BLUF: We’re looking for about $1.8M in SBIR funding to build a complete version of Aquaman. Read and download the full white paper here.
What if Aquaman was real, but instead of talking to fish, he was just a really smart computer program that could detect when someone was trying to poison your drinking water?
That’s where we are today. Last month, Tim Lee (HUNG-TING, LI) and I were strangers who met at the Washington DC AI Expo. The Special Compeitive Studies Project was having a hackathon hosted by OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and the US National Drone Association. Tim Lee and I ended up on the same team together. I hate to call it an immediate bromance, but Tim and I just clicked from a programming and engineering perspective. (Game recognize game.)
Fast forward three days, and Tim and I are sitting next to each other, listening to the winners get announced. “Second place goes to C4ADS…” Tim and I shot each other some glances, and just said, “Well, bummer. I guess we didn’t win.” Then, the team from OpenAI read the first place result.
“Aquaman. Tim Lee and Shane Morris.“
Holy crap, we won.
I know, I know. That sounds like the premise for a cheesy movie, but that’s how these things work sometimes.
So, why Aquaman?
Americans have this weird relationship with infrastructure. We expect it to work perfectly 100% of the time, but we also never want to think about it or pay for it. It’s like expecting your car to run forever without ever changing the oil, except in this case, the car is delivering the stuff that keeps you alive.
Consider this: You are roughly 80% water. Not metaphorically, not spiritually. Literally. You are basically a very sophisticated water balloon with opinions about Taylor Swift. (Folklore was her best album, and Poets was a little self-indulgent. Red was peak, but we’re not admitting it yet.) And yet, most of us can name more Taylor Swift songs than we can name our own water company, or even the reservoir our water comes from. Don’t even get me started on wastewater treatment or how it stays clean.
This would be charming in an ignorance-is-bliss kind of way, except for one small problem: there are people out there who really, really want to mess with our water systems. And they’re getting increasingly good at it.
Remember when hacking was just something Matthew Broderick did to avoid nuclear war in WarGames? Those days are gone, my friends. Now it’s Iranian cyber groups targeting water treatment facilities in Pennsylvania, Chinese hackers infiltrating power grids, and Russian operatives playing very real-world versions of SimCity with our critical infrastructure; except instead of building virtual buildings, they’re trying to figure out how to turn off the water pumps for the entire city, and make the little “water flowing” animation stop.
The scary part isn’t that this is happening and bad people exist. We know that already. The scary part is that it’s happening to water systems that were designed in an era when the biggest security threat was someone literally breaking a lock with bolt cutters. We’re defending 21st-century targets with 20th-century thinking.
That’s why Aquaman needs to be a full, production grade application, ready to protect our infrastructure. Tim and I proved it at the SCSP Hackathon, and we want to continue proving it in real life. We need it, we know how to build it, and it will serve everyone.
Why Aquaman, and why now?
The really brilliant thing about Aquaman (the platform, not the guy who talks to dolphins) is that it’s designed around a principle that seems obvious but is surprisingly rare in government: fix the problem before it becomes a problem.
Most of our approach to infrastructure security is reactive. Something bad happens, we freak out, we throw money at it, we implement new rules, and then we wait for the next bad thing to happen. It’s like playing whack-a-mole, except the moles have geopolitical agendas.
Aquaman flips this script. Instead of waiting for Iranian hackers to mess with water treatment facilities in small-town America, the AI is already watching, learning, and protecting. It’s like having a bouncer at every water plant in the country, except the bouncer never sleeps, never gets distracted, and can spot trouble from a thousand miles away.
Here’s where things get really interesting, in a interconnected-web-of-modern-civilization kind of way. When you protect water infrastructure at the federal level, you’re not just protecting water. You’re protecting everything that depends on water, which is basically everything. Think about it like this: No clean water means no hospitals can operate. No functioning hospitals mean public health crises. Public health crises mean economic disruption. Economic disruption means social unrest. Social unrest means political instability. The domino… effect? Chain reaction? Dominos… domino’ing? Whatever dominos do. I lost the analogy. Here’s my point. You don’t want to topple the first domino.
The Funding Need
This brings us to the part of the story where we talk about money, which is always the part where everything gets complicated. Developing AI systems that can protect critical infrastructure requires research funding. A lot of it. We’re thinking about $1.8 million worth.
Now, $1.8 million sounds like a lot of money if you’re a normal person trying to buy a house or pay off student loans. But in the context of protecting America’s water supply from sophisticated cyber threats? It’s basically couch cushion money. It’s what the Pentagon spends on coffee in about three weeks.
The beautiful irony is that spending money now to develop these systems saves exponentially more money later. It’s like buying good tires for your car; it seems expensive until you consider the alternative, which is wrecking in the rain. (I’m a tire nerd, okay? It’s the only part of your car that touches the road. Please make sure your tires are inflated properly, and you’re following treadwear guidelines.)
Seriously. You could fix this, if you’re someone with the need and interest.
Look, I get it. You’ve got your own problems. We have seen massive cuts to many federal agencies. There are people and programs getting cut left and right. I get it. I see it. But this is bigger than the moment. Everything else you worry about becomes irrelevant pretty quickly if you can’t turn on the tap and get clean water.
The future is coming whether we’re ready for it or not. The question is whether we want to meet it with systems that were designed for the threats of yesterday, or with AI that’s already thinking three moves ahead. We can keep playing defense with infrastructure that’s held together with duct tape and good intentions, or we can build something that’s actually worthy of the civilization that depends on it.
The choice, as they say in all the best superhero movies, is ours.
But unlike in the movies, we don’t get to wait until the last minute to make it. The bad guys are already here, they’re already working, and they’re counting on us to keep thinking this is someone else’s problem.
Spoiler alert: It’s not.
It’s time to build our own Aquaman.
Want to get started? Contact us: aquaman@beautifulmajesticdolphin.com