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Statement of Task

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will convene an ad hoc committee to identify potential scenarios over the next 10 to 20 years for the balance between encryption and decryption (and other data and communications protection and exploitation capabilities). The committee will then assess the national security and intelligence implications of the scenarios it deems most relevant and significant, based on criteria it develops.

The committee will first identify plausible scenarios, and the technological drivers (and other major drivers as deemed relevant by the committee) behind these scenarios, and potential areas of technology surprise. It will consider such factors as likelihood, speed, difficulty of planning and response, and consequence, in order to advise on which scenarios are most worthy of attention. The committee will also consider implications for applications of encryption such as cybersecurity, digital currency, cybercrime, surveillance, and covert communication.

The committee will then assess the national security, intelligence, and broad societal implications of each scenario determined by the committee to be most worthy of attention; identify and assess options for responding to these scenarios; and assess the implications for future Intelligence Community investments. In doing so, it will consider actions common across all scenarios, scenario-dependent actions, and technology developments that the Intelligence Community should monitor in order to narrow the range of possible scenarios in the future. It will also consider how other governments might act in each of the scenarios, and the implications of those actions for the United States. This project will produce a peer-reviewed consensus report.