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CIA Plans To Replace Spies With AI (thenextweb.com)

Posted by msmash on from the change-in-plans dept.

Human spies could soon be relics of the past. Dawn Meyerriecks, CIA's deputy director for technology development, recently told an audience at an intelligence conference in Florida that CIA was adapting to a new landscape where its primary adversary is a machine, not a foreign agent. From a report: Meyerriecks, speaking to CNN after the conference, said other countries have relied on AI to track enemy agents for years. She went on to explain the difficulties encountered by current CIA spies trying to live under an assumed identity in the era of digital tracking and social media, indicating the modern world is becoming an inhospitable environment to human spies. But the CIA isn't about to give up. America's oldest spy agency is transforming from the kind of outfit that sends people around the globe to gather information, to the type that uses computers to accomplish the same task more efficiently. This transition from humans to computers is something the CIA has spent more than 30 years preparing for.

80 comments

  1. lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Centered Idiot Agency

    1. Re:lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just like Miss Mash and her retarded "al" stories.

    2. Re:lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Clowns In Action

      like Syril Galindo, currently back in the US after a completely failed operation in cCentral America

  2. My name is Bond by the_skywise · · Score: 0

    bleep boop TERMINATAH BOND!
    ...
    Or worse it'll be a variant of Clippy.
    tap, tap, I see you're looking at classified material - mind if I copy and paste those for you?

    1. Re:My name is Bond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Possible future interrogations: "Is your avatar, or has it ever been a member of the CIA!? If you don't answer, your avatar gets Pepe the Frog treatment!", "Who is your avatar working for? If you don't answer we get all actor model on your CSP!"

  3. Copyright Infringement.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They copied that from one of the last bond films. Someone should sue.

    1. Re:Copyright Infringement.... by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

      My concern is that they'll train the AI using the bond films and then I'm going to be in trouble!

    2. Re:Copyright Infringement.... by desdinova+216 · · Score: 1

      it could be worse, they could use Archer

    3. Re:Copyright Infringement.... by gnick · · Score: 1

      Archer would be pretty easy to profile. The first time a cartoon character is admitted to the hospital with cirrhosis, they just have to get him to speak. His voice will give him away. He sounds just like the guy from Bob's Burgers.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  4. AI? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Call me when AI can ener your house and put hidden listening devices. Oh ... wait...

    1. Re:AI? by Streetlight · · Score: 1

      Call me when AI can ener your house and put hidden listening devices. Oh ... wait...

      I assume you're thinking all those IOT devices from Google, Amazon, etc., and Facebook and connected sites (whether you are a subscriber or not) are doing the work of CIA spies.

      --
      In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
    2. Re:AI? by HeckRuler · · Score: 1

      I'd be surprised if they haven't shown up to XYZ headquarters with a warrant, a gag-order, and a fat check to cover the cost of pushing a selective update to a (hopefully) select individual.

      Apple got in the news for resisting a request/command for breaking their iphone security wholesale. You wouldn't hear about the companies that comply with the gag order. But even Apple's canary has been dead for years. So has Reddit's..

    3. Re:AI? by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

      I'd be surprised if they haven't shown up to XYZ headquarters with a warrant, a gag-order, and a fat check to cover the cost of pushing a selective update to a (hopefully) select individual.

      Apple got in the news for resisting a request/command for breaking their iphone security wholesale. You wouldn't hear about the companies that comply with the gag order. But even Apple's canary has been dead for years. So has Reddit's. [wikipedia.org].

      Which all just further proves that the biggest threat to America (and much of the rest of the free world) is the US Government which abandoned any pretense of "Constitutionally limited powers" long ago.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  5. Pompeo: "And that's my cue... enjoy." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What could be less accountable than the CIA? A: The CIA run by fucking Skynet, of course!

  6. Messaging is important for humanity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I always use CryptoHashChaining to secure my enterprise data in a privacy-first manner.

    Everyone, I believe, should think about switching to crypto hashing to store data securely and crypto-ready.

    All crypto should be crypted cryptically, you crypto LUDDITES.

    Crypto crypts, crippity cryptiloid, crypt!

    1. Re:Messaging is important for humanity by vtcodger · · Score: 1

      Ahem.... How do we decrypt your post? Is the fact that every other word starts with the letters "crypt" some sort of clue as to how to crack whatever code you are using? Our AI keeps giving us segmentation errors when we attempt to decode it.

