PerspectiveIn the Deepfake Era, Counterterrorism Is Harder
For many U.S. intelligence officials, memories of that 9/11 terrorist attacks remain fresh, searing, and personal. Still hanging over the entrance to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center is a sign that reads, “Today is September 12, 2001.” It’s a daily reminder of the agency’s determination to prevent future attacks—but also of the horrifying costs when intelligence agencies adapt too slowly to emerging threats. For a decade after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the CIA and the FBI were mired in Cold War structures, priorities, processes, and cultures even as the danger of terrorism grew. The shock of 9/11 finally forced a reckoning—one that led to a string of counterterrorism successes, from foiled plots to the operation against Osama bin Laden. But now, nearly two decades later, America’s 17 intelligence agencies need to reinvent themselves once more, this time in response to an unprecedented number of breakthrough technologies that are transforming societies, politics, commerce, and the very nature of international conflict.
Eighteen years ago, al-Qaeda operatives hijacked planes, toppled buildings, terrified an entire nation, and killed nearly 3,000 innocents. That the elaborate 9/11 plot went undetected will forever be remembered as one of the intelligence community’s worst failures.
Amy Zegart writes in The Atlantic that for many U.S. intelligence officials, memories of that day remain fresh, searing, and personal. Still hanging over the entrance to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center is a sign that reads, “Today is September 12, 2001.” It’s a daily reminder of the agency’s determination to prevent future attacks—but also of the horrifying costs when intelligence agencies adapt too slowly to emerging threats.
She adds:
For a decade after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the CIA and the FBI were mired in Cold War structures, priorities, processes, and cultures even as the danger of terrorism grew. My research has shown that even though many inside and outside U.S. intelligence agencies saw the terrorist threat coming and pressed for change years earlier, they could not get the necessary reforms enacted. The shock of 9/11 finally forced a reckoning—one that led to a string of counterterrorism successes, from foiled plots to the operation against Osama bin Laden. But now, nearly two decades later, America’s 17 intelligence agencies need to reinvent themselves once more, this time in response to an unprecedented number of breakthrough technologies that are transforming societies, politics, commerce, and the very nature of international conflict.
As former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell and I wrote in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, the threat landscape is changing dramatically—just as it did after the Cold War—and not because of a single emerging terrorist group or a rising nation-state. Advances in artificial intelligence, open-source internet-based computing, biotechnology, satellite miniaturization, and a host of other fields are giving adversaries new capabilities; eroding America’s intelligence lead; and placing even greater demands on intelligence agencies to separate truth from deception. But the U.S. intelligence community is not responding quickly enough to these technological changes and the challenges they are unleashing.
Zegart notes that we are seeing the initial stirrings of reform, but that
these efforts are nowhere near enough. What’s missing is a wholesale reimagining of intelligence for a new technological era. In the past, intelligence advantage went to the side that collected better secrets, created better technical platforms (such as billion-dollar spy satellites), and recruited better analysts to outsmart the other side. In the future, intelligence will increasingly rely on open information collected by anyone, advanced code and platforms that can be accessed online for cheap or for free, and algorithms that can process huge amounts of data faster and better than humans. This is a whole new world. The U.S. intelligence community needs a serious strategic effort to identify how American intelligence agencies can gain and sustain the edge while safeguarding civil liberties in a radically different technological landscape. The director of national intelligence should be leading that effort—but after Coats’s resignation, that job has yet to be permanently filled.
Years ago, one former intelligence official ruefully told me that his chief worry was: “By the time we master the al-Qaeda problem, will al-Qaeda [still] be the problem?” He was right.
