Rightly Scaled, Carefully Open, Infinitely Agile:

Reconfiguring to Win the Innovation Race in the

Intelligence Community

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Strategic Technologies and Advanced Research (STAR)

Subcommittee

Chairman Rep. Jim Himes

Ranking Member Rep. Chris Stewart
 Acknowledgments
This report represents the culmination of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence’s Subcommittee on Strategic Technologies and
Advanced Research efforts during the 116th Congress to understand how the
Intelligence Community pursues innovation, and would not have been possible
without the valuable contributions of many individuals and organizations.
While this report was written by the Subcommittee, the entire
membership of HPSCI and the Committee’s staff had a hand in it, in particular
Raffaela Wakeman, Conrad Stosz, Thomas Eager, Amanda Rogers Thorpe,
Krishna Pathak, Kelsey Lax, William Wu, Steve Keith, and Andrew House. In
addition, I am also thankful for the collaboration with my fellow Subcommittee
Chair Eric Swalwell and his Subcommittee Staff Director Kathy Suber, given the
import of human capital management and security clearances to the subject of
this report. And from my personal office staff, I’d like to thank Jessica Hagens-
Jordan, Patrick Malone, and Elena Radding.
In addition to the dozens of career intelligence professionals we learned
from, I am grateful for the expertise rendered by the dedicated public servants
and thought leaders inside and outside government we met with to help us
understand how the United States pursues innovation, and how we can
empower the Intelligence Community to be ever more agile and open. In
particular, my sincere thanks go to the superb witnesses at our open hearing
on February 12, 2020: Chris Darby, DJ Patil, Nick Sinai, and Maria Zuber.
Finally, the publication of this report does not signify the conclusion of
the Subcommittee’s focus on innovation in the Intelligence Community. We
will continue to poke, prod, and press for the adoption of our
recommendations, and where we identify additional changes that warrant
reform, we will pursue those, as well.

Jim Himes
Subcommittee Chairman
 Table of Contents
Executive Summary………………………………………………………………………………………………………..1
Part I: Introduction………………………………………………………………………….………………….4
Part II: The Cost of Failure………………………………………………………………..………………….8
Part III: Recommendations……………………………………………………………………….…………12
Recommendation 1: Get the Money Right……………………………….……………..12
Recommendation 2: Get the People Right ………………………………………..……16
Recommendation 3: Get the Environment Right……………………….……………22
Recommendation 4: Improve IC Strategy and Vision………………………………36
Recommendation 5: Lead in the Development of Norms and Standards..38
Part IV: Conclusion………………………………………..…………………………………………………….42
Appendix A……………………………………………………..……………………………………………………………44
Appendix B………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…46
Endnotes………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………48
Minority Views……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..56
 Executive Summary

From our nation’s founding moment, innovation has been an essential

ingredient of American prosperity and national security. During World War II,
the threat of a Nazi atomic bomb prompted a federal commitment to basic
research that transformed every element of American life, including
establishing American technological pre-eminence. Today, neither that pre-
eminence, nor the commitment that fueled it, are unchallenged. We live in a
dramatically changed world. Innovation is happening almost everywhere,
including in the laboratories of our adversaries. Threats are dispersed;
terrorism, cybercrime, even a radiological or biological attack do not require
nation-state sponsorship. And just as nuclear technology emerged to change
the world 75 years ago, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biosynthesis
and other new technologies promise to reorder the global chessboard and
change the lives of everyone on the planet.
The question for U.S. policymakers, and the subject of this report, is
whether the United States will lead in the development of these technologies
or whether we will follow, and instead merely read about their unpredictable
effects in the media. Our national security depends on choosing the former
path, as does our economic prosperity and our traditional leadership role in
the development of the global norms, rules and institutions that disperse
technology’s benefits and constrain its destructive potential.
Like every element of our government, the U.S. Intelligence Community
(“IC”) has a crucial role to play in this endeavor. It brings to that role unique
assets: robust funding, exceptional people, and technology that is the stuff of
Hollywood thrillers. But its innovative capacity is also constrained by necessary
secrecy, compartmentalization and rules and a culture that often punishes risk
and cements the status quo.
Over the last 18 months the Subcommittee on Strategic Technologies
and Advanced Research has undertaken a study of existing thought leadership
and engaged with IC leaders and experts. This report presents the
Subcommittee’s views and recommendations and identifies those that are best
suited for legislative action, executive branch initiatives, or further study. While
our jurisdiction is limited to the IC, we have drawn liberally on reviews of other
government elements, especially the Department of Defense. And our
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recommendations must, if they are to be successful, be a part of a whole-of-
government approach.
The recommendations of the Subcommittee focus on five specific areas.
The first three are the critical components of innovation: money, people, and
the environment in which they come together. The fourth focuses on strategic
vision and coordination. The fifth focuses on the traditional American role of
leading in the development of international norms. The Subcommittee believes
this is critical because technological races rarely stay “won” for long.
Technology disperses. Always. So true national security requires rules,
predictability and transparency into how, when and why these tools are used.
Our recommendations include:
Get the Money Right:
• Expand the Federal Commitment to Basic Research
• Recalibrate Spending on R&D
Get the People Right:
• Broaden Targeted Hiring Authorities
• Expand Retention Incentives
• Create a STEM Fellowship Program in the IC
• Engage with Educators
• Explore Talent Exchanges
• Accelerate Security Clearance Reform
• Reconsider Whether All IC Personnel Require a Security Clearance
• Fix Immigration to Get and Keep Talent
Get the Environment Right:
• Invest in Private Sector Partnerships
• Learn Software Development Fast
• Rethink Acquisition Procedures and Culture
• Invest in Open Source Intelligence
• Leverage and Nurture the Federal Labs
• Collaborate with Foreign Partners
• Congress, Heal Thyself
Improve IC Strategy and Vision:
• Focus IC Strategic Leadership
• Establish an Intelligence Innovation Board
Lead in the Development of Norms and Standards

