AI is eroding trust in digital communications and data, giving old-school spycraft fresh relevance for modern agents

The bots won't be coming for 007's job anytime soon. According to a former CIA officer, AI may help create false documents, but this fakery will give old-fashioned human intelligence fresh relevance.

Former CIA case officer (case officers recruit and handle foreign agents overseas) and RAND Corporation researcher Thomas Mulligan explained in the March edition of the CIA's Studies in Intelligence journal that, rather than render human intelligence work obsolete, AI may make human operators and analysts even more important to the intelligence community.

Humans won't just be necessary for intelligence work, Mulligan said. He lays out a case that AI will make human intelligence officers essential as truth becomes harder to distinguish from computer-generated fiction in the coming years. AI, Mulligan said, will be fantastic for counterintelligence operations, with intelligence gatherers, analysts, and case officers like him becoming ripe targets in the coming years. 

"Agents ...