      PS - My bosses in Tashkent are very curious about this matter.

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
  7. They're changing their name to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    CAIA

  8. Why not go the whole hog ... by Alain+Williams · · Score: 3, Insightful

    produce a VR world where the spies can chase after each other and leave the rest of us alone.

    1. Re: Why not go the whole hog ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They did that already...

  9. What could possibly go wrong? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I thought CIA had already been deficient enough when it came to HUMINT. Now they propose to scale even further back when it comes to people immersed in the environment and attuned to the meaningful signals and things out of order? I can't see what could possibly go wrong with that...

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
    1. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by physicsphairy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The CIA being the CIA, it's a good policy to let other countries think that they are dispensing with their human spies if, in fact, they aren't (so they receive less scrutiny). It's also an advantage to paralyze enemy's use of technology by making them paranoid. Or to cause them to give away the location of sensitive data by clumsily trying to protect it against a new threat. And if the enemy doesn't respond that way, then the CIA can continue development and reap the actual benefits of wielding AI against an unprepared enemy. I wouldn't take information they publicly disclose too literally.

      --
      When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
    2. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what could possibly go wrong

      everything.

    3. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      One of the good things Bush Jr did was to recognize that:

      http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/18/bush.intelligence/index.html

      You'll never do as well with just information you can get over the Internet or satellite pictures as compared to "a man on the ground"

      I was approached in 2010 as a resource since it was noticed I was always angry and agitated. Apparently that's one of the key things they look for. I was working 80+ hours a week for a Chinese-owned start-up so of course I was. I also was MOS 35M (human intelligence) in the US army, but I never really did anything related to that and had a mortgage I couldn't pay after a pay cut. I said no and to never contact me again. Less than six months later I was laid-off and didn't have unused vacation time (and all of it was unused since we didn't allow any time off) paid.

    4. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All the political figures have their smart phone data to be hacked, or voluntarily given to the State Department. The rest can be covered with leaflets: "Think something's up? Call the CIA! We try our damnedest to fix it."

    5. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A couple of friends I grew-up with lost their jobs under Clinton since he cut intelligence spending by about half. Most of the spending cuts were on analysts. So as I understand it we kept a lot of overhead spending on infrastructure and intelligence gathering, but there wasn't anyone to review that information. Moynihan from NY even introduced a bill to kill the CIA. I remember it because a friends daughter was interning for him at the time. John Glenn stood up to him on that.

    6. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by greenwow · · Score: 1

      Wow, an article post-2002 from CNN about Bush that wasn't negative.

      I'm more surprised the Chinese didn't approach you. I've worked in tech for over forty years in the Seattle area, and I have several friends that claim to have been approached by them. You sound like the perfect candidate to get leverage on.

    7. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Chinese...and all of it was unused since we didn't allow any time off

      But I bet they allowed their Chinese employees 2+ weeks off each year to travel home. I work for a large Indian company now, and locals aren't allowed more than a single day off there and there but the Indian employees all get three contiguous weeks off each year to fly home. I understand family is important to them, and I respect that, and it takes a long time for travel and costs a lot, but I would also like enough time off to see my family on the other side of the country. Haven't seen my niece since she was one week old, and she's already seven.

    8. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by AHuxley · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem for the CIA is finding people who where never on social media and who have the needed international skills.
      Every useful graduate that has language, arts, science to a standard that can pass as educated internationally had some online history.
      What nations that the CIA is spy on did was buy into a lot of US social media data and build a large real time database of decades of US education.
      Anyone in the USA who is educated to any useful "CIA" standard is now online as part of the US education system.

      Great for the US education system and the graduates looking for work.
      No so good for the CIA trying to pass a CIA spy as part of the US diplomatic workforce for decades of embassy work.
      That persons past does not fit with the history presented and the work done in the embassy.
      Other nations the CIA likes to spy on have created and contracted a lot of US detective agencies and US investigators who do pre-employment screening on workers. All US workers.
      Their real time decades of data sets allow most nations to build up a database of every US graduate and "worker" with the academic ability to work internationally.

      The CIA attempted to create past factual histories online for missions but if the data was not in place years ago and in the hands of the private investigators it does hold up. New data given to US social media stands out when placed in trying to look a decade old.
      The only way around this is to use real US citizens who get asked to work for the CIA in another nation.
      Business, NGO, charity, people of faith, engineers, historians, tourists, medical experts all get approached to be "CIA" and report back on their visit to another nation the CIA is interested in. Their past is perfect as it is all "true" and other nations are trusting of average people.

