Security-first AI engineer · Founder, TECHLEAD 187 LLC · 26 years in uniform, still serving.

_{I build AI systems that earn trust the hard way - fail-closed by construction, provenance on every byte,
and proven in the places where "it mostly works" is not an option.}

Proof is the system that makes advanced technology dependable.

I've spent 26+ years taking technology from demo to fielded - starting as an enlisted network operator and ending up the senior Chief Warrant Officer of an Army AI Detachment. Along the way:

• Fielded the Army's first AI-powered language translation capability in wartime Iraq (2006) - Arabic broadcast TV to English in under a second, networked across a 350+ soldier task force.
• Accredited a first-of-its-kind Google Cloud enclave at Impact Level 5 for a U.S. Air Force customer - GKE, identity, and collaboration services where others said it couldn't be done.
• Principal Investigator for an Army advanced R&D program building AI agents for predictive logistics on Gemini/Gemma, with knowledge-graph platforms running on edge hardware.
• Deployed containerized computer vision to the tactical edge with Google while architecting cloud-to-edge for U.S. Special Operations Command - plus Zero Trust, data-science platforms, and IaC in denied/degraded/disconnected environments.
• Founded TECHLEAD 187 LLC (2026) - a Tampa engineering practice for security-first agentic AI, from national security to commercial verticals.

mlcyclops/lucidagentide - a fail-closed security · provenance · memory layer built around an agentic coding runtime, not a fork of one.

• A prompt-injection gate that cannot fail open - kill the scanner mid-run and it blocks, provably, forever green in CI.
• Provenance-gated memory - poisoned content can never auto-promote into what the agent remembers.
• AI-authorship attribution - a tamper-evident ledger of which model wrote which lines, per repo and identity.
• Sovereignty-aware model governance + an accredited government AI gateway integration, with lockdown mode.
• An encrypted personalization knowledge graph the agent learns and recalls across sessions - plus one-command ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini history migration, every message scanned on the way in.
• Cross-model cost showback - real-time token spend, cache savings, per-model drill-down.

Client and venture work, shipped or in flight - described by business vertical only; project and customer names withheld by design. What they do is open - how the hard parts work stays proprietary.

Vertical	The gist
Career intelligence	React 19 + Gemini mobility copilot - commute mapping, resume optimization with injection-hardened PDF parsing, multi-tier model routing
EdTech · certification prep	Spaced-repetition studio (SuperMemo-2) with Stripe entitlements and grounded pro decks (networking, cloud, military planning)
EdTech · K-12	Chrome MV3 curriculum companion - adaptive 3-rung math hint ladder, E2E-encrypted parent monitoring, encrypted DuckDB provenance store
PropTech · consumer fintech	Turns an opaque annual homeowner ritual into a guided savings play - investor-ready, brand-first
Nonprofit · clean water	Donation platform funding village water-system repair - keyless Cloud Run deploys, full SEO/JSON-LD treatment, $0 idle cost
AI infrastructure	Electron landing zone for remote NVIDIA DGX access - tiered VPN/SSH transport detection, typed IPC, Vitest-covered command building
Defense · contested logistics	Next.js ops-intelligence map - filtered threat/port/airfield layers, MGRS grid, synthetic exercise data
GovCon compliance	Workflow, ticketing, and compliance automation for government contractors (via advisory engagements)
Local services	Growth engineering for a main-street business - push-notification quote alerts (no SMS spend), AI-search-optimized schema

timeline
    title 26 years of fielded technology
    2000 : Enlisted - Army Reserve network operator
    2006 : Fielded the Army's first AI language translation in wartime Iraq - 350+ soldier task force
    2016 : Senior Cloud Architect, USSOCOM - cloud-to-edge AI, computer vision at the edge, Zero Trust
    2021 : Cloud & Data Technical Lead - first GCP IL5 enclave (USAF) - PI, AI predictive logistics
    2026 : Founder, TECHLEAD 187 LLC - security-first agentic AI - senior CW, Army AI Detachment

Still serving with the Army Reserve's 75th Innovation Command - the Army's change agents for emerging technology - as the senior Chief Warrant Officer of its AI Detachment: Project Convergence S&T advisory, Hacking4Defense, bug bounties that put reverse-engineering toolkits in soldiers' hands, and expert evaluation of next-gen Zero Trust, SATCOM, and AutoPACE AI/ML networking (2024-25).

• AFCEA 40 Under 40 (2019)
• AUSA 75th Innovation Command Officer of the Year (2019)
• Army Reserve Most Outstanding Recruiter (2012)
• BBA, Accounting & Information Systems - University of Toledo (with honors, earned while serving)

1. The Future of Military Logistics: AI, Data Models, and Emerging Technologies
2. Digital Engineering Tools for Efficient AI Development
3. Fight and Win in Contested Multi-Domain Operations - Small Wars Journal
4. Cloud-Agnostic Data Management Solutions
5. Data Management Design Patterns for Cloud Ecosystems

• Co-founder, COVERT Consortium - helping transitioning veterans launch engineering careers.
• GenAI educator - enterprise-wide hands-on GenAI workshops, the Idea-to-App Pipeline course, and a tactical GenAI training curriculum for military audiences.
• Mentor: FedTech xTechSearch finalists (IoT/AI), AFWERX Fusion small businesses, AMRoC students, and Hillsborough CC computer-science advisory board.
• AFCEA Greater Tampa Bay Chapter Technology Chair (2019-21).

Building something where trust, security, and delivery all have to be true at once?

_{© 2026 Nick Chadwick · TECHLEAD 187 LLC · Do, Not Talk.}