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¹ Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2021, Maintaining the Intelligence Edge: Reimagining and Reinventing Intelligence Through Innovation, a report of the CSIS Technology and Intelligence Task Force, Washington, DC, January.

IC’s ability to build and maintain a coherent, integrated view of the overall S&T enterprise. In addition, both red and blue perspectives have a shared need to understand global S&T activities.

Each agency has an S&T organization that has evolved according to the needs identified by that agency’s director and senior management. This is a consequence of each agency having its own history and its own R&D culture, which predates the establishment of ODNI. The agencies differ in matters discussed in this report, such as (1) balancing short- and long-term research; (2) collaboration with other agencies; (3) maintenance of in-house R&D capabilities; (4) assimilating relevant S&T advances; (5) making use of commercial capabilities and sources; (6) leveraging the technologies of major defense and aerospace systems integrators; (7) interacting with small innovative companies and other such innovators; and (8) interacting with the academic community. These differences affect how the recommendations of this report should apply to each individual IC agency.

Each of the “big five” has an S&T director charged with managing the agency’s R&D investments and related activities. In addition to their differences noted in the previous paragraph, the agencies’ S&T, their S&T structures have been evolving, and are likely to continue to do so. For example, in 2021, the CIA announced several major initiatives, including the establishment of a chief technology officer (CTO), a Transnational and Technology Mission Center, a Technology Fellows Program, and the CIA Labs organization.²

The S&T managers and directors across the IC agencies are charged with supporting their agency’s mission programs and they generally have wide latitude in deciding how to allocate funding and personnel to meet their missions’ current and future needs. Specifically, S&T managers in at least the major agencies view mission support as calling for a mixture of funding R&D to build near-term capabilities, future-oriented research in anticipation of the next-generations of current mission systems, and more speculative, higher risk, investments aimed at finding new ideas to support future missions. Investments can be in-house, at or with other agencies, or contracted out to academia, industry, and other performers. The amount of in-house R&D capabilities varies widely across agencies. One agency S&T manager characterized that agency’s in-house effort as being like an industrial research laboratory in size and scope, while others commented on having very little in-house R&D performance capacity.

While the mix of investments across these categories is under the control of the S&T managers, their options are subject to basic constraints, some of which can be substantial and place significant limitations on the flexibility of allocations within some spending categories. The S&T managers need to keep the agency mission managers—and ultimately the agency directors—satisfied that they are being adequately supported. The way money is appropriated limits discretion regarding allocation across R&D categories (e.g., basic research, applied research, advanced development). The funding is generally weighted toward higher technology readiness levels (TRLs)—that is, toward technologies that are moving close to implementation.

Investments are not made in isolation, and often they are coordinated with partners with similar interests at other IC agencies, non-IC government agencies, and other partners (including foreign partners). There is increasing interest in establishing research efforts that are more open to, and in contact with, the external S&T community, and the study committee believes this is both healthy and necessary. The IC’s ability to attract S&T talent benefits from increased interactions with the R&D sectors in both academia and industry, at both the student and mid-career professional levels. Such interactions could include simple collaborations as well as personnel exchanges. Such rotational assignments are proven methods for enhancing technical knowledge and skills.

NSA provides an excellent example of utilizing a diverse set of partners to meet S&T needs, including in-house research, federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) and (the Department of Defense’s [DoD’s]) university affiliated research centers (UARCs). One of these is the University of Maryland’s Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security, the only UARC focused on IC research. NSA also funds the Laboratory for Analytical Sciences at North Carolina State University.

The CIA is in the second year of standing up its new federal laboratory, an outward-looking organization that supports unclassified research and open interactions with researchers in academia and industry. “CIA Labs conducts multidisciplinary research, development, testing, and engineering to address new challenges; adapt, improve, or accelerate the production of existing solutions; and solve persistent scientific and technological problems in new

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² O. Gazis, 2021, “CIA Creates New Mission Centers Focused on China and Technology,” CBS News, October 7, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-creates-new-mission-centers-china-and-technology.

ways.”³ CIA Labs also intends to bring intelligence officers, academia, and private-sector companies together to develop technologies useful to the mission of the agency. CIA Labs will likely put the CIA and the rest of the IC in a stronger position to utilize the skills and creativity of academia and the private sector in accomplishing their missions.