      The AI is just an internal CIA database of all the normal people from everyday US who are now working for the CIA around the world.
      Its not real spies the CIA knows and trusts so its "artificial intelligence" as in the people doing the spying for the USA are not classic CIA spies in any way.

      A CIA computer system gets asked to find the best US graduates to spy on China. That group of people get approached and the CIA offers them a deal before their next trip to China.
      That person works, holidays, studies in China with a few side tasks for the CIA and then returns to the USA with their reports.

      The problem for the CIA is that it cant trust the people it is now contracting to be spies.
      They did not come from within the CIA and all its own investigations.
      Split loyalty and Communist support then becomes a risk for the CIA when approaching US academics to spy for the CIA.

      Social media and its images upset decades of easy CIA spying globally.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    9. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My God, we could ALL be a threat!

    10. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shut up and do your work, white devil.

    11. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by BrianMarshall · · Score: 2

      ...when it comes to people immersed in the environment...

      If the CIA needs to... uh... "immerse people in an environment", AI alone isn't enough - they will need some hardware... /dev/wtrbrd maybe.

      --
      "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
    12. Re: What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Spies generally get spied upon and double roles have always been an issue. Never been that covert and spies only get exposed when they somehow break the rules. Dont think of it as covert, but as war.

    13. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Loose lips might sink computers! Beware of unguarded talk!
      See something? Hear something?
      Call 911-5648-CIA

    14. Re:What could possibly go wrong? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      They probably think that the AI is less likely to leak information on moral grounds, or be turned into a double agent.

      Or maybe it's a response to them having too much data to sift through, thanks to the NSA feeding them "full take" dumps and the like. That's the goal remember, listen to and watch everything everywhere all the time. No source too small or insignificant, just filter it all into the great database and let the AI run wild making connections.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  10. The Inhospitable Seeds You Sow. by geekmux · · Score: 2

    "...difficulties encountered by current CIA spies trying to live under an assumed identity in the era of digital tracking and social media...the modern world is becoming an inhospitable environment to human spies."

    Hope standing by and allowing social media to violently fuck over the concept of privacy while granting those mega-corps Too Big To Fail status was worth it for all those who are now struggling in this "inhospitable" environment...

  11. Who's AI is bigger? by bobbied · · Score: 1

    MY AI is BIGGER than your ai... I win!

    This article is garbage... Who in their right mind thinks this even could happen?

    Seriously, who believes this tripe? No human spies eh? Yea... Not going to happen.. Just like taking the pilot out of fighter aircraft isn't going to happen. Sure, SOME activities will be automated, but humans are going to be a part of these activities for as long as more than one human is alive.. I know it sounds tempting and the common wisdom is AI will take over all sorts of complex things, but it won't really. Sure, AI will make tasks less complex and take over the mundane, but It's not doing these pie in the sky kind of things any time soon...

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    1. Re:Who's AI is bigger? by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      No human spies does not mean no human analysts. It relates to not sending agents into other countries to conduct criminal activities, often in association with organised crime in those countries. Rather the insertion of electronic hacking devices. Depending upon how, small, how they obtain power, how effectively they can secret insert and how widespread those insertion are. The boundary of war, level hacking insertions, millions of device. That is high level and does not count the simple stuff like Windows anal probe 10 with targeted backdoors via unique updates. Of course all hardware and software supplied by any US company is expect to have back doors for overseas deployment.

      This in preference to proper policing treaties, hence no need to spy but no war profits, who wants those.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    2. Re:Who's AI is bigger? by bobbied · · Score: 1

      Human activity is NOT electronic, so spying via AI then is easily subverted. Just keep things personal and/or off the electronic infrastructure your adversaries can monitor. Only a fool would think AI can monitor stuff it cannot possibly see.

      Yea, AI might be able to sort though reams and reams of data looking for information, but it's never going to see stuff that's not in the data it can collect. There will need to be "spies on the ground" forever, both to bypass electronic monitoring and infiltrate to collect information in ways that cannot be monitored..

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  12. Strike the word "spies" from this sentence: by ffkom · · Score: 1

    "in the era of digital tracking and social media, indicating the modern world is becoming an inhospitable environment to humans."

    That's the correct statement.

