III SBIR contract, funded by AMC, to accelerate the transition of the prototype to production code for the training software. Just six months after closing the Phase II SBIR, the DEFCON AI team provided AMC with a prototype demo of the DEFCON Scenario Setter, Mission Engine, and Simulation Fabric™ environment, three months ahead of schedule. These milestones are just the beginning. DEFCON AI continues to push forward on modernizing analytics and AI capabilities within the DoD with an eye towards adapting these capabilities for the commercial sector.

DEFCON AI is a portfolio company of Red Cell Partners, an incubation firm that builds rapidly scalable, technology-led companies situated in the healthcare and national security sectors. The company pulls its name from the US military alert system called the Defense Readiness Condition, which indicates our military’s readiness to respond. DEFCON AI was co-founded by former Acting Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) within the DoD Yisroel Brumer, PhD; DEFCON AI CEO,; former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General (Ret.) Paul Selva, DEFCON AI’s Chief Strategy Officer and an Operating Partner at Red Cell; and Grant Verstandig, Red Cell Founder, CEO, and Executive Chairman of DEFCON AI.