Other IC agencies are considering establishing open laboratories. One objective of open laboratories is to provide a clean separation between unclassified research and classified work. Depending on the results, some information developed through unclassified work—which can draw on the world’s best scientists and engineers, and with the free flow of information allowing much more rapid advances than in classified research—can be brought “in-house” for further development as a classified project. Those working on the unclassified work are not subject to the restrictions associated with classified work, and are free to continue other open research. While this has its attractions, some of the IC managers with which the committee interacted cited security concerns with this approach, due to the proximity of cleared and uncleared individuals working closely on the same or related projects.

S&T managers within the IC also have several options for expanding the career experience of their S&T staffs. These options include rotating personnel among in-house positions; bringing in outside R&D talent on temporary assignment through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act Mobility Program (commonly known as “IPAs”); sending agency personnel out on temporary assignments; and sharing staff through joint duty assignments (JDAs). Such arrangements build relationships across agencies. One S&T manager reported that typically 20 percent of staff are on JDA at any given time. In fact, some agencies require JDAs or other rotations outside of the home agency when considering career advancements. In addition, S&T personnel are often encouraged to take assignments within their own agencies in units outside of S&T.

Some of the managers interviewed send personnel on temporary assignments outside the government, such as to academia or industry, and encourage senior academic researchers to take sabbaticals at the agency or otherwise become agency subject-matter experts. However, career rotations are not necessarily easy for the employee. Scientists and engineers from outside the IC do not necessarily have sufficient understanding of the intelligence profession and culture; and intelligence officers do not necessarily understand the world of science.

In addition to individual broadening assignments, the S&T managers interviewed by the committee staff noted important benefits from establishing R&D partnerships with entities outside their agency. Partnering must, of course, be done consistent with necessary security, and satisfy other such constraints. In the view of these IC S&T managers, partnering expands opportunities to meet mission needs, and it also helps the agency look beyond current mission needs to anticipate future mission needs, thus broadening the agency’s relevant situational awareness and enhance the country’s ability to leverage these non-IC S&T investments. Moreover, partnering arrangements provide a vehicle for personnel exchanges, rotations, and other forms of temporary assignments.

IC agencies partner with other IC agencies, with selected other U.S. government agencies, with the private sector, and with foreign partners (mostly Five Eyes⁴ partners, NATO, and other allied governments). Some of these partnering arrangements are formalized through activities such as regularly scheduled meetings; others are on a more ad hoc basis. One manager noted that the United States has become skilled at the mechanics of collaboration, but is not so good as a member of a collaborative team. Another suggested that it would be worthwhile to study how other entities (e.g., large corporations) partner in S&T.⁵

Based on the committee’s interviews, many S&T managers in the IC appear to agree that the National Intelligence Science and Technology Committee (NISTC) has not been as useful as it could be. While NISTC meetings provide somewhat of a venue for portfolio reviews, they do not offer sufficient time to do this in depth. Interviewees used terms like “general awareness” and “skim the surface” to describe the level of depth. Also, because NISTC connects only the top-level S&T managers, it does not promote working relationships among S&T experts from different agencies. One manager suggested that NISTC could be more useful if it were to provide a “matchmaking” function to assist agencies in matching needs, assets, and solutions. NISTC is now being revived,

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³ Central Intelligence Agency, “CIA Labs,” https://www.cia.gov/cia-labs, accessed August 7, 2021.

⁴ Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Five Eyes Intelligence Oversight and Review Council (FIORC),” https://www.dni.gov/index.php/ncsc-how-we-work/217-about/organization/icig-pages/2660-icig-fiorc, accessed January 26, 2022.

⁵ Benchmarking best practices might be analyzed in some detail, but this would imply a more detailed study.

with adjustments such as data calls and associated databases, and some interviewees feel it is becoming much more useful than it had been.

ASPECTS THAT LIMIT IC CAPABILITIES FOR LEVERAGING S&T

As noted in Chapter 1, the IC faces several major challenges that impede its efforts to maximize its ability to assess and access the evolving S&T landscape—including culture, security needs, and government practices. The committee examined these impediments, and found them to be credible. In particular:

• While most R&D in other contexts is conducted in an environment of open collaboration, the IC culture is generally closed, primarily due to security considerations.⁶ Outside the IC, S&T is a global enterprise, and academic and industry teams based in the United States typically have members who are not U.S. citizens. The IC does not have the same freedom to partner with its rivals that some commercial entities do, and it must generally be cautious with interactions that might involve non-citizens and/or be open to all in the S&T enterprise. Thus, the IC’s access to the global S&T landscape is necessarily constrained.
• The research and technology environment routinely operates within a digital architecture with increasing global access to data, information, technologies, and enhanced computing capabilities, and as a result, progress often advances very rapidly. Government rules, regulations, and procedures tend to restrict the agility of government agencies to follow the advances, and IC agencies typically are even more encumbered. Procurement and contracting requirements can be very time-consuming and too restrictive for the rapid pace of discovery and technology. For example, the pace of refresh of office information equipment within the IC is often much slower than it is in the commercial world, and connections to open networks are often difficult or impossible. One of the issues that is increasingly slowing down the acquisition of new office technology is the Internet of Things (IoT) challenge. A lot of new equipment comes with integrated Bluetooth and WiFi. This is a huge security issue for secure facilities. The deeper these radio frequency (RF) components are buried, the harder it is to remove them and/or to ensure that they cannot be used to compromise the secure facility.
• Committee interviews with IC S&T managers revealed that, while some innovative approaches are available, contracting rules and procedures are still viewed as insufficiently flexible to meet the needs. The process of contracting for R&D is often perceived as being too long to meet needs for timely interaction, too complicated for those who do not already have a history of working with the government, and too restrictive.
• The government’s restrictive personnel practices impede the IC’s abilities to employ experts in rapidly emerging technical disciplines. Salaries are often significantly below commercial or academic competition, hiring decisions move slowly, and long delays for matters such as security investigations can stretch the “on-boarding” process out for many months or even years. In addition, recruiting fresh talent can be hindered by necessary restrictions on foreign travel and foreign contacts, limitations on digital social activities, and by lifetime prepublication review requirements for those who are granted certain clearances. The latter is especially problematic for academic researchers who might otherwise be recruited for a temporary position at an IC agency.
• Achieving striking advances in research often requires the acceptance of risk and failure, and the IC tends to be risk-averse. In order to work at the leading edge of research, the IC needs to have greater tolerance for failure in the early stages of high-risk, high-reward research projects. To their credit, IC agencies do fund some cutting-edge work. Being involved in cutting-edge R&D is a time-tested way for an enterprise to maintain a high level of awareness and insight. However, it is not possible for the IC to be directly engaged in all relevant areas of S&T, so supplementary means of gaining awareness and insight are also needed.

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⁶ Including controlling important information in compartments with very limited access.

• As IC responsibilities are expanded into non-traditional areas such as climate change, global health threats, and disinformation campaigns, IC S&T is not adequately resourced and prepared for the additional demands of these new tasks. For reasons such as those discussed above, it is not feasible for the IC to have in-house capabilities in all of these relevant disciplines, and token involvement is not generally adequate to provide awareness and insight.
• IC agency S&T programs tend to be tightly “stovepiped” to meet agency mission needs, and to protect compartmentalization of highly classified information. This narrow focus conflicts with the broad perspective necessary to discern and follow advances in a timely way, so proactive steps to foster sharing and coordination are necessary.
• Finally, IC S&T is not configured to take a broad, integrated approach.⁷ While ODNI does have a Director of Science and Technology who serves as a focus for S&T monitoring and assessments for that office, the position is not configured or resourced to be able to fully understand the needs of the IC S&T community, coordinate S&T activities, and maintain broad awareness of the national and internal S&T landscape. Under existing authority, the role of D/S&T is more coordinator than leader among IC agencies.

FOUNDATIONAL STEPS FOR STRENGTHENING IC S&T CAPABILITIES

Improve Coordination and Collaboration Among the IC Agencies

The ability of individual agencies to share knowledge regarding S&T development work, their mission needs, and technical solutions is currently limited by a combination of security constraints (plus an internal culture that is cautious about sharing) and the absence of incentives for more collaboration. Interviews with S&T managers produced observations that more encouragement and rewards for communications among agencies are required; lack of interagency communication (on S&T) is a significant problem; and that discussions on S&T matters at NISTC meetings need to be more comprehensive. Some interviewees noted that D/S&T has made important progress in improving communication. A truly coordinated S&T system would understand and evaluate what S&T tools are needed by the various IC agencies to perform their missions; assess the availability of such tools; promote the sharing of S&T information, expertise, and technologies among the IC agencies; strengthen networks among the IC S&T managers to support their missions by assuring systems development of needed capabilities through operation availability; and strengthen the collective capabilities of S&T intelligence.⁸ Interviews with IC S&T managers and the relevant experience of committee members has persuaded the committee that these objectives are not being attained as effectively as they could be.

