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Ryan Connell

Ryan Connell

Strategic Operations Chief in the Acquisition Directorate at the DoD Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), host of the Defense Mavericks podcast

Aug 4, 2026

BertHOST
4:49
And, and Ryan Connell, why don't we start with you, since you're our guest? What are your, uh, impressions of Tupac and of the album Me Against the World?
4:56
Well, specifically of Tupac, I have to say it's been a long journey to get to love Tupac.
5:02
I mean, I'm a huge fan of classic hip-hop.
5:05
Uh, Tribe has always been my favorite.
5:07
Phife has always been my favorite.
5:09
[hip-hop music] Now here's a funky introduction of how nice I am.
5:12
Tell your mother, tell your father, send a telegram.

39 MINS LATER

speaker_7UNKNOWN
44:14
Mm-hmm.
10:27
So how is the rapid acquisition team tackling the challenge of organizing our data and across all functionals and all services to actually make it AI-ready?
10:39
Yeah, it's interesting.
10:41
So, obviously, you and I had some conversation leading up to the podcast, and then I saw this question, and I was like, oh, so I'm a little outside my ballpark, but I think I'll take it anyway for transparency purposes, right? So, what I found really interesting, maybe it's kind of a twofold answer.
10:56
One is, If you just think about the contracting workflow, like we've talked about, I have a requirement, start coming up with some strategy, drafting documentation, and then maybe oversight and compliance, those type functions.
11:13
It doesn't need this robust data set on the back end of an understanding to be able to do those functions.
11:19
And that was something I feel like I learned a couple of years ago.
11:22
And so the things that really need those robust data sets were like market research and potentially pricing.

7 MINS LATER

18:26
So as the department leverages AI to write requirements and evaluate data, how is this changing the dynamic with our industry partners? So I imagine we're seeing some contractors use AI to write proposals in response to our AI written requirements, sort of creating a scenario of AI talking to AI, right?

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