Lt. Gen. John N.T. “Jack” Shanahan served as the inaugural Director for the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center at the U.S. Department of Defense. Lt. Gen. Shanahan was responsible for accelerating the delivery of AI-enabled capabilities, scaling the department-wide impact of AI, and synchronizing AI activities to expand joint force advantages.
Lt. Gen. Shanahan received his commission in 1984 as a distinguished graduate of the ROTC program at the University of Michigan. He has served in a variety of flying, staff and command assignments, most recently as the Director for Defense Intelligence (Warfighter Support), Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, the Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia. He was also the Director of the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (Project Maven), where he established and led the department’s AI pathfinder fielding program charged with accelerating, augmenting, and automating intelligence collection and analysis.