Strengthen the IC’s Capabilities for Monitoring All of the Relevant S&T Landscape

Because advances in S&T increasingly offer opportunities for the IC to increase mission effectiveness and impact—and also recognize risks of surprise—it is urgent that the IC develop a stronger situational awareness of S&T across the globe. It must create or expand its abilities to liaise with non-IC scientific and technical experts who can provide the IC with open-source situational awareness of the increasingly rapid S&T developments in areas of interest. These networks of contacts will link the IC to experts from U.S. research institutions and corporations, from within and outside the government, as well as from international components of the S&T enterprise. The purpose of these contacts would be on collecting, mining, and assessing open-source S&T information,⁹ and commensurate capabilities must be established in order for this enhanced understanding to be shared across the

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⁷ For example, it may be impossible for breakthroughs or special insights known to one compartment to be shared with other compartments.

⁸ As noted in Chapter 1, science and technology intelligence (S&TI) is the systematic study and analysis of foreign capabilities in basic and applied research and applied engineering. The emphasis within S&TI work is on capabilities and advances that are not documented in the open literature, especially those arising in other nations, whereas most mentions of “S&T” in this report refer to a broader range of science and technology, including open-source information. Regular meetings among appropriately cleared individuals from the various agencies would be highly beneficial.

⁹ Where appropriate, cleared individuals within these networks could advise the IC on classified S&T progress around the world.

IC in a way that facilitates its ultimate use. This topic was addressed extensively at the workshops. For example, one speaker championed drawing not only on the competitive intelligence of academia but also on the competitive intelligence of the commercial sector. The challenge in both cases is that it can be difficult for the IC to reach out directly to those universities and companies without a contract in place (i.e., multiple layers of approval are needed). Discussions of how IC outreach to academia and the private sector might be accomplished are noted in corresponding sections in Chapter 4.

This speaker also suggested creating a clearinghouse that is separate from but accessible to the federal government to facilitate interactions with these academic and commercial communities, which could lead to more timely, cost-effective, and accurate awareness of global S&T. The Director of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Global described how it works internationally, establishing trusted partnerships with both other U.S. agencies and allied intelligence agencies to understand state of S&T in a broad spectrum of other countries. Similarly, it was pointed out that “In December 2020, Department of Defense International Science and Technology Engagement Strategy: A Unified Approach to Strengthen Alliances and Attract New Partners (ISTES) was released, providing a rationale for engaging with other countries. The mission of ISTES is to leverage foreign defense S&T capabilities, develop relationships with other countries to access these capabilities, maximize coalition interoperability, and achieve U.S. national security objectives.”

Increased networking would augment the IC’s current ability to maintain awareness of S&T developments within and outside the United States, and foster partnerships with non-IC entities. This could be accomplished through greater engagement in S&T conferences around the globe as noted above or, for example, funding emergent start-ups, both domestically and internationally. The effort should supplement, rather than supplant, the networking activities conducted already by IC S&T offices. Such an outward-looking effort could be staffed by scientists or engineers from the IC or on assignment from other federal agencies, federal laboratories, academia, or industry, in a manner that learns from the experience of ONR’s Global program, through which scientists and engineers with experience conducting R&D (rather than intelligence officers) handle many of the day-to-day interfaces with the non-IC community. That model has enabled ONR to build trusted S&T relationships with researchers around the globe.

Improve Methods for Collecting and Using Open-Source Information, with Emphasis on S&T

To enable this S&T situational awareness, the IC needs the technological tools to collect, manage and exploit enormous quantities of S&T data, both from open and classified sources. In today’s environment, such data can provide deep insights into other nations’ S&T activities and capabilities. Open-source intelligence is particularly germane to S&T awareness because so many of the advances in S&T take place outside of governmental efforts. Moreover, unlike much—and probably most—of the information available from open sources, S&T information is vetted for accuracy and reliability through an open process of peer review and competitive research. (It is important to note, though, that an increasing amount of information is being communicated in advance of formal publication in peer-reviewed journals, via preprints and other informal mechanisms.) Information collected from sources such as scientific publications, professional society conferences, and patent applications is inherently more credible than information from press reports, social media, and commercial data merchants.