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 The Subcommittee notes that the national security innovation race is
often framed as a competition with China. While this is an overly narrow view,
it is true that China has dramatically increased its commitment to innovation in
terms of money, strategic coordination and methods both legal and illegal to
become a near-peer to the United States in technological capability. So we
note, with some satisfaction, that our recommendations are generally not calls
for the hierarchy, direction and centralized control that characterize Chinese
innovation efforts. Instead, they reflect the ideas of openness, flexibility and
agility that gave rise to American innovative success from Los Alamos to Silicon
Valley.
As Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and the first Chairman of the
Defense Intelligence Board, noted, we may not have an innovation problem,
we may have an “innovation adoption” problem. The ideas are out there, and
many of them have been for some time. Now is the time for their adoption.
Our tradition of technological leadership and the security that follows is at
stake.

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I. Introduction
In 1938, two chemists in Nazi Germany, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann,
bombarded uranium with neutrons to discover nuclear fission. The explosive
energy produced, and the fact that it had occurred in Nazi Germany, caused
several European physicists, including Albert Einstein, to write to U.S. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt about the possibility of a terrifying new bomb, capable of
unprecedented destruction. As he read Dr. Einstein’s warning, President
Roosevelt understood that certain technological advancements would be
capable of both improving life and altering history, possibly catastrophically.
Einstein warned the President of the threat of what we would call today
“game changing” technology. In response to this warning, the Manhattan
Project – and a broad commitment to American technological innovation – was
born. The Manhattan Project accelerated the Allies past Nazi Germany to
develop an atomic bomb, the weapon that ultimately brought the war against
Japan to an abrupt end. For generations since, people have toyed with the dark
counterfactual question of what might have happened had Nazi Germany won
that technological race.
Vannevar Bush, the director of the Office of Scientific Research and
Development – which oversaw the Manhattan Project – and “father” of
America’s official commitment to innovation, saw basic research as more than
just a means to protect national security. In 1945, he noted that “Advances in
science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, shorter
hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for
learning how to live without the deadening drudgery which has been the
burden of the common man for ages past.”1
American innovation in the 75 years since Bush’s observation has been a
partnership between government-sponsored basic research and a private
sector finding applications and commercializing that research.2 The ubiquitous
iPhone is just one example of this partnership: almost all of the technology
enabling its wondrous applications – semiconductors, GPS-based location
services, voice recognition technology, and the Internet itself – was initially
researched in government laboratories.
The United States’ strategic decision to propel basic scientific exploration
through sustained funding – even, or especially when the practical application
of that research was unclear – sustained successes in the post-World War II
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era. Often, those funding decisions led to consequential advantages to U.S.
national security.3
Today, however, two trends have converged to threaten U.S. national
security and specifically to erode the relative effectiveness of the IC. First, the
United States and its adversaries are in a Manhattan Project-like race to
develop several game-changing technologies, including high-performance and
quantum computing, artificial intelligence (“AI”), and biosynthesis. Second, the
United States’ historical position as an uncontested leader in basic research
has, since the end of the Cold War, been fading fast.4 The United States is no
longer the clear leader.
China, in particular, poses a significant threat. Quantitatively, China now
rivals the United States on research and development (“R&D”) spending,
accounting for 26% of global spending compared to the United States’ 28%.5
This near parity is a result of the Chinese strategy of massive coordinated
investment in designated technological areas.6 In some technologies,
particularly biotechnology, China may be a peer or near-peer to the United
States.7
In the last several years, report after report has sounded the alarm over
America’s declining edge in scientific and technological (“S&T”) R&D. In 2013,
the congressionally-established National Commission for the Review of the
Research and Development Programs of the United States Intelligence
Community (“the Commission”) released a comprehensive report and
recommendations on the topic.8 Several of the Commissioners remain sitting
Members of Congress, serving on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
(“SSCI”) and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“HPSCI”).
Since the Commission’s report, many think tanks, including the Council
on Foreign Relations (“CFR”), the Center for Strategic and International Studies
(“CSIS”), the Center for a New American Security (“CNAS”), and the Center for
Security and Emerging Technology (“CSET”), have voiced their concern over our
eroding lead in global R&D. The recommendations of the Commission and the
think tanks are remarkably consistent, but they have received insufficient
attention from legislators and other policy makers. Appendix A summarizes
many of these reports’ recommendations.
Over the last year, the Subcommittee explored the IC’s strengths and
shortcomings in technological innovation. Our intent was not to duplicate the
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work of the aforementioned studies but rather to look at the IC’s technological
innovation from the inside and to offer fresh thinking on what can and should
be done by legislators and policymakers.
Because of the Subcommittee’s jurisdiction, we focused particularly on
the IC as it contributes to national security. National security, of course, is an
abstraction, distant from the people, institutions and cultures that promote (or
inhibit) innovation. The IC is in some ways radically different from the
Department of Defense (“DOD”), with its own set of missions, cultures and
personnel, even as it overlaps in many of those missions, departments and
challenges. Our report focuses on innovative capacity in the IC specifically,
even as we considered some particularly relevant challenges and initiatives
undertaken by others, including the DOD.
Innovation, too, is an abstraction. It is the product of a complicated
mixture of money, people, and environment as well as intangible
characteristics like genius, inspiration and culture. Getting these factors right
leads to trillions of dollars of wealth creation in Silicon Valley or the
development of a war-winning weapon at Los Alamos. Getting these factors
wrong leads to “also-ran” status, not an enviable position in the realm of
national security.
This report makes recommendations with respect to each of these key
inputs: money, people and environment. Taken together, these
recommendations suggest that the U.S. does not necessarily need to “beat
China at its own game” of more centrally directed, hierarchical, planned
innovation. Instead, we need to do better in the distinctly American direction
of openness, flexibility and agility.
To carry out our research, surface relevant findings, and develop
recommendations, the Subcommittee met with numerous experts and
practitioners both inside and outside of government and reviewed selected
literature on the nexus of technology and national security. Recognizing the
importance of identifying unconventional or novel ways for the IC to harness
emerging technology, the Subcommittee devoted considerable attention to
capturing insights from credible voices beyond Washington, including
prominent representatives from venture capital, academia, industry, and from
the startup community. Appendix B contains a description of the
Subcommittee’s engagements.

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 We must act now. Studies, reports and commissions have warned for
decades about the risks to national security from the steady erosion in our
innovative capacity. Those risks are no longer abstract or speculative. They are
upon us and presenting us with ever more adversity and ever more limited
policy options. Throughout this report, we highlight specific recommendations
that the Subcommittee has acted on or intends to address in the future.

