Innovation in Intelligence

This article was first published by our friends at JustSecurity.

Corin R. Stone is a Scholar-in-Residence and Adjunct Professor at the Washington College of Law. She is on leave from the ODNI where, until August 2020, she served as the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Strategy & Engagement, leading Intelligence Community initiatives on artificial intelligence, the 21^st Century workforce, and acquisition agility; overseeing the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity; creating IC-wide innovation and net assessment organizations; re-imagining data and information management for the digital age; establishing IC policy and strategy; and overseeing engagement with Congress and the public. 

OPINION — Congress wants to pour hundreds of billions (yes with a B) of dollars into the federal government to increase the nation’s competitiveness in emerging technology and, in particular, to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that are vital to protecting our national security. The bipartisan support shown for the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) – the bill that provides these funds –  is a noteworthy and important step in ensuring the United States is resilient and competitive in the 21st century. And that kind of money is nothing to sneeze at. But can the federal government manage to spend it?

Thanks to China’s aggressive, whole-of-nation approach to emerging technology and the ubiquity of AI technologies that adversaries big and small are now poised to exploit, there is a sudden urgency around AI and national security. In addition to the USICA, the National Security Commission on AI has produced sixteen chapters of recommendations over the last three years (along with several quarterly, interim, and special topic reports) and several prominent think tanks have produced their own reports on AI and national security.  While there are open questions about ethics and proper implementation that must be addressed, there is no question that the United States must figure out how to address them and quickly take advantage of AI to continue to be a leader on the world stage.

The USICA, a $200 billion proposal, dramatically expands federal government support for technological growth and innovation and strengthens U.S. national competitiveness. It proposes new incentive programs and increased research and development funding in areas like AI and microelectronics, as well as the creation of new offices and increased public investment, lending, and trade abroad to support key technology focus areas and to counter China’s influence. The USICA is an important measure to protect and promote U.S. research and innovation and to drive national strategic advantage on the global stage.

However, having spent the last 20 years in the U.S. government, 15 of them in the Intelligence Community (IC), I believe that without a visible, concerted effort to revisit current budget, acquisition, risk, and oversight frameworks – led by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and IC leadership – the IC will not be able to effectively identify, develop, and incorporate in real-time the technological advances needed to keep its competitive edge, regardless of how much USICA money comes its way.

AI systems have the potential to transform how the IC makes sense of the world, rapidly and at scale. To discover secrets and provide policymakers with exquisite intelligence and insights at mission speed, the IC must be able to quickly and accurately sort through vast amounts of data to find patterns, uncover connections, understand relevance, and draw conclusions in real-time. Without the advantages that evolving AI will continue bring, the IC will quickly be outmatched by the nation’s formidable adversaries.

But, as we have seen before, money is necessary but not sufficient. In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Congress threw a great deal of money at the counterterrorism problem, much of it aimed at helping the IC “connect the dots.” This goal included a steady focus on sharing information across agency lines with those who needed it so that the IC would never again fail to discover or understand information it already had in its holdings. However, the IC quickly realized that money alone could not solve that problem. Among other things, the IC had to tackle foundational issues involving cultural resistance and inconsistent, complex authorities.  The IC has come a long way on information sharing 20 years after 9/11, but it still has more work to do.

Similarly, when it comes to the IC being able to take advantage of significant advances in AI, the jury is still out. To take full advantage of what AI has to offer, the IC will have to work closely with the private sector, where much of the emerging technology is being developed.  Unfortunately, when it comes to that kind of partnership, the IC’s track record is mediocre, at best. Time and again we have seen that the national security community – including in particular the Department of Defense (DOD) and the IC – has serious, basic hurdles to clear if it is to partner smartly with the private sector to harness innovation and emerging technology like AI. Existing budget and acquisition processes are laborious, complex, and slow; the IC neither sufficiently understands nor accepts risks associated with AI technologies; and congressional oversight processes compound these issues. Moreover, within the national security community the cultural barrier to trying new things persists, despite the fact that there is jaw-dropping innovation and creativity in pockets.

DOD has started tackling some – but not all – of these issues. It has recently piloted new approaches to software procurement, received important legislative flexibilities to deal with acquisition bottlenecks, and driven the need for innovation and emerging technologies from the most senior levels of the Department. This is an encouraging start.