CIA Director John Ratcliffe vowed to step up the agency’s efforts to deploy artificial intelligence and quantum computing, stressing that rapid developments in emerging technologies are changing the nature of geopolitics.
In rare public remarks on Tuesday, Ratcliffe promised to make organizational changes at the Central Intelligence Agency to increase its embrace of cutting-edge technology. He warned that the US must move quickly because the country’s rivals are also pursuing AI, likening its capabilities to “digital nuclear weapons” that are “rewriting the reality of conflict.”
“Worldwide advancement of AI tools will only continue to raise the stakes in our competition with all of America’s adversaries,” Ratcliffe said at a tech conference in Washington hosted by Amazon.com Inc.’s Web Services unit, which was the first major AI developer to strike a deal to provide the CIA with secure cloud computing.
The CIA has made about 400 technology contracting acquisitions in the last six months, with a goal of completing most deals on the same half-year timeline, he said. That would reduce what previously had been an up to 24-month process followed by a nine-month security review, he added. Though Ratcliffe didn’t name any new contractors, he praised SpaceX’s capabilities and said he had invited Elon Musk to the CIA early in his tenure, along with executives from Amazon, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Dell Technologies Inc.
To drive faster adoption, Ratcliffe said the CIA has strengthened communication with private partners, deployed a new acquisition framework and worked to standardize data across the agency. His comments echoed remarks from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in January organizational changes at the Pentagon to speed the AI rollout across the military.
The Pentagon’s push has raised questions about how to ethically use AI in combat, especially with the US military deploying it during operations against Iran. Pentagon contract negotiations with AI firms touched off a bitter dispute between Anthropic PBC and defense officials over additional safety guardrails the company has sought for military use of its products.
In March, the Defense Department moved to drop the startup and declared it a supply-chain risk, a designation Anthropic is seeking to overturn in court. Months later, President Donald Trump issued an AI for defense and national security agencies that address some of the fundamental tensions between Anthropic and the Pentagon.
Ratcliffe’s remarks fell broadly in line with Trump’s memo, which included a call for agencies to quickly adopt a variety of providers while seeking assurances that access to their technology won’t be interrupted. The guidelines, however, didn’t directly answer the question of how much human involvement would be required in use of AI tools.
Earlier this month, the Defense Department opened the door for wider use of AI in selecting battle targets, Bloomberg News reported. The Pentagon’s revised principles envision allowing AI to initiate action with human monitoring, in a shift from the current practice where humans take the first step.
In his remarks, Ratcliffe said the CIA would still be driven by human decision-making even as it embraces AI, stressing that “only people can decide which is the right way to go.” Still, he called for the US to take chances in its pursuit of the emerging technology.
“We’re going to take smart risks, we’re going to experiment, and then we’re going to course-correct as we go,” he said. “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.”
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