  13. Physical access trumps AI exploits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You could have the strongest digital lock in the world and still get pwned when Sam Fisher plugs a USB stick into your secure server.

  14. Done that in 1966 episode of "The Fugitive" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0584005/

  15. Does this mean we're ending the war of terror? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I cannot imagine people like Osama bin Laden, and al Bagdadi, or even Kim Jong Un had/have a giant online presence for these AIs to analyze. Without human agents, I'm assuming that people like them are no longer targets? Genius. At least we might finally have peace.

    1. Re:Does this mean we're ending the war of terror? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Were they ever really targets? Without bogeymen, it's rather challenging to justify the massive out of control budget for defense. The kind that is and of itself a threat to national security.

      Granted, they did eventually get Osama bin Laden, but not until after they'd spent trillions of dollars on that pointless war in Iraq and made a major mess of Afghanistan.

    2. Re:Does this mean we're ending the war of terror? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would agree with you, it's just interesting that they're dropping the pretense for their existence.
      We pay them because we think they're keeping an eye on the bad guys like those I mentioned.
      But if we're the bad guys (instead of ISIS, al qaida, DKPR, etc), then their existence is unnecessary.

  16. Got the perfect name for it... by Smidge204 · · Score: 2

    Call it "Project 2501"

    Now we'll just need a war where the Korean peninsula gets nuked into oblivion and we'll get set.
    =Smidge=

    1. Re:Got the perfect name for it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now we'll just need a war where the Korean peninsula gets nuked into oblivion and we'll get set.

      Well, Trump has got you covered in that department.....

      Call it "Project 2501"

      That's the key to my car!

  17. Just type what you want to report by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    will AIs really be able to lie as good as CIA humans have already proven?

  18. Does this mean future spy movies by k6mfw · · Score: 3, Funny

    are going to be really boring except for computer nerds?

    --
    mfwright@batnet.com
    1. Re:Does this mean future spy movies by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      A communist nation sends its spy into the USA to become friends with a US nerd as a movie plot.
      Years of UK pop culture, US computer lore. The politics and university life all getting used to become cyber friends.
      The nerd is so happy to have a real friend they start spying for "reasons".
      Slowly the Communist nation helps the US nerd advance in their day job. Getting more clearances and access to secret US mil/gov information.
      US security has to work hard to discover the well placed nerd spy.
      Not the charm and fun of the classic Romeo Spies but its a spy plot with nerds. It could be a very satisfying movie.
      The CIA working with the NSA and GCHQ with help from MI6 to find the nerd that got a US embassy job. Think of the international cities in the plot.
      Switzerland? Hong Kong?

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re:Does this mean future spy movies by k6mfw · · Score: 1

      Slowly the Communist nation helps the US nerd advance in their day job.

      But never help him get a date?

      --
      mfwright@batnet.com
    3. Re:Does this mean future spy movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Instead of girl-on-girl action with Bowie playing in the background we get girl-on-girl action on a tiny window in the corner of the screen of an agent and a collection of jokes from the co-workers related to that window and its contents.

  19. What could possibly go wrong by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    HUMINT tends to actually understand what's going on, while AI believes what it thinks it sees and the apparent patterns it's presented with. You can fool an AI fairly easily, because they're designed that way, but using an AI to add data for HUMINT can also horribly go wrong. Just ask anyone in: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, pretty much all of Africa, etc.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  20. Fewer analysts going nuts by VeryFluffyBunny · · Score: 2

    I think they mean that they'll do more computer assisted analysis of surveillance data than currently. At the moment, a whole lotta people sit in windowless rooms going through piles of data that's been automatically flagged as interesting by current SIGINT algorithms. My bet is that computers will take over more of this mundane, tedious, soul-destroying work so that fewer analysts can go through more data more easily and be able to pick out patterns and interesting anomalies to report to the higher-ups.

    They're also trawling through orders of magnitude more SIGINT data than in the last millennium so the only feasible way to go through it is computer-assisted.

    --
    Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
  21. Intelligence first? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can we replace the CIA with an agency possessing something resembling intelligence first?

  22. This Only Works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If they have access to every computer, every Facebook post, every browser history, every e-mail, every smartphone, every conversation, every CCD TV feed, everything.

    OK, they don't actually need everything. They do however need a statistically significant percentage, and the more the better. Always more.

