CSIS Brief on Intelligence and Emerging Technology

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently published The Intelligence Edge: Opportunities and Challenges from Emerging Technologies for U.S. Intelligence to frame the work of its Technology and Intelligence Task Force.

Brian Katz, a Fellow in the International Security Program, Transnational Threats Project authored the brief and is supporting the work of the Task Force. The full brief can be found HERE.

The CSIS Technology and Intelligence Task Force has embarked on a year-long study to understand how technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and its subset, machine learning (ML), cloud computing, and advanced sensors, among others, can empower intelligence and the performance of the intelligence community (IC). The task force will explore how emerging technologies can be applied and integrated into the IC’s day-to-day operations and how the IC must adapt to maintain their intelligence edge.

This CSIS Brief provides a strategic framework for the task force’s efforts. It begins with a snapshot of the potential opportunities emerging technologies present across the intelligence cycle, to be explored in greater depth during the project year. It then outlines the risks and challenges such technologies will pose to the IC. The brief concludes by presenting the core intelligence questions that will drive the task force’s inquiry. The focus of this framing brief and the CSIS task force is strategic intelligence, that is, national-level intelligence intended for senior-level policymakers and national security officials.