Green Berets Lock In Clearview AI Through 2030: Sole Source

TL;DR: The Army’s 1st Special Forces Command just renewed its Clearview AI contract: five licenses, options through March 2030, sole source procurement. Translation: no bidding, no competition, just four more years of accessing a database built from your scraped photos. The justification memo says DOD “cannot” identify high-value targets without it. Meanwhile, European regulators have slapped Clearview with €100 million in fines. Clearview hasn’t paid any of them. Hasn’t deleted any European data either. The Army doesn’t seem to care.

The Renewal

Procurement records from the Mission and Installation Contracting Command at Fort Bragg show what looks routine but isn’t ^[1][2]:

Base period: March 20, 2026 – March 19, 2027
Options: Annual renewals through March 2030
Licenses: Five software seats
Previous contract: $75,000 in March 2025
Solicitation: W9124726QA005

The Army characterized this as a “follow-on” contract. That’s bureaucrat-speak for “we’re already dependent and we’re not stopping.”

Technical requirements haven’t changed: access to approximately 50 billion images, minimum 98% accuracy, SOC 2 Type II certification, TLS encryption, annual penetration testing ^[1].

Why “Sole Source” Matters

Federal contracts typically require competitive bidding. “Sole source” means the government decided only one company could do the job. The Army’s justification memo makes this claim ^[1]:

“Clearview AI is sole source facial recognition software... Without Clearview AI, the Department of Defense cannot rapidly analyze vast amounts of facial data.”

That’s a big “cannot.” Not “prefers.” Not “finds it more efficient.” Cannot.

The memo specifies that Clearview “parses social media photos and enables users to identify potential subjects and victims across diverse sources.” Without it, the Army says it’s harder to “identify high-value targets at the accuracy levels required by the 1st Special Forces Command” ^[1][2].

High-value targets. Identified using photos scraped without consent from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and everywhere else you’ve posted a picture.

€100 Million in Unpaid Fines

While the Army renews its contract, European regulators have been busy. Clearview AI has racked up approximately €100 million in GDPR fines across four countries ^[3][4][5]:

Netherlands (September 2024): €30.5 million. The Dutch DPA called Clearview’s database “illegal” and warned they might hold executives personally liable
France: €20 million
Italy: €20 million
Greece: €20 million
UK (May 2022): £7.5 million, upheld on appeal in October 2025

Total damage: roughly €100 million plus £7.5 million.

Amount Clearview has paid: zero ^[3].

European data Clearview has deleted as ordered: none that regulators can verify ^[3].

The Dutch DPA put it bluntly in September 2024: Clearview “ignores” EU regulators’ orders. The company operates from the US and apparently considers European privacy law someone else’s problem.

Australia Gave Up

Australia’s privacy commissioner found Clearview breached Australian privacy law and ordered the company to stop collecting images from Australian residents and delete existing data within 90 days ^[6].

No fine was imposed. The regulator effectively gave up on enforcement. Clearview continues operating.

This is the company the US Army just locked into a potential four-year contract.

A Growing Military Footprint

This renewal isn’t an isolated purchase. Clearview AI has been steadily building its defense portfolio ^[2][7][8]:

1st Special Forces Command: $75,000 (2025), now renewed through 2030
Army Criminal Investigations (502nd MP Battalion): $67,200 (2020–2023)
BAE Systems / Army Intelligence (INSCOM): $150,000 subcontract (December 2024)
US Special Operations Command (via NexTech): $46,500
ICE: $9.2 million (September 2025)
CBP: $225,000 for “tactical targeting” (February 2026)

And don’t forget: Owen West, who sat on Clearview AI’s advisory board from 2021 to at least 2024, now runs the Pentagon’s $2 billion Defense Innovation Unit ^[8]. The former Clearview advisor is now in charge of bringing commercial tech into military use.

50 Billion Faces, Zero Consent

For anyone unfamiliar: Clearview AI scraped the internet. Not legally licensed photos. Not photos people agreed to share for facial recognition. Just... scraped ^[2].

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Venmo, employment directories, dating apps, news sites, personal blogs. If a photo existed online with a face in it, Clearview grabbed it.

The company claims over 50 billion images. Some estimates put it at 60 billion now ^[1]. Upload a face, get matches, get links to everywhere that person appeared online.

Every major platform banned Clearview from scraping. Clearview kept going. They’ve been ordered to stop by regulators across the world. They ignore the orders.

This is the database Green Berets are using to “identify high-value targets.”

What Five Licenses Means

Five seats isn’t many. This suggests headquarters-level intelligence analysts running queries, not every operator in the field with a phone app ^[2].

But five analysts with access to 50 billion faces can run a lot of queries. The contract documents describe capabilities for:

Targeting: Identifying “high-value targets”
Network mapping: Connecting subjects to associates via photos
Intelligence preparation: Building operational environment pictures

That “network mapping” bit matters. Your photo on someone’s Instagram? You’re now potentially connected to them in a military intelligence database. Even if you had nothing to do with whatever they’re investigating.

The Legal Vacuum

There is no federal law restricting military use of commercial facial recognition built on scraped civilian data.

Congress introduced the ICE Out of Our Faces Act in February 2026 to ban ICE and CBP from using facial recognition. It won’t pass. And even if it did, it wouldn’t touch Army contracts.

European regulators can fine Clearview all day. The company doesn’t operate in Europe and doesn’t care. As long as US agencies keep writing checks, the business model works.

Your tax dollars, funding a facial recognition system illegal in most of the democratic world, used for military targeting, built on your photos scraped without consent.

What You Can Do

Almost nothing, practically speaking:

Opt out: Clearview has an opt-out form. Whether they actually honor it is anyone’s guess.
Scrub old photos: Won’t help for what’s already scraped, but limits future exposure.
Contact Congress: Representatives should know their constituents’ faces are in a military targeting database.

The uncomfortable truth: if you’ve ever posted a photo online, you’re probably in the database. And now that database is locked into a potential four-year military contract.