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II. The Cost of Failure
Einstein’s letter to President Roosevelt warned of an unimaginably
powerful bomb in the hands of Nazi Germany. Today, the Pentagon takes
seriously the threat of game-changing weaponry in the hands of our
adversaries and the IC appreciates the threat of falling behind in surveillance,
data management and cryptography. The prospect of hypersonic weapons,
bio-altered “super soldiers,” or swarms of autonomous drones keeps national
security leaders up at night. But it is important to remember that less
Hollywood-esque advances in more obscure technology, and indeed in esoteric
processes, procedures and culture, may pose a greater threat to our national
security.
In considering the risks associated with technological innovation, it is
critical to consider not just linear progress in the development of the outputs
(the aforementioned weapons and drones) but the overall health of the inputs:
that is, the people, funding and environment in which they come together to
produce innovation. Getting the inputs wrong will, over time, assure the failure
of the outputs. There is a tendency in the broad policy community to focus on
those outputs. Technology is usually tangible and sometimes captivating. There
is a reason why “Q” is a critical part of every James Bond movie. Since World
War II, the U.S. has also generally held a meaningful qualitative edge over its
adversaries in technology. So, it is not hard to conjure alarming scenarios
around the deployment of “dual use” emerging technologies in the future:
● Quantum computing could help develop solutions to the world’s most
complex problems – from cures for cancer to climate change – because
of its ability to run certain models and assess outcomes in a fraction of
the time required by current computers. A scalable quantum computing
capability could also defeat the toughest encryption, rendering unsafe
U.S. nuclear command and control and the most secret communications
of the United States government.9
● Artificial intelligence could alleviate the burden of some of humankind’s
most challenging tasks, by automating dangerous jobs, eliminating
human error from medical emergencies, or predicting the weather.10 In
the future, AI could also be used to deploy thousands of autonomous
micro drones for persistent surveillance or kinetic attacks against which
defense would be nearly impossible.11
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 ● Advances in biotechnology are creating ways to manipulate the very
building blocks of life and could be used to address challenges from
pandemics to world hunger.12 At the same time, they might be used to
develop weapons that target specific human genotypes.13
Failing to lead the world in any one of these technologies might reset the
international order, threaten the norms that have guided international conflict
and competition, and undermine the model of international cooperation and
leadership that has existed since the end of World War II. However, ambush by
game-changing technology is not the only concern: incremental technological
advances can also threaten economic and national security, as the Chinese
telecommunications firm Huawei’s commercialization of fifth generation
cellular technology (“5G”) has shown.14 Huawei is the world’s largest provider
of telecommunications equipment and has been steadily growing its market
share.15 Its main competition comes from the Swedish company Ericsson and
the Finnish company Nokia, which struggle to match the price and
performance of Huawei’s offerings.16
5G networks will offer lower latency, higher bandwidth, and the capacity
to interconnect our lives into the “internet of things.” It will also generate vast
quantities of personal and commercial data for those enabling (or with access
to) such networks.17 In its 2012 investigative report on the Huawei and ZTE,
this Committee noted that with Chinese equipment in telecommunications
networks, “the opportunity exists for further economic and foreign espionage
by a foreign nation-state already known to be a major perpetrator of cyber
espionage.”18
The risks of losing the technological race to the outputs are tangible in a
way that decay and erosion in the critical inputs of innovation are not. When Q
appears in a James Bond movie, we see his toys, never his budget, the quality
of his staff or the attitude of his overseers. Though evident on a graph, the
declining U.S. market share in basic global research will never be the core
theme of a Hollywood thriller. When top-notch programmers leave the
National Security Agency (“NSA”) for the private sector, when layers of
oversight or politics punish risk taking or creativity, few notice. However,
money, people, culture, processes and incentives matter tremendously. And
the Subcommittee believes that in this area of innovative inputs, the reviews
are decidedly mixed.

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 Today’s intelligence and military industrial base has evolved dramatically
since World War II and is characterized by many layers of bureaucracy,
extensive oversight and review, consolidating contractors, lengthy
development cycles, and most unsettling of all from the standpoint of
innovation, intolerance of risk. These attributes usually developed for sound
reasons. But their effect today, particularly in the all-important realm of
software and its rapid and agile development, can be deadly.
Christian Brose, former Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, in his book The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-
Tech Warfare, explains the evolution in stark terms:
“Eisenhower had directed the military-industrial complex to incredible
effect, whatever misgivings he ultimately developed about it. But
somewhere along the way, Washington turned against Eisenhower’s risk-
tolerant approach that had enabled innovators such as [General
Bernard] Schriever and others to do the impossible, and then spent
decades replacing it with cumbersome, stultifying central planning
processes that could not deliver great technology fast or at all.
Washington sacrificed speed and effectiveness in the military-industrial
complex for the hope of cost savings and efficiency, and it ended up with
neither. It is as if America defeated the Soviet Union and then went
about adopting the Soviets’ military procurement system.”19
The risk that Brose describes, which has been highlighted by many
leaders such as former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, the Defense
Innovation Board (“DIB”), its first chairman, Eric Schmidt, General John Hyten
and Dr. Will Roper, is immensely complicated, touching on culture, incentives,
congressional turf and political concerns, among many other factors. The
challenges of achieving speed, agility, accountability for the end user and
acceptable levels of risk affect nearly every piece of technology and every
aspect of innovation inside the IC.
Nowhere are the risks of failure and the rewards for success more
dramatic than in the realm of software and its development. Software, which is
all too often thought of as just another product to be acquired or developed, is
anything but. Yes, it is an output of innovation, but the environment in which it
is developed—its speed, agility, responsiveness to the end user and constant
real time improvement—is an essential input to almost all innovation.

