TL;DR: Owen West (who served on Clearview AI's advisory board from August 2021 until at least June 2024) has been appointed director of the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit. DIU sits on roughly $2 billion earmarked for scaling commercial technology into military use. Clearview AI, which has scraped over 60 billion facial images from the internet, is actively courting Pentagon contracts. West is now the person who decides what gets funded. Connect the dots.
The Appointment
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in January 2026 that Owen West would take over as permanent director of the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon's bridge to Silicon Valley and the commercial tech sector.[1]
West isn't a random pick. He previously served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict from 2017 to 2019 under Jim Mattis. He ran DoD activities tied to the Trump administration's DOGE initiative. Most recently, he led the secretary's drone dominance program.[2]
But here's the part that should make you uncomfortable: from August 2021 until at least June 2024, Owen West sat on Clearview AI's advisory board.[3]
The Clearview Connection
On August 18, 2021, Clearview AI announced its advisory board. West joined alongside Raymond Kelly (former NYPD Commissioner), Richard A. Clarke (former counterterrorism advisor), and several others.[3]
Archived versions of Clearview AI's website confirm West remained on that board until at least June 2024, according to Responsible Statecraft.[4]
At the time of the board's formation, Clearview had roughly 3 billion facial images scraped from the internet. Today that number has ballooned to over 60 billion, vacuumed from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and every other corner of the web.[5]
During West's tenure on the board, Clearview was:
- Banned from selling to most private-sector companies after an ACLU lawsuit settlement in 2022
- Fined by regulators in the UK, France, Italy, Australia, and Greece for privacy violations
- Providing free facial recognition to Ukraine's military, which ran over 350,000 searches in 20 months[6]
West apparently saw none of this as disqualifying.
Follow the Money: $2 Billion and Counting
DIU isn't a think tank. It's the Pentagon's procurement pipeline for commercial technology, headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices across the country.
The numbers tell the story:
- FY2024: Congress appropriated $946 million for DIU, $842 million above what the Pentagon even asked for[7]
- FY2025: The Pentagon requested just $110 million. Congress pushed it to approximately $900 million[7]
- FY2026: The reconciliation law allocated $2 billion specifically for DIU to scale commercial technology into military applications[8]
Owen West now controls this money. His job is to decide which commercial technologies get fast-tracked into military use. And he spent three years advising a facial recognition company that is actively seeking Pentagon contracts.
Clearview Is Already Knocking on the Pentagon's Door
This isn't hypothetical. Clearview AI's current CEO, Hal Lambert (a prominent Trump fundraiser), has publicly stated the company is pursuing government contracts.
"We're talking to the [Pentagon], we're talking to Homeland Security...There are a number of different agencies we're in active dialogue with," Lambert told reporters.[4] Those talks are producing results: CBP signed a contract in February 2026 for 15 Clearview AI licenses at its National Targeting Center.
Clearview has spent years trying to rehabilitate its image. The Ukraine war was a key part of that strategy. The company offered free access to Ukraine's military in March 2022, right after the Russian invasion. Over 1,500 officials across 18 Ukrainian government agencies used it. They identified over 230,000 Russian soldiers and officials.[6]
"The volume is insane," Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That told TIME. "Using facial recognition in war zones is something that's going to save lives."[6]
The strategy is textbook: give the product away in a crisis, point to the results, then sell it for billions when the contracts come around. And now the person reviewing those contracts used to advise the company.
60 Billion Faces and Growing
Clearview AI has built the largest known facial recognition database on earth. Some numbers to sit with:
60+ Billion Images
Scraped from the public internet without consent. Your photos, your family's photos, your kids' school event pictures. All indexed and searchable.
2 Billion VKontakte Images
Clearview pulled 2 billion images from Russia's largest social network alone. Useful for identifying Russian soldiers, and setting a precedent for scanning any population.
Banned From Private Sector
The 2022 ACLU settlement barred Clearview from selling to most private companies in the US. Government agencies? Still fair game.
Fined Globally
The UK, France, Italy, Australia, and Greece have all fined or sanctioned Clearview for illegal data collection. The company has largely ignored these rulings.
The Conflict of Interest Nobody's Talking About
Federal ethics rules are supposed to prevent exactly this scenario. Former corporate advisors taking government roles that directly oversee their former employers or clients.
But those rules have gaps. Advisory board members aren't always classified the same as employees or lobbyists. And in the current political environment, conflict-of-interest concerns tend to be waved away as bureaucratic friction slowing down national security.
West wrote in 2022 that combining "crowdsourced photographs with facial recognition is a modern tactic too powerful to be ignored", proposing a "Wall of Shame" to publicize the identities of Putin's network.[4]
He's not just a passive associate. He's a facial recognition evangelist who now runs the Pentagon unit tasked with bringing commercial surveillance technology to the military.
The Bigger Picture
This appointment fits a pattern. The Pentagon's innovation ecosystem was restructured in January 2026 under Hegseth's direction, consolidating fragmented tech offices into a unified pipeline designed to move faster.[2]
The explicit goal: get commercial technology into military hands with less bureaucracy. That means fewer reviews, faster approvals, and less time for anyone to ask uncomfortable questions about where these tools came from or how they were built.
DIU was already the Pentagon's preferred channel for bringing in Silicon Valley startups. Under West, with $2 billion in fresh funding and a mandate to "accelerate like hell" (Hegseth's words), the path from scrappy surveillance startup to Pentagon contractor just got a lot shorter.[9]
What You Can Do
Contact Your Representatives
Demand congressional oversight of West's appointment and any Clearview AI contracts with DIU. The Senate Armed Services Committee has jurisdiction.
Support Watchdog Organizations
The ACLU, EFF, and Responsible Statecraft are tracking this story. Their FOIA requests and legal challenges are the only things creating accountability.
Limit Your Facial Data
Make social media profiles private. Untag photos. Use tools like Fawkes to add invisible perturbations to photos before uploading. Clearview can't scrape what it can't access.
Follow the Contracts
Check USAspending.gov and FPDS.gov for new DIU contracts. When Clearview gets its Pentagon deal (and the signs suggest it will), the public record should show it.
The Bottom Line
A company that built a 60-billion-face surveillance database by scraping the internet without consent. Banned from private-sector sales. Fined by countries around the world. Actively seeking Pentagon contracts.
And the person who just took control of $2 billion in Pentagon innovation funding? He used to advise that company.
There's a word for this arrangement. It's not "innovation."
References
- Defense Innovation Unit: DIU Announces New Director, Designation as DoW Field Activity (January 2026)
- DefenseScoop: 'Accelerate like hell': Hegseth moves to reshape DOD's AI and tech hubs (January 13, 2026)
- Business Wire: Clearview AI Announces Formation of Advisory Board (August 18, 2021)
- Responsible Statecraft: Controversial AI facial recognition biz gets a Pentagon champion (January 22, 2026)
- Wikipedia: Clearview AI
- TIME: Ukraine's 'Secret Weapon' Against Russia Is Clearview AI (2023)
- DefenseScoop: House appropriators propose more than $1.3B for DIU (June 4, 2024)
- Janes: Pentagon Budget 2026: Reconciliation law adds USD15 billion (2026)
- DefenseScoop: Hegseth reorganizes DOD's AI and tech hubs (January 2026)