😀😃😄😁😆 From The CIA To The CEO: Operatives Coming Out Of The Shadows
The Trump administration’s push to ramp up the national defense budget to a record $1.5 trillion in the next fiscal year, which works out to a hike of about 50%, could end up sparking major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and cutting-edge tech.
The administration’s frustration with the clunky bureaucracy and slow turnaround from traditional defense contractors is clearing the way to funnel more funding toward agile startups. With that in mind, former intelligence operatives find themselves in a privileged position. Their background working with high-end tech puts them in a great spot to cash in on the growing security tech market, which is forecast to hit $338 billion by 2033.
Some of the key players stepping up include Aaron Brown, a former CIA counterterrorism officer who started up Lumbra, a company that focuses on building out advanced AI architecture. Another is Ryan Joyce, a former Arabic-speaking CIA officer who set up GenLogs Corp. to focus on cargo tracking and shore up supply chain security. Both companies entered the market within the last year.
Brown first ran into the issue of having to sift through massive amounts of data while out in the field, serving as deputy chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center’s Pakistan-Afghanistan department and participating in the years-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden. Brown said in an interview that over the course of his career, he kept running into these huge data sets and was always sure they held the clues to terrorist networks, rising leaders, and active plots. Operatives always knew they were lacking the tools to figure them out, Brown added.
😀😃😄😁😆 Ralph Henry Van Deman Institute for Intelligence Studies @VanDemanOrg