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 Marc Andreessen, an iconic technology investor, famously noted in a
2011 article that “software is eating the world”.20 He meant that every aspect
of life, including national defense, has become deeply entangled in and
dependent on software. It is only a small exaggeration to say that software has
eaten just about everything in the IC.
The core activity of the IC is the collection, analysis and storage of vast
quantities of information: images and electronic signals of nearly infinite
varieties, voice data, thermal signatures…the list goes on and on. Only in the
briefest and most specialized of moments – a conversation across a table in an
African café, a human judgment made of a photographic image – is software
not collecting, sorting, cataloging, labeling, clarifying or presenting the data.
The more exotic possibilities of next generation technology—megabytes of
data carried in the cells of a housefly, emotional intelligence in a machine—will
be enabled and countered by software.
Consequently, rapid, iterative, end-user focused software development
capability is essential to our competitive position and to our very security. As
Brose starkly notes, however, throughout our national security apparatus,
software development is none of those things. As the DIB’s excellent and
solutions-oriented report Software is Never Done: Refactoring the Acquisition
Code for Competitive Advantage notes, “The current approach to software
development is broken and is a leading source of risk...it takes too long, is too
expensive and exposes warfighters to unacceptable risk by delaying their
access to tools they need to ensure mission success.”
This report cannot touch on every aspect of undertaking a new approach
to software development. A variety of other reports and analyses have done
so. Fortunately, many elements of the national security effort, such as the Air
Force’s Kessel Run (discussed below) are currently modeling success. Many of
the recommendations which follow would create the environment and provide
the people to help accelerate and broaden this effort. In the aggregate, the
Subcommittee believes that they will help ensure that when U.S. policymakers
confront today’s emerging technologies face-to-face, they are in the driver’s
seat.

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III. Recommendations
Recommendation 1: Get the Money Right
Expand the Federal Commitment to Basic Research
Studies of American innovative capacity almost universally highlight the
declining commitment to government-sponsored basic research. As
demonstrated in Appendix A, nearly all of the reports reviewed by the
Subcommittee called for substantial increases in federal funding. In fact, while
the absolute federal commitment to basic research has grown over time, its
share relative to U.S. gross domestic product (“GDP”) has declined
substantially.21 The CFR Task Force notes that federal investment in basic
research has fallen from a peak of 1.9% of GDP in 1964 to a level of 0.7% in
2016 and recommends a restoration of that funding to its historical average of
1.1%.22 Many observers note that the private sector commitment to basic
research, while growing meaningfully, will not necessarily be directed at
government research priorities, but instead at developing commercial
applications.
Perhaps of greater concern is the decline in all federally sponsored R&D
relative to other countries. As Chart 1 illustrates, China is approaching and will
soon exceed the U.S. share of global R&D investment if present trends
continue. In this regard, China is a competitor in a different class from other
U.S. adversaries such as Russia, Iran and North Korea.

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 Chart 1: Share of Global R&D of United States and China, 2000-201823

