By Steven Rosenbush
The future of the chief information officer was once in doubt, the role cast as a bureaucrat destined to be replaced by someone, anyone. The chief digital officer, chief technology officer and chief data officer all had more cachet. Steve Jobs said the Fortune 500 had " five hundred orifices called CIOs."
But it hasn't been so easy to kill the CIO. Its fortunes began to turn during the pandemic, when someone needed to be responsible for enabling the shift to work-from-home. Now the rise of artificial intelligence is lifting the profile of the CIO once again.
"The place where it comes in is through the CIO, because where else would it come in from?" Lockheed Martin CIO Maria Demaree told me. "Otherwise, it would be coming in from a particular business area. It's got to come from a central place that the company can go to and connect to it. And they're looking to the CIO."
Demaree, whose father worked at the military contractor and whose brother and daughter now do too, has held a range of leadership roles during 35 years at the company. Until becoming CIO and senior vice president for enterprise business and digital transformation last January, she was vice president and general manager of its national space security business. Fifteen years ago, she was a director in Lockheed Martin's office of the CIO.
The CIO role has been almost completely transformed since those days, Demaree says.
I spoke to her at length in December about how it's different and the ways in which AI is central to the change. "As CIO, I need to lead AI adoption internally, while also ensuring we have ethical and risk management considerations addressed ... not only providing the capability, but the vision for how it can be used."
Process over technology
The job used to be about providing tools and technology to all corners of the business, hopefully making them more productive. Now it's about working with business units, sometimes helping to define their missions, and providing the technology to support those efforts, Demaree said.
The structural changes in the business are accelerating because AI technology itself is maturing. "It's getting to the point now where it's actually usable and reliable," she said. "We can put it in the hands of our employees."
Demaree said her role rests on three pillars. Pillar One is establishing common processes and tools for back-office functions such as HR, engineering, finance and business development. That's a massive transformation given the company's history of disparate systems, she said.
Pillar Two is the creation of a "model-based enterprise" that includes implementation of digital twins and advanced simulations to allow for rapid iterations with customers.
"And then the third part is artificial intelligence," she said. "How are we using AI to optimize both of those other areas? How do we use AI for ourselves to make ourselves the best we can be?"
Making sense of the parts bin
Lockheed Martin produces complex systems such as the F-35 fighter jet used in the deposition of Nicolás Maduro, the Thaad missile defense system, Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters and the Orion deep space craft. Many parts, such as screws and batteries, are used in more than one system, but may go by different names and numbers depending upon where they are used. That lack of standardization can create inefficiency in the massive organization, which employed about 121,000 people at the beginning of 2025 and forecasts revenue of up to $74.75 billion for that year.
It can't afford the operational slack amid competitive pressures from emerging drone manufacturers or traditional rivals such as Boeing, which last year won the contract to build the Pentagon's next-generation jet fighter.
So Lockheed is using AI models to identify parts by analyzing attributes such as their weight, material and voltage, rather than reading labels.
The model requires human input, but once trained, the AI can categorize parts at a speed and scale that human workers could never match, Demaree said. That allows the corporation to consolidate orders to negotiate better pricing, share spare parts across divisions during shortages and accelerate projects, she said.
Lockheed is also using AI in every phase of software delivery, from checking requirements to generating and testing code. Because the company operates in a restricted environment with sensitive data, it built secure agents for internal use that record meetings, summarize activities and track action items. And it deployed a general purpose agent that allows employees to securely query corporate data.
Demaree said she holds regular meetings with corporate functions including legal, HR and communications to identify areas in which custom AI agents could help reduce operational friction.
Her organization works closely with the Lockheed Martin AI Center, which provides models, infrastructure and other resources to the company. Lockheed Martin said it is processing 35 billion tokens -- units of AI usage -- a month, and that demand for AI is rising.
Maintaining AI realism
Demaree said AI is driving a return on investment where Lockheed has put it to use, primarily by helping her team of 5,000 accelerate the pace of projects -- thereby reducing costs. "ROI will continue to increase over time, the more we do, the more places we learn how to use it," she predicted.
AI so far has been effective at handling highly repeatable tasks, or helping a junior person be more effective because they have an agent at their side. Next she expects the company to use AI to capture the knowledge and experience of more senior people, making it more accessible to the entire organization.
"We need to be thoughtful about where we use it. It's not going to be AI everywhere," Demaree said. "It's not going to replace people that need to make mission-critical decisions."
Write to Steven Rosenbush at steven.rosenbush@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 16, 2026 07:00 ET (12:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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