CIA to accelerate its use of AI, other advanced technologies
Director John Ratcliffe says the agency is reorganizing as it aims to maintain its edge.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe used his first major public speech on Tuesday to announce steps that he said will revolutionize how the spy agency adopts artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other technologies that are rapidly transforming espionage and warfare.
The CIA has long used homegrown high-tech spy devices to aid its undercover officers around the globe. And, Ratcliffe said, CIA technology was integral to the January capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and the daring rescue of a U.S. pilot shot down over Iran in early April.
But the spy agency also has a reputation, current and former officials say, for being a slow and wary adopter of technologies developed outside its Langley, Virginia, headquarters.
“We recognize that when it comes to partnering with private industry, CIA hasn’t always been the easiest agency to work with,” Ratcliffe told an audience of tech executives at the Amazon Web Services Summit in Washington.
The CIA chief announced a new division that will focus on cybersecurity and advanced data, as well as new procedures that will accelerate the agency’s timeline for adopting new technologies from roughly three years to six months.
“If this all sounds like redrawn lines on an org chart, it isn’t,” Ratcliffe said. “This is a fundamental reshaping of CIA’s approach to technology.”