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Priorities need budgets behind them
The Four Priorities
After two decades of counterterrorism work since 9/11, the agency could not afford to take its foot off the pedal there, but it had to focus on two big things: the return of major power competition and a revolution in technology. Four priorities were repeated publicly and to the workforce: China, technology, people, and partnerships.
The Technology Push
Technology got a first-ever chief technology officer role and a new mission center, one of the dozen or so building blocks of the CIA, focused on partnerships with the private sector. The agency cannot compete effectively with China in emerging technologies without those partnerships.
Why Partnerships Matter
Partnerships mattered because the United States no longer holds the uncontested primacy it had through most of the quarter century after the Cold War. Allies and partners became a force multiplier.
How does the CIA work with private tech firms?
Much of the frontier work in artificial intelligence, computing, and space now happens in private companies. During the Cold War, government laboratories funded a large share of advanced technology. In 1999 the CIA helped set up In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit venture firm that invests in startups with technology useful to intelligence work. The model gives the agency early access to commercial products it did not build itself.
How is the intelligence budget kept secret?
The details of intelligence spending are classified, and Congress oversees them through its intelligence committees. A recommendation of the 9/11 Commission was to make the overall figure public. The aggregate National Intelligence Program total has been disclosed each year since 2007. Individual agency lines mostly stay classified.
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