45.0%

40.0%

35.0%

30.0%

25.0%

20.0%

15.0%

10.0%

5.0%

0.0%
2000 2009 2018

United States China

Chart 2: United States Federal Share in R&D, 1976-201724

600.0

500.0
Billions of Constant FY 2019 Dollars

400.0

300.0
Industry
Federal
200.0

100.0

0.0
1976 1996 2016

Year

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 Quantifiable R&D expenditure may also understate the extent to which
an adversary is financially committed to acquiring (as opposed to developing)
intellectual property. Foreign direct investment (“FDI”) into early stage
companies has been of great interest to Chinese investors, some with clear
links to the Chinese government. While overall Chinese FDI has fallen in recent
years – from $8 billion per quarter in 2016-2017 to less than $2 billion in 2019
– venture capital investments grew to a record $4.1 billion in 2018, far
outpacing the previous record of $2.6 billion set in 2015.25 While China’s $4.1
billion in venture capital investment is a small portion of total venture capital
raised in the United States, it has been concentrated in a few strategic
technologies.
While the Subcommittee believes that recommendations for increased
federal spending on basic R&D are almost certainly directionally correct, we
cannot ignore the changes in the global basic research ecosystem revealed by
these trends. Increased federal funding alone will not be enough: it must be
coupled with changes to how the IC organizes, establishes relationships, and
sets priorities for R&D in order to be successful.
Recalibrate Spending on R&D
In addition to increased funding, the Subcommittee heard repeatedly
that the current structure of the federal budget as it relates to innovation in
the IC and national security generally is rigid in ways that make difficult the
agile and flexible pursuit of ideas of uncertain success. This is particularly true
when investing in any technologies that change rapidly to suit evolving
requirements – often more frequently than can be accommodated by an
annual budget and appropriations process – and for which the line between
acquisition and maintenance is not, and in fact should not, be clear.
Unfortunately for our government, many of today’s most relevant and cutting-
edge technologies – from software to biotechnology – fall in such a category.
The appropriations process is – for good reason – designed to buttress
Congress’ power of the purse. Appropriations are for specific amounts of
money, allocated for specific periods of time, usually attached to some
framework of milestones designed to provide congressional committees with
plentiful opportunities for oversight. The committees of jurisdiction have ever
changing membership, and those members offer uneven (some might say
quirky) levels of focus over time. Combined with the frequency of continuing

14
resolutions and shutdowns in recent years, these factors work against the
unique combination of predictability, sustainability, and flexibility that
optimizes the production of valuable research. As the Software is Never Done
report observed, “Congress and DoD have created a massive body of laws and
regulations that are just slowing things down…[and] should focus on rewriting
selected pieces of old code (=legislation and regulations) that are doing more
harm than good.”
The Subcommittee intends to pursue a number of the changes proposed
in the DIB’s report, including a) new acquisition pathways for software; b) the
creation of a software appropriations category that combines R&D, production
and maintenance into a single budget item; and c) the deployment of
empowered digital experts throughout the IC to assist and promote the rapid
and iterative deployment of software to the end user. The Subcommittee will
also consider further ways to reduce the uncertainty injected into research
projects by the often short-term quality of available money.

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Recommendation 2: Get the People Right
Venture capital investors, whose livelihood depends on identifying
successful innovation, often focus on finding and supporting innovators, that is,
people. The IC is and must continue to strive to make itself an attractive
destination for the talent it needs. This involves bridging disparities in both pay
and culture relative to the private sector. The IC will likely never match the
