Spy Family

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been stepping up its efforts in the world of AI — including an eyebrow-raising use of chatbot tech.

As the New York Times reports, the CIA has been quietly developing a platform that lets analysts “talk” to foreign leaders, in a bid to predict how they might react in certain situations. The human variety of this type of behavior-predicting analysis has been the bread and butter of the agency’s behind-the-scenes grunts for a very long time. Instead of painstakingly compiling “profiles” on world leaders based on public information and gathered intelligence, however, those analysts will engage in faux conversation with large language models (LLMs) trained on similar intelligence and information that’s presumably being fed into its training data.

The NYT didn’t say how formally the chatbot has been deployed, or who helped develop it. However, an interview with the CIA’s first chief technology officer, ex-Pentagon AI czar Nand Mulchandani, reveals that its opacity is very much by design. Mulchadani, a Silicon Valley veteran, has a chart in his offices showing all the layers of approval it takes to get any private sector collaboration approved within the secretive agency. From handing issues with contracts to taking care of any project roadblocks, each step requires an incredible amount of bureaucracy and clandestine discussion — hurdles that the CIA acknowledges are hindering its quest to keep up with innovation and China, America’s main tech adversary.

Training Day

The agency’s now-CTO was, as the NYT notes, hired to help spearhead a forward-thinking sea change within the CIA. In the two-and-a-half years since he was brought on, Mulchadani has apparently made it easier for private companies to start working with the intelligence agency — and reading between the lines, it seems he’s held the hands of tech CEOs through the labyrinthine bureaucracy.

“The more we share about how we employ technology, how we procure technology, what we’re going to do with it, will make companies want to work with us and want to team with us more,” explained Juliane Gallina, the deputy director of the CIA’s digital innovation arm, in an interview with the NYT.

According to Gallina, the agency is looking to declassify and “expose a little bit” of its secret technological sauce to help procure private sector contracts.

There was no mention, however, of whether the public will be given a look behind the curtain of what their tax dollars are helping to fund.

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