About Peter
Peter is the Chief Product Officer of Maxar Intelligence, bringing his passion for maps and 12 years at Palantir Technologies to this renaissance story. At Palantir, Peter developed the famed “ontology” and mapping technologies, helping transition the company's defense business from intelligence operations to real-time operational support. His background in theoretical chemistry gives him a distinctive lens through which he approaches the relationship between models and reality—a tension at the heart of both cartography and defense technology.
Peter's expertise spans the intersection of hardware and software systems, with particular emphasis on how they can be integrated to deliver actionable intelligence. His current mission at Maxar involves reimagining how satellite data is collected, processed, and utilized to solve complex global challenges.
About Maxar Intelligence
Maxar Intelligence began as DigitalGlobe, a pioneering Earth observation company. In 2017, Digital Globe was acquired by MDA, which was renamed Maxar. The company underwent significant transformations—being sold in 2019, taken private in 2022, and split into two business units (Maxar Intelligence and Maxar Space) in 2023.
Maxar's bread and butter is high-resolution satellite imagery, specifically 30-centimeter class resolution data. This exquisite imagery serves as a foundation for more sophisticated data products. The company's Legion satellites represent their newest generation of sensing technology.
But beyond imagery collection, Maxar has invested heavily in creating deep integrations with classified government systems—expertise they're now leveraging to create partnership frameworks for smaller, newer space companies. For example, their Direct Access Program allows international customers to install radio antennas and directly task satellites locally, embodying the shift from centralized to distributed space architecture.
Key Takeaways
1. The Shift from Efficiency to Resilience: For the past 15-20 years, technology decisions (both commercial and government) have optimized for efficiency through centralization (cloud computing, SaaS, mobile devices with minimal local compute). However, geopolitical changes and the COVID pandemic have highlighted the critical need for resilience. Defense systems need to operate when disconnected and remain functional even when data centers can be targeted. Maxar is adapting by federating processing, enabling localized tasking, and building resilient architectures.
2. Maps as Purpose-Built Stories: Gone are the days of Maxar building "one digital globe." Today, the company creates multiple representations of Earth, tailored for specific purposes. This represents a return to traditional cartography where maps told stories rather than just depicting geography accurately. The future of geospatial intelligence is creating maps that reveal relationships and enable decisions, not just document terrain.
3. Orchestrating "Teams of Constellations": No single company or government has enough capital to build a constellation that can do everything. The solution is creating "teams of constellations" with complementary capabilities, balancing cost with capacity and resolution with revisit frequency. Maxar's high-resolution foundation enables other lower-resolution systems to be co-registered accurately, creating a more comprehensive monitoring system than any single provider could achieve. This requires sophisticated scheduling and tasking algorithms that optimize across multiple satellite systems.
4. Moving from Reactive to Proactive Collection: Traditional satellite collection has been largely reactive—documenting events after they occur. The next frontier is moving "left of the event" to capture precursor activities. As Peter noted, "We recently took a picture of the Russian ICBM explosion that happened. But we didn't have a picture of that launch before it exploded." This shift requires automating collection management and capacity allocation rather than just focusing on automating analysis—connecting the loop between analytics and tasking.
5. Speed Trumps Direction for Startups: When asked for parting wisdom for founders, Peter offered this gem: "Velocity is speed and direction. Ultimately, the most important thing is speed. If you have speed, you can change direction. If you have no speed, direction does not matter." For defense tech entrepreneurs, this means prioritizing action over perfect planning—building momentum that allows you to adapt rather than waiting for perfect clarity.
Maxar’s ongoing transformation reflects broader changes in the defense landscape: moving from centralization to federation, from efficiency to resilience, and from collection-focused operations to decision-centric systems. For emerging companies in this space, partnership opportunities are abundant—you don't need to build everything yourself, but can instead focus on complementary capabilities that enhance the overall ecosystem.
For more about Maxar: https://www.maxar.com
For more on Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterwilczynski/
For more Crossing the Valley: www.valleycrossers.com
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