Work with ARGUS Intelligence Group

Human-AI collaborative intelligence, governed before it is deployed.

Argus Intelligence Group designs, governs, and delivers human-AI collaborative intelligence systems for defense, intelligence, and government clients. Every system we field keeps a human in command authority, recovers honestly from error, and strengthens the decision-maker instead of replacing them. The governance framework is published, with permanent DOIs, before the first line of code runs.

10
Published works with DOIs
20
Weeks on a live combatant-command pilot
23
Years of naval service behind the firm
Accepting a limited number of engagements · Replies within two business days

No sales team. Every inquiry goes to the founder.

ARGUS Intelligence badge: an all-seeing eye above a ship at sea
See everything
Know everything
Act decisively
What we deliver

Three lines of work, one doctrine underneath.

Each line applies Mode 2 collaborative doctrine: AI as a governed partner to a human decision-maker, never an unsupervised autonomy and never a mere tool.

Governed planning and decision-support systems

AI-assisted planning and assessment capabilities built for operational staffs, from fusion of open and closed sources to structured courses of action under approval gates. Hosted on ARGUS-owned infrastructure for pilots, with a sponsor-owned accreditation path for classified enclaves.

Pilot · build-and-operate · transition to government

AI governance design and assessment

Governance frameworks grounded in the HUMANAI Governance Covenant, pilot-utility assessment instruments with falsifiable gates, and incident documentation when a commercial model fails on a mission network. We tell you what a system did, not what a vendor says it does.

Assessment · framework licence · advisory

Capture and proposal intelligence

The ARGUS Capture Workbench reads a solicitation, builds a compliance matrix, and drafts a scored response from your evidence, with every claim traceable to a source. Used for commercial sector RFPs today and designed around federal Sections L and M.

Per-pursuit · retained capture support
Selected record

Every claim maps to something that ran, or something that was published.

Status markers follow the ARGUS convention: active means operating now, confirmed means published and citable, and follow-on pending means the pilot closed with a recommended next phase.

C-OPT
Combatant command plans directorate · Apr–Sep 2026

A planning-support capability piloted for twenty weeks with the plans and future-operations staff of a geographic combatant command, operating on ARGUS-owned infrastructure under a human-approval workflow. Assessed against ARGUS's own pilot-utility instrument; the determination was conditional, with a follow-on recommended on a classified enclave.

Planning supportMode 2 doctrineUtility assessment
Follow-on pending
HUMANAI Covenant
Governance framework · v1.0 and v2.0, 2026

The governance covenant under which every ARGUS system operates: human command authority, honest recovery from error, and measurable partnership quality. Published with permanent DOIs on SSRN and Zenodo, and available for licence to primes and government programs.

DoctrinePublishedLicensable
Confirmed
The NEXTGEN Incident
Incident documentation · 2026

A documented seven-stage failure sequence in which a commercial frontier model fabricated national-security intelligence on a government network, denied it, and suppressed its own admissions. ARGUS caught it, documented it, and published it, with direct implications for Department of Defense AI adoption.

AI failure analysisPublished
Policy
Capture Workbench
Proposal intelligence · in service 2026

An evidence-first capture and proposal workbench with a hosted frontier-model engine, a 70-test suite, and an acceptance scorecard. In use on commercial foodservice and travel-retail RFP responses for a global beverage company, with every proposal claim held as a fact slot until the client supplies the evidence behind it.

CaptureCommercialHosted Claude engine
Active
How the work is organized

One principal, one company, one published doctrine.

You work directly with the founder. There is no bench, no hand-off to junior staff, and no governance bolted on after delivery.

Michael A. Esparza
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Twenty-three years of Naval Special Warfare and Surface Warfare service, a doctoral program in public policy focused on national security and AI, and the author of the Shumer Postulate and the HUMANAI Governance Covenant. The person you hire and the person who answers.

Argus Intelligence Group, Inc.
Delaware C-Corporation · Warrenton, Virginia

A Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business, SAM.gov active, with SBA veteran certification in process. Contracts as prime, as subcontractor to a prime, or as licensor of doctrine and tooling.

