The Aerospace AI Race Is Really About Data Control

As artificial intelligence reshapes aerospace design, production, inspection, and maintenance, the real competitive battleground is shifting from products to the data surrounding them. That is the argument advanced by Alexander S. McGee, an AI attorney with Howard & Howard, in an analysis published by Aerospace Manufacturing and Design on August 07, 2026.

A shifting competitive landscape

AI is changing how aerospace companies design, build, inspect, maintain, and support their products. Early adopters of AI tools have already seen benefits like shorter development timelines, improved testing performance, and reduced costs. But as those tools spread, the advantages are harder to hold.

Aerospace companies routinely provide customers with product-related data, data generated by the product, or data about the customer's use of the product. As customers and competitors embrace AI tools, the reliability and usefulness of that data are becoming more important — and reliable AI systems rely on reliable training data.

"The competitive race now underway is not just about who can deploy AI tools first. Rather, it is increasingly about the underlying data: who controls the data, the workflows, and the know-how that make AI tools useful."

The competitive landscape is changing because of this shift in focus from building good products to positioning the data surrounding those products. As McGee puts it:

"Companies need to think about how to position the data surrounding their products so it is useful, reliable, and aligned with customer needs."

Three lines of defense

The article outlines three conventional — but still essential — protection mechanisms.

Contracts.: Contracts can define permitted uses, limit redistribution, address derivative uses, and draw boundaries around how technical information may be shared or repurposed. Even in a transaction centered on a physical product, the agreement may be one of the few places a supplier can clarify whether associated data is part of the sale or should be treated differently.

Patents.: These can protect technical innovations that give products and related data real commercial value.

"Patents remain one of the clearest and most powerful tools aerospace companies can use to protect the technical innovations that give their products and related data real commercial value."

Trade secrets.: Unlike patents, trade secrets can protect valuable technology and know-how for as long as they remain secret.

"Trade secret protection can be especially important where the value lies in things that can be kept confidential: internal processes, proprietary workflows, data treatment methods, software implementations, thresholds, tuning practices, or other know-how that is difficult to reverse engineer from the finished product."

The employee factor

The harder problem is often human. Employee mobility in the aerospace industry can create exposure of valuable know-how — judgment and process familiarity built over years of program work. Companies need to be deliberate about employment agreements, confidentiality provisions, internal policies, and training to protect trade secrets. The strongest trade secret protection comes from layering different types of safeguards together.

The takeaway for manufacturers: the companies that think early and deliberately about how valuable information moves through customers, supply chains, and employees will be better positioned to protect both their products and the data that gives those products value.