2 min read
The CIA recently used AI to generate an intelligence report without a human analyst driving it. Deputy Director Michael Ellis confirmed the milestone Thursday at a Special Competitive Studies Project event, marking a shift from quiet experimentation to a public declaration of ambition.
Ellis said the agency ran more than 300 AI projects last year, Politico reports. Somewhere in that stack, a machine produced an intelligence product entirely on its own—a first in the agency's history.
The near-term roadmap is more incremental. Analysts would get AI "coworkers" embedded in agency analytics platforms to handle drafting, editing for clarity, and benchmarking outputs against tradecraft standards. Humans would still ultimately sign-off on the results. But the goal is speed—getting intelligence products out faster than a human-only pipeline allows.
Within a decade, Ellis said, CIA officers will manage teams of AI agents operating as "autonomous mission partners," a hybrid model that scales intelligence gathering in ways no human workforce can match alone.
The CIA has been building toward this for years. In 2023, the intelligence agency announced its own AI chatbot to help staffers parse surveillance data. By 2024, CIA Director Bill Burns and MI6 Chief Richard Moore jointly disclosed they were actively using generative AI for content triage, analyst support, and tracking how foreign adversaries deploy the technology. Ellis' remarks push that public timeline forward considerably.
Earlier this year, Anthropic declined to relax restrictions barring its tools from domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons applications. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded by designating Anthropic's products a "supply chain risk." President Trump then ordered every federal agency to phase out Anthropic tools. The company has legally challenged the move.
Ellis didn't name Anthropic, but the message landed clearly. The CIA "cannot allow the whims of a single company" to constrain its use of AI, he said, and the agency is actively diversifying across vendors to stay operationally flexible.
Ellis also flagged that the CIA doubled its technology-focused foreign intelligence reporting, tracking how adversaries like China are deploying AI across semiconductors, cloud computing, and R&D. The agency's Center for Cyber Intelligence was elevated to a full mission center—a move Ellis described as critical, given that "the battle of cybersecurity will be a battle of artificial intelligence."
Decrypt-a-cookie
This website or its third-party tools use cookies. Cookie policy By clicking the accept button, you agree to the use of cookies.