Then came a surprising announcement from Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence. AI tools are currently in the process of scanning over 80,000 still potentially classified documents. Former President Donald Trump directed this effort. Its sole purpose is to decide if these documents need to remain classified or can be given to the American public.
Thanks to AI, it’s now possible to make more of the massive caches of formerly secret data public than ever before. In the past, analyzing this data could have taken months or years. Gabbard was particularly keen on AI’s ability to simplify workflows for intelligence professionals. By automating many of the boring tasks, it puts analysts and field officers back where they’re supposed to be—working on high-value assignments.
“We have been able to do that through the use of AI tools far more quickly than what was done previously — which was to have humans go through and look at every single one of these pages,” Gabbard stated. This policy shift is part of a broader debate taking place in Washington. It examines the use of commercial artificial intelligence in national security and how far we can trust machines to engage with sensitive information.
Advances in AI have been remarkable. Yet, Gabbard did not promote what kind of safeguards exist to protect the data processed through these systems. She further failed to clarify how these AI tools determined which documents should remain classified. Indeed, this lack of clarity calls the entire methodology into serious question.
The new initiative is a promising sign of an accelerating movement that seeks to bring innovative technologies into national security processes. Gabbard remarked on the importance of exploring existing tools in the private sector, questioning, “How do we look at the available tools that exist — largely in the private sector — to make it so that our intelligence professionals… are able to focus their time and energy on the things that only they can do?”
Debates over how AI should be applied to safeguarding America’s most sensitive secrets are becoming increasingly urgent. Gabbard’s comments underscore the promise of this technology, but they bring to light the challenges it poses. The intelligence community is at a critical inflection point as it strives to reconcile competing priorities of efficiency and security in an increasingly dynamic environment.
