Project Maven's path from a 2017 surveillance imagery pilot to a department-wide program of record is not an AI success story — it is a procurement story. The Pentagon's formal designation of Maven as a long-term program converts a platform that has never faced independent capability verification into institutionalized infrastructure, with all the budget protection and replacement resistance that status carries. When a system becomes a program of record, it stops being evaluated on whether it works and starts being evaluated on whether replacing it would cost more than keeping…