speed or flexibility of private sector hiring, nor can it compete with its pay,
particularly in critical areas like cybersecurity and AI.26 It should, however,
leverage its unique attributes: a distinct national mission suffused with pride
and patriotism and the opportunity to work with technology and people not
available outside of government.
Broaden Targeted Hiring Authorities
Compensation issues should not be ignored entirely, and in fact, there
exist mechanisms to reduce the compensation gap. In 2017, Congress
authorized the head of each element of the IC to establish higher minimum
rates of pay for positions that require expertise in STEM.27 The NSA was
granted authority to establish a special rate of pay for positions that perform
cyber-related functions.28 In addition to those IC-specific mechanisms, the IC
can utilize government-wide authorities to hire experts on a temporary basis,
referred to as “special government employees” (“SGE”) or “highly qualified
experts” (“HQE”). The SGE authority allows agencies to appoint temporary,
part-time employees outside the standard hiring process.29 The HQE authority
permits government agencies to offer higher pay and more flexible onboarding
processes for people with relevant qualifications.30 Besides compensation, the
federal government, beginning October 1, 2020, will grant up to 12 weeks of
paid parental leave to all federal employees following the birth, adoption, or
foster of a new child – a benefit rarely offered in the private sector.31
Elements of DOD, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (“DARPA”), have benefited from special hiring authorities to fill
technical positions through an expedited hiring process and increased pay,
enabling them to attract top-tier talent.32 The Intelligence Advanced Research
Projects Activity (“IARPA”), an office within the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence (“ODNI”) with a similar mission of advancing basic
research, might benefit from similar hiring authorities, as would other IC
elements. These positions offer preeminent experts an opportunity to spend a
16
defined period leading government research efforts and advising major agency
initiatives. The term-limited nature of these positions helps ensure that these
personnel do not compete with government employees for promotion. While
attracting the right talent is essential, new hiring authorities are not a silver
bullet.
The Subcommittee believes that the IC’s existing hiring authorities are
underutilized, but that more information is needed before undertaking
legislative changes. Therefore, we recommend that ODNI conduct a study to
determine whether existing authorities fail to fulfill the IC’s need for highly
skilled STEM talent, and whether a companion authority similar to that given to
DARPA would fill such a gap.
Expand Retention Incentives, Including Student Loan Repayment Plans
IC employees – like other federal government employees – can qualify
for the Federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program if they remain in
public service for 10 years and make on-time payments on their student loans
throughout that period. Some federal agencies also provide financial
contributions to their employees in exchange for a commitment to remain
employed for a period of time.33 The IC’s record here is not uniform, with some
elements or their parent agencies offering repayment assistance for certain
categories of personnel and others not offering assistance whatsoever.
The federal government should offer such support to all federal
employees, but in the absence of such a policy, we recommend that all IC
elements establish support for federal student loan payments and, as noted in
the FY 2021 IAA, consistent standards for federal student loan repayment
eligibility.
Create a STEM Fellowship Program in the IC
IC policies should be updated to reflect the fact that many graduates and
mid-career professionals may not be interested in a lengthy career in the
federal government.34 STEM professionals have strong incentives to change
jobs frequently in order to expand their skill sets and stay current on cutting-
edge technology development.35 The IC’s recruitment, security, and
onboarding processes were designed in a time when the goal was to recruit
and retain career personnel, and thus the process often overlooks those with
the right skills who would be interested in a shorter period of service.36