From a more general intelligence perspective (i.e., beyond gathering information on S&T activities), the potential value of open-source intelligence (OSINT) has been recognized for decades, and efforts have been mounted to facilitate such work. For example, in the past, the CIA operated the Open Source Center, which was supplanted by the Open Source Enterprise. However, it has been challenging for the IC to mine this enormous quantity of data, identify and select the data of most significance to the IC, verify the reliability of the open-source information, and integrate it with classified sources to produce analytical products. There has been continuing progress in addressing this integration, applying advanced analytics to the combined data, while also respecting privacy issues. It would be beneficial to advance these efforts to satisfy the need to combine classified and open-source data in order to derive reliable information from both types of sources.

In addition to continuing to conduct its critical mission of collecting and analyzing information from clandestine sources, the IC also needs to more fully recognize the value of open-source S&T information, particularly

to support S&TI and S&T awareness, and further its ability to collect, analyze, and integrate S&T information from open sources.

Overcome Bureaucratic Obstacles That Impede IC Efforts to Fulfill Its S&T Missions

The seven items discussed in the section above on “Aspects That Limit IC Capabilities for Leveraging S&T” suggest that IC agencies face some common bureaucratic challenges with respect to fully using the IC’s S&T capabilities. A shared approach to addressing them would be more efficient and effective than separate efforts. An example of such a shared challenge is the systemic barriers in hiring and retaining S&T professionals. These barriers include requirements for security clearances and the lengthy clearance process, government salary scales, impediments to career path opportunities, and restrictions on publication and on travel.

IC access to, and understanding of, the broad national and global dimensions of the S&T landscape requires IC personnel who interact with professionals across that landscape. Timely awareness of and access to new developments requires the IC to recruit and retain scientists and engineers who are current in their fields and have active working contacts with those conducting leading edge R&D. Thus, the IC needs to develop personnel policies and practices that attract qualified people to the IC in a timely manner. In the experience of the study committee, reinforced by comments received during its interviews and two workshops, the IC could do more to improve its hiring and retention of S&T professionals.

Another shared bureaucratic barrier that limits the IC’s capabilities with S&T arises from contracting processes that hamper access to rapidly developing technology. Innovation is often stifled by inappropriately detailed contracting requirements. Lengthy contracting processes are a broad problem within the IC, particularly for rapidly evolving technologies such as computing capabilities. In addition, there are apparent cultural preferences toward risk avoidance in developing innovative contracting procedures and away from use of less-common contracting approaches. Congress has authorized DoD to run a pilot program to explore novel contracting for software-related initiatives, and some agencies have sought to exploit other transaction authorities to allow them to be more innovative with their contracting. Shared attention to these options, and to minimizing cultural limitations, could facilitate more nimble contracting.

A third shared bureaucratic barrier arises from requirements related to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which were designed to control dissemination of information related to weapons systems and military technologies to all nations. At present, these regulations can impede timely S&T collaboration with NATO, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, and other allies and thus unduly constrain the IC’s work. The intent of ITAR is to safeguard sensitive U.S. defense technology (both products and information) against export to adversary nations. However, because re-exports from a primary recipient are also covered, information shared with close allies (e.g., Five Eyes and NATO) can also be subject to ITAR review and restrictions. This process can impede S&T information sharing. Currently only one nation, Canada, enjoys a limited ITAR exemption.¹⁰ This problem has been recognized for many years.¹¹ Extending the Canada exemption to selected other allies, as previously suggested,^12,13 could be extremely helpful to IC collaborations. Technical interaction with close allies will be constrained unless exemptions or other means of narrowing ITAR restrictions can be found.

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¹⁰ Trade Commissioner, Government of Canada, “Export Controls and Canada,” updated June 6, 2021, https://www.tradecommissioner.gc.ca/sell2usgov-vendreaugouvusa/procurement-marches/export-cont-export.aspx.

¹¹ See, for example, U.S. Congress, U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Technology, Impacts of U.S. Export Control Policies on Science and Technology Activities and Competitiveness, 111th Cong., 1st sess. February 25, 2009, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg47610/html/CHRG-111hhrg47610.htm.

¹² J.A. Lewis, N.D. Wright, and G. Rees, 2021, Innovation with Allies: Practical Paths Forward, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 26, https://www.csis.org/analysis/innovation-allies-practical-paths-forward.

¹³ T. Bromund and D. Kochis, 2017, How to Expand Defense Trade Cooperation Between the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation.

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¹⁴ CSIS, 2021, Maintaining the Intelligence Edge, p. 15.