Intel analytics

Artificial Intelligence Outperforms Human Intel Analysts In a Key Area


In the 1983 movie WarGames, the world is brought to the edge of nuclear destruction when a military computer using artificial intelligence interprets false data as an imminent Soviet missile strike. Its human overseers in the Defense Department, unsure whether the data is real, can’t convince the AI that it may be wrong. A recent finding from the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, suggests that in a real situation where humans and AI were looking at enemy activity, those positions would be reversed.

Artificial intelligence can actually be more cautious than humans about its conclusions in situations when data is limited. While the results are preliminary, they offer an important glimpse into how humans and AI will complement one another in critical national security fields.

DIA analyzes activity from militaries around the globe. Terry Busch, the technical director for the agency’s Machine-Assisted Analytic Rapid-Repository System, or MARS, on Monday joined a Defense One viewcast to discuss the agency’s efforts to incorporate AI into analysis and decision-making.

Intel analytics

Leidos to support Army with intel analytical sofware

Leidos has been awarded a slot on an Army contract, with a maximum value of $250 million, to develop analytical software for intelligence analysis.

Under the five-year, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract with the Army Research Laboratory's Sensors and Electron Devices Directorate, Leidos will be one of four contractors to compete on task orders to develop software.

"Leidos will develop a suite of analytic software and tools to encompass the integration of large sets of data and the redeployment of new and existing sensors in an effort to create an ecosystem which allows the effective and efficient gathering and use of information," according to a company news release. "Technologies include sensors, cloud computing, multi-source data fusion, munitions detection systems, signal processing tools and concepts, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (PED) tool automation capabilities, and Counter-IED (CIED) technologies and systems in asymmetric, counter-terrorism, and counter-insurgency warfare scenarios."

Intel analytics

Exclusive: 50 Spies Say ISIS Intelligence Was Cooked

More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned.

The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S. military command charged with the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State assesses intelligence.

“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official said.

Intel analytics

Spies: Obama’s Brass Pressured Us to Downplay ISIS Threat

Senior military and intelligence officials have inappropriately pressured U.S. terrorism analysts to alter their assessments about the strength of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, three sources familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. Analysts have been pushed to portray the group as weaker than the analysts believe it actually is, according to these sources, and to paint an overly rosy picture about how well the U.S.-led effort to defeat the group is going.