    Then they can profile everyone. People can expect visits when they book a hotel but they aren't on vacation. Inquiries will be made when people purchase something at a hardware store yet they aren't "handy". Do anything unusual, out of character, or contrary to established patterns. Also, acceptable life patterns could well be established by the CIA, and violating those norms could also trigger an investigation.

    Yes, it's paranoid, certainly that. Hollywood has been playing with these ideas for years though. Person of Interest, 24, Homeland, even the CSI franchise. Why wouldn't an organization of spooks be interested in bringing this future to life?

    And all the protections, the Constitution, courts, judges, political oversight, the Federal Government, well what of them? They have mostly either applauded strongly or been the actual requesting authority as the Panopticon has been assembled, or they have merely stood by and watched. 9/11 and the Patriot Act handed the Three Letter Agencies everything they ever wanted and more.

  23. Training by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    The usual scheme is to train IA with human gathered information. Once IA replaces human, how will it absorb new information required because the target adapts to new threats?

  24. They never learn... by hyades1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Go back half a century or so, and substitute "satellite" for "AI". The CIA let its efforts to recruit and/or train spies suffer to invest in various means of electronic information gathering. Training and recruiting is difficult, expensive and requires high-level decisions about the reliability of an agent and/or his information. This leads to a level of accountability many career civil servants don't necessarily want.

    Unfortunately the change of direction meant the CIA lost its place as one of the top intelligence agencies in the Free World. I'm not saying it was horrible or incompetent, just not necessarily the place to go for a comprehensive picture of what was happening inside Russia, China and countless ugly little dictatorships.

    So now so-called "artificial intelligence" is going to save the day?

    It won't. The single best way to get intelligence is to have a lot of well-concealed, top level spies who have access to it. I doubt that will change for a long, long time.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
    1. Re:They never learn... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was never about gathering Intel on Russia or China. It's about gathering intel on US citizens for use in parallel construction. Or worse, it's the beginnings of Samaritan.

      Remember, CIA agents are behind enemy lines when in the US for a reason......

  25. Surveillance Society Hits the CIA by crunchygranola · · Score: 1

    Ubiquitous cameras, social media, the web generally, facial recognition software and unlimited data storage is stripping anonymity away from everybody.

    Combine that with data bases on everybody (cough - Facebook - cough - Google - cough) and it becomes impossible to maintain a 'legend'.

    It makes sense that it is making old-school cloak-and-dagger work obsolete.

    --
    Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
  26. Is this legal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They are trying to legalize automation of violations of the 4th?

    Your stupid AI probably just branded me an enemy for exercising the 1st in saying that this is a really, really stupid, terrible, bad idea.

    Did you know, people are required to train the AI?

    And I don't trust you people to begin with.

    So I beg the question, is this even legal?

    If so, it should be illegal.

  27. Trenchcoat-wearing spy sits on park bench... by tgibson · · Score: 4, Funny

    "The mongoose is cold in Alberta this year."

    "Can you elaborate on that?"

    "Uh...the mongoose is cold in Alberta this year."

    "Would you like to discuss your mongoose?"

    "Eliza, is that you?"

  28. Cancel I by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Central Intelligence Agency = Artificial Intelligence

    cancel 'Intelligence' from both sides

    Central Agency = Artificial

  29. I hope it gets a voice module based on... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hugo Weaving.

  30. excuse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More likely the CIA has been using AI all along and the human agents were just a smokescreen to fool the enemies into thinking they hadn't already been pwned.

  31. This would be... by argStyopa · · Score: 2

    ...the CIA that *missed* the fall of the Soviet Union - you know, the ONE THING they were tasked with watching, analyzing, studying, and understanding?

    Yeah, they're doing a GREAT job.

    --
    -Styopa
  32. Is this re-branding of ML ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is this re-branding of ML algorithms disclosed by Snowden?

  33. Making stories up just got cheaper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since the 3 letter agencies have been making things up to justify whatever they want to do, letting a fiction writing AI take over may not much any difference. It may even come up with better plot twists than yellow cake or chemical attacks where the 1st responders seem to be impervious or victims show up at hospitals hours before the attach.

  34. You need to learn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The difference between 'could soon' and 'plans to'

  35. If they're going AI by John.Banister · · Score: 0

    I hope they also replace the management with AI. I'll be happy when the CIA AIs understand the Code of Federal Regulations well enough to tell the humans "None of your goddamned business," when those humans try to misuse the surveillance.

  36. Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here in Vladivostok we use trained Monkeys to analyze the USB sticks which our gorgeous blondes have obtained from their CIA boyfriends.