17
 The Presidential Management Fellowship offers a constructive model for
shoring up the IC’s STEM workforce. We recommend that the IC explore the
creation of a technology fellowship program similar to the Presidential
Management Fellowship oriented towards recent STEM graduates.
Engage with Educators
The Subcommittee believes that the IC should broaden its engagement
with academic institutions at every level; not just to undertake immediately
valuable research, but to help encourage the STEM pipeline and better
cultivate future recruits. Colleges and universities are necessary partners, and
not merely because they are educating the future IC workforce. Engaging with
K-12 students must continue to be a component in the IC’s STEM recruitment
strategy. IC elements that are part of the DOD have statutory authority to
establish educational partnerships and to ensure such institutions are
preparing their students for careers with the federal government, which is of
particular importance when the skills are in the highly-coveted STEM fields.37
These relationships also facilitate information sharing. Over the course of the
Subcommittee’s survey, the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) sought
additional authorities to empower it to establish relationships with academic
institutions in the same way as DOD IC elements do.38

Photo: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Subcommittee supports this request in the FY 2021 Intelligence

Authorization Act, and also recommends the ODNI produce a report identifying
gaps in how the IC governs its relationships with academic institutions with the

18
goal of informing further legislative changes (as necessary) in the FY2022
Intelligence Authorization Act.
Explore Talent Exchanges
Another area to spur a more constructive dialogue between the IC and
the private sector is for each to spend some time walking in the other’s shoes.
A public-private talent exchange would expose IC personnel to the practices
and culture of the private sector and affirm the existence of extensive legal and
policy restrictions over IC operations to public skeptics. More fundamentally,
each would gain first-hand exposure to the contributions of the other.
In the FY 2020 Intelligence Authorization Act, Congress required the
Director of National Intelligence to develop policies, processes and procedures
to facilitate the detail of IC personnel to the private sector, and vice versa.
Accelerate Security Clearance Reform
The Subcommittee’s review encountered frequent frustration at the
cumbersome, time-consuming, and backlog-laden security clearance process.
Until recently, the average security clearance would take two years to be
completed, with certain candidates waiting as long as five years. At a time
when national security threats change and evolve in weeks and months, that is
not acceptable, particularly in the context of numerous recent high-profile
breaches and unauthorized disclosures of highly classified information.
As a consequence, renewed attention to the security clearance process
in the last several years has led to significant process changes. Notably, the
government is transitioning to a “continuous evaluation, continuous vetting”
model, which requires an ongoing reevaluation of personnel with security
clearances rather than the “periodic reinvestigation” approach. In addition, the
government is transitioning all government background investigations to
DOD’s Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency from the Office of
Personnel Management.39 Federal agencies with the authority to adjudicate
clearances are also working to synthesize and develop government-wide
standards and reciprocity for personnel moving from one agency to another.
Recent progress has been made in reducing the backlog, from its peak of
over 725,000 open investigations to 205,000 in July 2020, and in average
processing time for Top Secret clearances, which has been cut by more than
half, from 411 days to 79 days.40 Such improvements must be sustained while
19
the interagency council develops government-wide standards as well as
reciprocity protocols to ease the bureaucratic burden on agencies and
personnel seeking security clearances.
Reconsider Whether All IC Personnel Require a Security Clearance
Security clearance processing times stretching into years slow progress
and dissuade many highly qualified applicants from embarking on a career in
the IC, including many with STEM backgrounds.41 Providing opportunities for
STEM-oriented recruits to begin work before receiving their clearances would
allow the IC to retain more candidates throughout the clearance process.
Opportunities exist for open source intelligence work, training and coursework,
research collaborations with academia and industry, and building capabilities
that can be developed outside a secure facility.42 This could be particularly
beneficial for the STEM workforce: unclassified research partnerships, such as
with the Laboratories for Physical Science and Telecommunication Science
housed at the University of Maryland43 offer opportunities that could be
expanded to allow STEM recruits without a security clearance to contribute to
the IC’s mission.
The COVID-19 health crisis has prompted sweeping changes in the way
people work, including IC personnel; the impact of the pandemic on the IC’s
work is particularly dramatic since nearly all work performed by the IC is done
in secure facilities.
The Subcommittee believes that a Top Secret clearance is not necessary
for all IC personnel to perform their job responsibilities, and for S&T R&D in
particular, much work can be completed without even a Secret-level security
clearance.
We recommend that the IC use its experience with COVID-19 to produce a
report to Congress identifying IC positions that require personnel to maintain
security clearances and at what level, IC activities that can be performed
outside of secure facilities, and for those personnel who do require a security
clearance, what authorities or policy restrictions might prevent the IC from
placing new employees in positions lacking the clearance requirement while
they wait for their security clearance to be complete.

