# Talk:Sentient (intelligence analysis system)

This article has a lot of good information, but the sourcing is far too heavily reliant on primary sourcing (budget justifications, documents from the National Reconnaisance Office, and so on).  I realize it's going to be hard to find a lot of secondary info when the program is mostly classified, but as it stands we're essentially aggregating a bunch of quotes here, which isn't really what WP is for.  I put up the primary sources template because I think we might need to winnow our quotes to rely mostly on the few secondary sources that are given. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 14:35, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

@Very Polite Person: You nominated this article for GAN a week before this complaint was lodged.  You've had some time to address it, but nothing has been done.  I will quick fail this article if I don't hear from you soon. Viriditas (talk) 22:37, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Also, I am a bit concerned by your comments up above.  The day before you nominated this article at GAN, you described it as a "first draft".  I don't think that qualifies for GA. Viriditas (talk) 22:54, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
I was sidetracked by 'real life' and other projects. I'll swing back to this later. Thanks for your time and sorry.  -- Very Polite Person (talk) 18:25, 31 August 2024 (UTC)
Ping me again when you nominate it and I will try again. Viriditas (talk) 20:25, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

100% of known/found sources (over a year+) -- considered, integrated or discarded for various policy reasons. More edits than I want to admit. Article was 2,606 bytes before my first edit. Peaked at 40,599 bytes to get everything that was workable in place to refine, and now down to 29,662 bytes. 
That cut 10,937 bytes, or four entire copies of the original article as I found it. There's no more sources I know of (yet)--this is about as refined as I can get it. Anything else is probably polish if there's any.  -- Very Polite Person (talk) 22:54, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Saw a post a while ago on the WikiProject Mass Surveillance talk asking for advice on improvements. I think this article would greatly benefit from an explanation of exactly how AI is used -- it currently reads like a press release where AI is used as a buzzword, but even what kind of AI is completely unclear. Mrfoogles (talk) 17:47, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

I would be exceptionally greatful for any additional sourcing along those lines. If it exists, anywhere, I've yet to find it. At best we have logical inference for the reader based on standard computer science and related data analysis concepts, intersected with intelligence concepts, which are all public. It's not terribly difficult to put 2+2 on it. After over a year, I've just never found any WP:RS that goes that deep. That's undoubtedly among the rather more classified information.  -- Very Polite Person (talk) 17:55, 25 May 2025 (UTC)
Use what you have.  Start with the future ground architecture slide and use your own words to explain the info depicted.  That’s a good start.  You can use that as a starting point. Filling in the gaps from there in a general way should be easy. Viriditas (talk) 19:30, 25 May 2025 (UTC)
...it didn't even occur to me to use the slide image as a source. You rock.  -- Very Polite Person (talk) 20:21, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

@Viriditas:, I was thinking about this edit to take the image of the ADF site out...  it had the caption I used here in the thumbnail. That was based on this passage/source:

Passage: The NRO's Aerospace Data Facilities (ADF)—Colorado, East, and Southwest—provide ground support for intelligence collection.[22]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentient_(intelligence_analysis_system)#cite_note-Sentient_HASC_ADFs_2016-03-15-22
And there on page 151 (link):

Mr. Coffman. Mr. Calvelli, in your written statement, you mentioned that NRO is improving space-based persistence, creating a, quote-unquote, thinking system called Sentient and developing a transformative future ground architecture. Can you discuss how Buckley Air Force Base and the Aerospace Data Facility, ADF-C [Aerospace Data Facility-Colorado], fit in these efforts?
Mr. Calvelli. Sure. All of our ADFs are a major piece of how we operate our systems today and will continue to be for the future. What we are trying to do is to try to tie our systems together more closely, so instead of stovepipes of GEOINT or stovepipes of SIGINT [signals intelligence], it is sort of an integrated set of sensors in space, integrated ground providing data to our user community. The ADF-C, ADF-E [Aerospace Data Facility-East], ADF-Southwest will all play major roles in that in the future.
Is that not sufficient to use the image with a similar caption? Mike Coffman was specifically asking about how the ADFs fit into Sentient in Congress, and that was Frank Calvelli's direct answewr in the next sentence.  -- Very Polite Person (talk) 15:48, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

@Very Polite Person: Your argument for adding the image is the reason I removed it. The supporting source from 2017 doesn't say ADF is being used. It says it will "play major roles...in the future".  That's all we have?  If so, it's not really enough. We really want to focus on writing things that we know are true.  I have no objection to altering the content so that it says something like, "In 2017, A, B, and C, said D, E, and F might be used to facilitate the Sentient program", and then maybe adding an image to the body. But does such speculation belong in the lead infobox position? I don't think so.  We need to be careful about crystal balling. Viriditas (talk) 19:09, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Hm, you are right. Would something like this be possible then down in the body if not the lede?  -- Very Polite Person (talk) 20:10, 25 June 2025 (UTC)
That works for me, although you might want to avoid using long captions in the image itself and reserve that content for the body description.  Just label the image "Aerospace Data Facility-Colorado on Buckley Space Force Base" and leave the long descriptions elsewhere. We are generally advised to avoid using the captions for that purpose, but not everyone has received the memo. Viriditas (talk) 21:01, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

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