CIA will take ‘smart risks’ and ‘course correct’ as it adopts AI, director says

The Central Intelligence Agency is moving aggressively to adopt advanced artificial intelligence tools, with Director John Ratcliffe saying Tuesday that the spy agency cannot afford to wait for a “risk-free approach” as emerging technologies reshape national security.

The CIA is “going to take smart risks, experiment and course-correct as we go” as it works to embed AI and other evolving technologies into its operations, Ratcliffe said at the AWS Summit held in Washington, D.C.

“We simply can't afford to wait for a risk-free approach when it comes to emerging technologies. It doesn't exist,” he said, noting that he can’t predict how far such technologies will go, but “what we’re not going to do, as we test the limits of what is possible at CIA, is to make perfect the enemy of good.”

The remarks underscore how aggressively the spy agency is trying to embed advanced artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies into its work, a notable push for an agency best known for human intelligence-gathering overseas. They also show that the agency is willing to accept some degree of risk as it adopts emerging technologies, betting that experimentation is preferable to moving too slowly in the face of foreign adversaries.

The CIA recruits and manages foreign assets, often undercover, to clandestinely collect intelligence on issues ranging from economics and terrorism to cyber threats. Over the last year, The Trump administration has sought to highlight the agency’s contributions to many of its national security achievements in Iran and Venezuela.

CIA officials have been increasingly public about the tech shifts the agency has undergone. Deputy Director Michael Ellis said earlier this year that the agency aims to integrate AI-powered “coworkers” into analysts’ workflows in the coming years, with the tools helping draft key judgments, edit for clarity and flag trends for human review.

The agency also recently announced a new acquisition framework to overhaul how it integrates technology into its missions. In his Tuesday speech, Ratcliffe said that, under new approaches, the agency completed some 400 acquisitions in about six months, a sharp reduction compared to previous acquisition deals that took around three years.

Recent research has argued that emerging tech may spur spy agencies to revert to older intelligence-collection methods, but Ratcliffe argued that more CIA officers “are going to have to become just as comfortable handling lines of code as they are with handling human assets and sources,” although “good intelligence is always going to require good judgment, and only people can and should decide which is the right way to go.”