The intelligence community’s future is in many ways contingent on how quickly and capably its officers can take advantage of emerging technologies.

The 2023 National Intelligence Strategy, published earlier this summer, makes clear the IC must cultivate a talented and diverse workforce while harnessing “state-of-the-art” technology.

“The IC will improve its ability to provide timely and accurate insights into competitor intentions, capabilities, and actions by strengthening capabilities in language, technical, and cultural expertise and harnessing open source, ‘big data,’ artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics,” the strategy states.

Intelligence agencies have historically been on the cutting edge of technology, but the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence and other digital capabilities in the private sector has the IC playing catch up.

“We’re kind of starting with a base of employees that are digitally savvy to begin with, but we’re trying to align that with some of the emerging technology that’s going on out there in the world,” Christine Parker, senior strategist in talent management at the National Security Agency, said on Federal news Network.

The NSA is in the midst of a major hiring drive and taking a hard look at its recruitment strategies through the “Future Ready Workforce” initiative. The agency is looking to recruit a next-generation workforce by driving down its typically lengthy hiring timelines and even looking at remote work options.

But Parker said the NSA is also focused on reskilling and upskilling its existing workforce to equip them with the latest technological skills the agency needs to meet its mission. She said the NSA is working with the National Cryptologic University to develop courses for its employees.

“We know we have the talent in house already, we might just need to enhance it a little bit,” Parker said. “So how do we build some coursework internally to do that? And how do we work with our external partners?”

CIA seeks digital talent

The Central Intelligence Agency is also on the hunt for digital talent and skills. Cindy Susko, director of the CIA’s Talent Acquisition Office, said the agency is targeting undergraduate and graduate programs across a range of engineering, computer science and math specialties.

And like the NSA, the CIA is also looking at reskilling and upskilling to keep pace with emerging technologies like AI and machine learning.

“There’s a need for everyone to increase their technical knowledge, regardless of what occupation they were hired into, because it is what we need in order to be able to support the mission,” Susko said.

With the recent advances in large language models and computer vision technologies, AI and machine learning is on the forefront of what Michael Epley, chief architect and security strategist at Red Hat, calls “ubiquitous technology.”

“We’ve seen the rise of AI and ML systems recently, and it’s to the point where those systems have infiltrated how we think about and analyze data and information that we’ve obtained, and even become primary sources for that information,” Epley said.

Technology ‘the problem and the solution’

The infusion of digital technologies in everyday life has some intelligence agencies considering shifting more work to unclassified environments.

Parker said the NSA is looking at how to get its entire workforce up to speed on “data acumen” to ensure they know what can be done in unclassified environments and what has to stay in Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF)

“Every single person who works in this agency is going to have to know and on understand the technology behind that,” Parker said. “You don’t have to be an expert, but you have to have some understanding of how these systems work, how they’re separate, and how they’re not separate, to maintain that security that we need to do these missions. So there’s a lot of in house development going on in those areas.”

Epley pointed to how the adoption of a “zero trust” cybersecurity approach could help agencies ensure their data is shared and protected appropriately, potentially allowing the intelligence community to pursue models that split software development, for instance, between the “low” unclassified side and the “high” classified network.

“Modern workforces expect things like access to mobile devices, and ubiquitous communication and collaboration models,” he said. “It’s so deeply ingrained into our culture and in our in our personnel and how they operate. So technology is both the problem and potentially the solution to a lot of these things going forward.”

Learning objectives:

• Approach to building the digital workforce
• Reskilling and upskilling to meet new demands
• Training techniques across the IC