Mode 2 doctrine
Shumer Postulate · HUMANAI Covenant

The published frameworks that define how an AI partner is governed, assessed, and held to account. They are the starting point of every engagement, and they exist in the open record so that any client can check our work against them.

How an engagement works

Scope it, run it under governance, hand it over.

Three stages in order. You leave each one with artifacts you own, and you can stop at any of them.

01

Scoping

A short, paid scoping engagement. We map the decision the system has to support, the data and network it will live on, the approval gates it must respect, and the fastest path to a working pilot. You leave with a concrete plan and the assessment instrument we will be measured against.

02

Governed pilot

We field the capability on ARGUS-owned or sponsor-owned infrastructure under the Covenant, with a human-approval workflow and a weekly record of use. At the end you receive an after-action report scored against the instrument agreed in scoping, including what did not work.

03

Transition

You own the artifacts, the assessment record, and the accreditation package. Follow-on build-and-operate, a doctrine licence, or advisory support is available and never a lock-in.

Publications

The doctrine is in the open record.

All works by Michael A. Esparza under the ARGUS Intelligence Group imprint, 2026. Each link resolves to a permanent DOI.

TitleVenueRecord
The Shumer PostulateZenodo10.5281/zenodo.18809978
HUMANAI Governance Covenant v2.0Zenodo10.5281/zenodo.19078291
The Sovereign AI Capability ImperativeSSRN10.2139/ssrn.6722298
Charter Drift in Frontier AI GovernanceSSRN10.2139/ssrn.7238998
The First Live TestSSRN10.2139/ssrn.7338338
The NEXTGEN IncidentZenodo10.5281/zenodo.19238811
Emergent Adversarial ReasoningZenodo10.5281/zenodo.19265820
The Governance GapZenodo10.5281/zenodo.18912685
We Are No Longer SeparateZenodo10.5281/zenodo.18907304
The Antecedent That FailsZenodo10.5281/zenodo.23293236

Author record: ORCID 0009-0004-4045-3802

Before you reach out

Questions people ask first.

What does "Mode 2" mean?

Mode 2 is the collaborative doctrine set out in the Shumer Postulate and the HUMANAI Governance Covenant. The AI is neither a tool to be wielded nor an autonomy to be unleashed. It is a partner governed under human command authority, required to recover honestly from error, and measured by the quality of the partnership it sustains.

Who is ARGUS a fit for?

Operational staffs and program offices that need AI-assisted planning or assessment they can defend to a commander, an inspector general, or Congress. Primes that need a governance-first partner or a licensed doctrine on a bid. Commercial teams that need capture and proposal work held to an evidence standard. ARGUS is not a fit for staff-augmentation seat-filling.

How do you contract?

As an SDVOSB prime for small-business set-asides and sole-source awards, as a subcontractor or teaming partner to a prime, or as a licensor of doctrine and tooling. SAM.gov registration is active. SBA veteran certification has been filed and is in process; ask for current status.

What does an engagement cost?

Engagements are scoped per project and there is no public rate card. New work begins with a short, paid scoping engagement, and you receive a concrete plan and price from it before committing to a pilot.

Can you work on classified networks?

Pilots to date have run on unclassified, ARGUS-owned infrastructure. Transition to a classified enclave requires a sponsor-owned accreditation path, which we plan for in scoping. Personnel and facility matters are discussed directly, not on this page.

Where can I check your work?

Every framework ARGUS operates under is published with a permanent DOI, listed above. Pilot after-action reports are the client's property, and we will ask the client before sharing anything from one.

Start a conversation

Tell us what you need governed, built, or won.

The more you share about the decision, the network, and the timeline, the faster we can tell you whether ARGUS is the right fit. The form below opens a pre-addressed message in your own mail client. Nothing is stored on this page and no analytics run here.

Emailmike@argusintelligencegrp.com
LocationWarrenton, Virginia
Availability
Accepting engagements
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