    1. Re:Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're either lying or ignorant. Not everything is so rosy in Russia as you describe, nor is it as bad as the media will have you believe. They are a standard oligarchy that doesn't give any more fucks about the common man than they need to stay in power.

  37. Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why don't they just hire Chinese business people who visit the US. Plenty of targets.

    Of course the Chinese do exactly the opposite.

    Plus Americans are incapable of protecting some of their most important registries (e.g. OPM). Maybe the Chinese registries are equally effed.

    Which means the only proper spies are the completely undocumented ones. Such as the freemasons. These folks are alleged to pull the strings behind the scenes anyway...

  38. Stoopid Whitey by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I guess you ate all the anti-White propaganda, which is emitted by the lefties. You are "privileged" and so you must be punished.

    The Asians and Africans laugh about our stupidness.

    Quit that company ASAP.

  39. But But But by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some elitists told me that "AI" would be the Next Magic Thing!

    I am a stupid whitey and I believe all the crap the moneychangers and their propaganda orgs (CNN, BBC, Hollywood, AFP,...) tell me.

    How can you dare to deconstruct this carefully chosen meme ?

    Honorable moneychangers like Elon Musk and Marvin Minsky have been spreading the meme, think of that !

  40. As The Resident Russian Here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...I can tell you our paper file cabinets do not have a USB connector. If you tried to mount one, we would have a conversation over a cup of tea with you.

    But yeah, our blondes make good use of American USB connectors :)

  41. So ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    * "Forget" your telephone at home early and often.
    * Limit the use of email and other messengers
    * Meet people in the real world without any bugs ("mobile phone") carried
    * Dont use The Exhibitionist Tool ("facebook"). Or at least minimize it.

    Then you go a long way to reduce your exposure.

  42. Sure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is why they are squealing about a supposed "Russian threat" and the "Iranian threat". These nations have outfoxed America with well-educated and patriotic men and women.

    America meanwhile suffers from the lies and bullshit spread by her own elite. How can you have clear thinking if you are told lies from a young age ? How can you fight for your Nation, if your own elite ships your job overseas ?

  43. Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It could also be interpreted as the soviets having had a top-notch security organization. Which came out of top notch security from the Russian state. Churchill already talked about how Russia is a big mystery wrapped in layers of more mystery.

    If you have lived in Russia, you will understand this and the mystery will disappear. Russians are just not as stupidly naive and defeatist as Americans and Western Europeans. They do not hate their own people as the western Marxists do. They have won a war by means of great suffering and sacrifice. They do not think Mongols and Mohammedists are "like us". They know both pose a deadly threat which must be fought by war on a regular basis.

    At the core most Russians (except the Mohammedists) are Europeans, but not weakened by Sodomist bookscribblers, defeatists and moneychangers. Russia has been founded by Vikings, very similar to Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Germany. The Russian language has plenty of proof of that which any linguistically skilled person can find out.

  44. The Clinton Administration thought the same thing by dwillden · · Score: 1

    The fact is the best intelligence is that gathered by trained, experienced agents on the ground. An AI can't go into villages in Afghanistan that have no power and cultivate relationships of trust that result in the production of useful intelligence. The AI can't run agents even in technological countries where often the safest method of transferring information out is via old school mechanical or photo-optical means.

    If it's a matter of life and death are you really going to trust that the nation you are spying on hasn't penetrated the security of the networking tools you at using. Or do you pass information via microfiche in a dead-drop. The AI can't pick up the dead-drop placed in the middle of a park.

    As I said in my subject line. In the 90's the Clinton Administration thought satellites could do everything and substantially down-sized the Humint capabilities (human agents that talk to humans) of the intelligence community. This meant after 9/11 we were actually scrambling to come up with sufficient resources (agents) to do the jobs needed.

    This official is an idiot, and hopefully there are others in place who remember the mistakes of the 90's and ignore him. Yes AI can most likely improve the analysis of all the information we can collect. But it still takes humans to collect the most reliable intelligence.

    --
    I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
  45. How stupid can they be... or is it Trump? by whitroth · · Score: 1

    Are his people pushing this idiocy?

    I mean, really, AI's going to deal with zillions of burner phones? And do they *really* think that what goes on in cafes, or close rooms, is actually all being recorded?

    Maybe all us real humans should leave the planet, and then they can have the whole planet as a porr-quality game.....