IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 85

our libraries, from aardvarks to zymurgy, we who are
living in a modest information booth facing outward,
our unseeing backs to a vast and classified empire
we barely know.
Since Galison published his article, the U.S. IC has
continued to expand and modernize its activities,
particularly with respect to IT, to ensure the United
States maintains its dominance in its national security
mission [16], [17]. Thus, understanding the inner
workings of the IC-and how it produces knowledge
with information technologies-is an important gap
that needs attention [18].
Information technologies and
intelligence practitioners
How do working-level intelligence practitioners
perceive and adopt new technologies, such
as information technologies? A few studies have
examined the culture and use of collaborative
and information technologies in the U.S. IC [19]-
[21]. These studies have focused on working-level
knowledge-making practices in intelligence, and
how new technologies can run against traditional
cultures and work processes, in particular, intelligence
units and agencies. But these kinds of
studies are few and far between-we do not have
many robust empirical studies that provide information
on where the specific problems and pressure
points lie in incorporating new information
technologies into intelligence work. In talking with
intelligence practitioners, many have shared with
me personal anecdotes about painful experiences
of having new technologies foisted upon them, ultimately
creating more difficulties and trouble than
they were worth. In some cases, this is because an
upper-level decision was made to adopt the new
technology without considering user preferences
or context, or without considering the available
skills or expertise of working-level analysts. This
has led to some intelligence analysts avoiding new
technologies, even when these technologies might
have provided the capability for increased assistance
and insights into a particular intelligence
problem. Thus, user buy-in and trust in new technologies
is critical for intelligence practitioners, as
it is for other IT workers.
At the other end of the spectrum, how are highlevel
intelligence officials thinking about and making
decisions about big data and AI technologies?
What kinds of considerations shape their strategies,
September 2021
investments, and
directives?
What information
frames their decision-making about these technologies?
We do not have satisfying answers to these
questions. At both micro and macro levels, we need
more studies that look at how the U.S. IC is thinking
about, planning for, and incorporating big data, AI
technologies, and other kinds of emerging information
technologies. These kinds of analyses would
be beneficial for both practitioners and scholars. IC
managers and planners could use this information
to help them determine: 1) whether the framing
and scope of their planning efforts is adequate-or
whether there are important omissions and biases
to consider and 2) whether these technologies are
being designed, developed, and implemented in
ways that will truly enable and empower intelligence
analysts to create the best possible knowledge on a
given problem. These kinds of studies would also
help the scholarly STS/intelligence studies communities
to better understand the various sociotechnical
factors that shape how knowledge is produced
in intelligence analysis-a unique, closed, elite, and
powerful knowledge-making community in American
society. It would also give STS scholars the ability
to create new knowledge that could potentially
improve the high-stakes world of intelligence collection
and analysis, which could literally be a life-ordeath
affair.
Call
We need more STS scholars who would be willing
to invest time and energy into conducting these types
of analyses on and with the IC. This type of research,
however, is fraught with challenges that need to be
considered-the first of which is access to the IC.
Members of the U.S. IC are notoriously difficult to
access and interview; in part, their hesitation stems
from a valid fear of revealing classified information
to uncleared (and potentially risky) individuals.
But there are precedents for this kind of research.
Although with typically less of a focus on technology,
there have been ethnographic studies of intelligence
analysts within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
and the National Counterterrorism Center [21], [22],
as well as studies of the discourse, practices, and
knowledge production within different intelligence
units and cultures [23]-[27]; internal histories of
intelligence organizations [28], [29]; and historical
and contemporary studies of information technologies
used in intelligence [19], [20], [30]-[33].
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021

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