AI & INTELLIGENCEIntelligence Agencies Have Used AI Since the Cold War – but Now Face New Security Challenges

By Dafydd Townley

Published 3 May 2023

Intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the NSA, have been using earlier forms of AI since the start of the cold war. Today, budgetary constraints, human limitations and increasing levels of information were making it impossible for intelligence agencies to produce analysis fast enough for policy makers. The increasing use of AI aims to help intelligence agencies cope with such challenges, but AI creates both opportunities and challenges for these agencies.

Recent publicity around the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT has led to a great deal of public concern about its growth and potential. Italy recently banned the latest version, citing concerns about privacy because of its ability to use information without permission.

But intelligence agencies, including the CIA, in charge of foreign intelligence for the US, and its sister organization the National Security Agency (NSA), have been using earlier forms of AI since the start of the cold war.

Machine translation of foreign language documents laid the foundation for modern-day natural language processing (NLP) techniques. NLP helps machines understand human language, enabling them to carry out simple tasks, such as spell checks.

Towards the end of the cold war, AI-driven systems were made to reproduce the decision-making of human experts for image analysis to help identify possible targets for terrorists, by analyzing information over time and using this to make predictions.

In the 21st century, organizations working in international security around the globe are using AI to help them find, as former US director of national intelligence Dan Coats said in 2017, “innovative ways to exploit and establish relevance and ensure the veracity” of the information they deal with.

Coats said budgetary constraints, human limitations and increasing levels of information were making it impossible for intelligence agencies to produce analysis fast enough for policy makers.

The Directorate of National Intelligence, which oversees US intelligence operations, issued the AIM Initiative in 2019. This is a strategy designed to add to intelligence using machines, enabling agencies like the CIA to process huge amounts data quicker than before and allow human intelligence officers to deal with other tasks.

Machines Work Faster Than Humans
Politicians are under increasing pressure to make quicker informed decisions than their predecessors because information is available faster than ever before. As intelligence scholar Amy Zegart pointed out, John F. Kennedy had 13 days to decide on a course of action on the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. George W. Bush had 13 hours to formulate a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The decisions of tomorrow might need to be made in 13 minutes.

AI already helps intelligence agencies process and analyze vast amounts of data from a wide range of sources, and it does so far quicker and efficiently than humans can. AI can identify patterns in the data as well as detect any anomalies that might be hard for human intelligence officers to detect.