The CIA is preparing for an “infinite race” with China for artificial intelligence and top technology, making getting the best tools a leading priority for America’s spies.
CIA Director William J. Burns has made a giant pivot toward making technology a major intelligence objective, said Nand Mulchandani, the agency’s chief technology officer.
In remarks to the Hill & Valley Forum’s gathering of top technology and government officials in Washington this week, Mr. Mulchandani said the CIA is “all in” on AI for offense, defense and more. He said the CIA is building its own large language models, which are sophisticated algorithms that make generative AI tools work.
“We’re looking at transforming every single part of what the agency does, from operations to the analytic function, support functions and other pieces there,” Mr. Mulchandani said. “We don’t think there’s anything more important than this.”
Mr. Mulchandani said the spy agency is working to outcompete China while “fighting across every single one of these emerging tech areas,” which he identified as AI, biotechnology, space technology, quantum technology and telecommunications.
He said the CIA is working to “keep running as fast as possible” but America needs to stop thinking about a finish line in a race with China. The communist government in Beijing has recognized AI as a critical technology that it wants to dominate.
“This competition with China: No. 1, we have to stop using the word ‘race’ when it comes to the fight with them because that implies that there is a distinct endpoint, there is a gold medal winner, and somebody goes home with not the gold,” Mr. Mulchandani said. “This is an infinite race. This is not going to stop. It’s going to keep on going.”
If it deploys its new tools in war, America will learn whether it is ahead in the technology competition. Mr. Mulchandani said he hoped that point of conflict would never be reached.
Mr. Mulchandani predicted that the next war would “be primarily a software war that is powered by something like AI” rather than hardware fueled by software.
The view from the Valley
Americans exhausted by endless wars may have concerns about infinite races, but a technological revolution is on the horizon regardless of whether the U.S. government is leading the way.
Stanford Emerging Technology Review Director Herbert Lin told reporters this week that the U.S. was long considered the central focus of fields under the rubric of science and technology.
“In certain fields, it isn’t anymore and AI is an example,” Mr. Lin said at a Hoover Institution gathering with reporters sponsored by Stanford at its Palo Alto campus this week.
Mr. Lin said building a talent pipeline to support key research, development and use of technology is a widespread concern, and he fretted about America’s lack of a strategic vision for biotechnology.
The Stanford Emerging Technology Review is a major initiative of educators and researchers to take expertise out of the school’s laboratories and put it into the hands of policymakers tasked with governing and deploying technological breakthroughs.
Upon the review’s first report this year, Mr. Lin said, the Stanford team briefed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence about the myriad national security challenges posed by emerging tools in the market.
A top concern for the CIA is dodging AI-fueled Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance (UTS), which threatens to expose U.S. spies’ sources and methods, Mr. Mulchandani said.
At the Hill & Valley Forum, Mr. Mulchandani said the CIA is undertaking the unglamorous “sewer and plumbing work” to respond to the AI revolution. He said the architectural edict to the application team is “Don’t lock in early on any of this stuff” because it will all change two weeks later with new developments.
“We talk about UTS, which is basically something that’s really, really killing us out in the field in terms of competitively, you know, biometrics, video cameras,” Mr. Mulchandani said. “Well, how do we turn it around [and continue] those operations in the face of this much AI being thrown at us is another big area that they’re looking at. So directorate by directorate, we’re rethinking, reshaping every part of what CIA needs to do in the face of using it and deploying it.”
The U.S. government is imploring Silicon Valley for help in developing and understanding technological tools.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, pleaded with the technologists and venture capitalists who flocked to the Hill & Valley Forum on Capitol Hill to assist the government whenever and wherever they can.
“There are not many industries, not many leaders and experts, who we just openly plead for your counsel, but I am doing that here today,” Mr. Johnson told the forum. “Because a lot of the people who are of goodwill here, who want to do the right thing, could use some of your guidance along the way to make sure that we don’t step on any land mines that we don’t see. You have a much better vision, I think, on a lot of that than we do.”