Green Berets Are Using Clearview AI for Targeting

Army Special Forces locked in a 4-year facial recognition contract. The justification: DOD "cannot" do its job without scraped social media photos.

TL;DR: The US Army’s 1st Special Forces Command (the Green Berets) just renewed its Clearview AI contract for another year, with options extending through March 2030. The Army’s justification memo claims DOD “cannot rapidly analyze vast amounts of facial data” without access to Clearview’s 50+ billion scraped images. Five licenses. Fort Bragg headquarters. “Sole source.” No competition. This follows a $75,000 contract signed in 2025 and locks special operations into a facial recognition system built on photos scraped without consent from Facebook, Instagram, and every other corner of the internet.

The Contract

Procurement records show the Mission and Installation Contracting Command at Fort Bragg issued Solicitation W9124726QA005 in late February 2026. The terms [1][2]:

  • Base period: March 20, 2026 – March 19, 2027
  • Options: Annual renewals through March 2030 (potential 4-year commitment)
  • Licenses: Five software seats
  • User: 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne) at Fort Bragg
  • Previous contract: $75,000 awarded in March 2025

The contract documentation spells out the requirements: access to approximately 50 billion images, minimum 98% accuracy, SOC 2 Type II certification, TLS encryption, and annual penetration testing [1].

The Army executed this as a “brand name procurement,” meaning they specifically wanted Clearview AI and didn’t consider alternatives. The justification memo explains why.

The Army’s Justification

In procurement-speak, a “brand name” contract requires explaining why no other product will do. The Army’s memo makes a remarkable claim [1][2]:

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

Cannot. Not “would prefer not to.” Not “finds it difficult.” Cannot.

The memo describes the product as software that “parses social media photos and enables users to identify potential subjects and victims across diverse sources.” It “makes it more difficult to identify high-value targets at the accuracy levels required by the 1st Special Forces Command” without it [1].

Translation: Green Berets are using a database of scraped social media photos to identify targets for military operations.

What 50 Billion Images Looks Like

Clearview AI scraped the internet. Facebook. Instagram. LinkedIn. Twitter. Venmo. Public websites. Employment directories. Dating apps. Any photo ever posted publicly, and plenty that weren’t meant to be [3].

The company claims over 50 billion facial images in its database, though this number has grown from 3 billion in 2020 to 60 billion in some recent estimates. Upload a photo. Get matches. Get links to where that face appeared online. That’s the service [3].

Every major social media platform banned Clearview from scraping. The company kept going. They’ve been fined over €90 million by European regulators. They haven’t paid [4].

Now the Army is using that same database, built by scraping your photos without consent, for military targeting operations.

What Special Forces Does with Facial Recognition

The contract landed at 1st Special Forces Command headquarters, suggesting use by intelligence or analytical elements rather than individual Green Beret teams in the field [1]. The Army describes the capability as supporting:

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

Five seats is a small number. That suggests analysts running queries, not widespread tactical distribution. But “small” is relative when each query can search 50 billion faces.

A Pattern of Military Adoption

The Green Berets aren’t the first military customers. Clearview AI has been building its defense portfolio [2][5]:

  • Army Criminal Investigations (502nd MP Battalion): $67,200 contract from September 2020 to May 2023
  • BAE Systems / INSCOM: $150,000 subcontract in December 2024, part of a larger $482 million Army intelligence contract
  • US Special Operations Command (via NexTech Solutions): $46,500 for Clearview products
  • Ukraine military: Over 350,000 searches since Russia’s invasion, provided for free

Meanwhile, 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 [6]. The former advisor to the most controversial facial recognition company on earth is now in charge of bringing commercial tech into military use.

The China Connection

The irony runs deeper. In April 2024, leaked documents revealed that Army Special Operations Command personnel were trained to use Face++, a facial recognition system developed by Chinese firm Megvii [2].

Megvii is sanctioned by the US Treasury for its role in surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Yet US special operators were learning its software while simultaneously signing contracts with Clearview AI.

The lesson: military interest in facial recognition isn’t about which company. It’s about the capability itself.

The Bigger Picture

This Green Beret contract is one piece of a federal spending surge on commercial facial recognition [7][8]:

  • ICE: $9.2 million Clearview AI contract (September 2025)
  • CBP: $225,000 Clearview AI contract for “tactical targeting” (February 2026)
  • DHS: 1.2 billion face database through NEC’s Mobile Fortify
  • FBI: Access to state DMV photos, passport images, and commercial databases

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 it wouldn’t touch Army contracts anyway.

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

What This Means for You

If you’ve ever posted a photo online, you’re probably in Clearview’s database. That database is now:

  • Available to Green Beret targeting analysts
  • Searchable by ICE enforcement agents
  • Accessible to CBP border officers
  • In use by hundreds of local police departments

You didn’t consent to any of this. The platforms where you posted those photos explicitly banned this scraping. The Army doesn’t care. They issued a “sole source” contract because they say DOD “cannot” do the job without it.

Your selfie. Their database. Military targeting workflows.

References

  1. Biometric Update: US Army renews Clearview AI facial recognition contract for special operations (February 2026)
  2. Jack Poulson: Green Berets are now using Clearview AI’s facial recognition (2026)
  3. Clearview AI: National Security & Defense
  4. The Hacker News: Clearview AI Faces €30.5M Fine for Building Illegal Facial Recognition Database (September 2024)
  5. FedScoop: Clearview AI CEO says company focused on winning federal agency contracts (2024)
  6. State of Surveillance: Clearview AI Gets a Pentagon Champion (January 2026)
  7. State of Surveillance: CBP Signs Clearview AI Contract for Tactical Targeting (February 2026)
  8. State of Surveillance: DHS Maintains a Database of 1.2 Billion Faces (2026)