20
 Fix Immigration to Get and Keep Talent
Scholars of innovation have repeatedly pointed out the importance of
skilled immigration to innovation in the United States and abroad.44 Israel’s
small but highly innovative economy has benefited from mass high-skilled
immigration,45 and CSET notes that other countries, including Canada, are
modifying their immigration systems to lure talent away from centers of
technological innovation – including the United States.46 The National Science
Foundation describes the situation bluntly:
Foreign-born workers—ranging from long-term U.S. residents with
strong roots in the United States to more recent immigrants—account
for 30% of workers in [science and engineering] occupations. The
number and proportion of the [science and engineering] workforce that
are foreign born has grown. In many of the broad [science and
engineering] occupational categories, the higher the degree level, the
greater the proportion of the workforce who are foreign born. More
than one-half of doctorate holders in engineering and in computer
science and mathematics occupations are foreign born. In comparison,
about 18% of the overall population and 17% of the college graduate
population in the United States are foreign born.47
This is particularly problematic for the IC, which has rigorous vetting
procedures for its personnel,48 including the requirement that a person seeking
a job be a U.S. citizen.49 If the United States is serious about maintaining its
edge in science and technology, it must tap the highly-qualified foreign-born
students that U.S. academic institutions are educating.
In order to leverage this largely untapped resource, the United States
must grapple with its onerous, bureaucratic, and backlogged immigration
system.50 A flexible immigration system – particularly to facilitate access to
highly-skilled scientists and engineers – is essential to innovation and the STEM
workforce in the United States.51 The national debate on immigration is
currently generating far more heat than light, and a comprehensive solution to
this issue extends well beyond the jurisdiction of this Subcommittee, but we
cannot ignore the calls from across the political spectrum for meaningful
reform, nor can we overlook the benefits that would accrue to the national
security of the United States.

21
Recommendation 3: Get the Environment Right
Adequate resources and creative, empowered people are necessary, but
not sufficient, conditions for innovation. Environment, which is less tangible
and quantifiable than money or the talents of people, is also essential. Were it
not, American innovation, rather than being highly concentrated in a few
locations like Silicon Valley, Boston, New York and Austin, would be
significantly more evenly distributed.
What makes for an innovative environment is subject to debate, but a
variety of essential qualities are obvious: an open, collaborative culture, often
between innovators and nearby academic and research institutions; a culture
which embraces, rather than punishes risk-taking; an almost religious devotion
to doing things differently—what economists call “disruption” and what Mark
Zuckerberg called “breaking things”. These are not qualities that are readily
embraced by the federal national security apparatus. The Subcommittee offers
several ideas to improve the status quo, ideas which are largely about
collaboration. As Steven Johnson, author and student of innovation notes, “If
you look at history, innovation doesn’t come just from giving people
incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can
connect.”
Invest in Private Sector Partnerships
The dramatically increased share of private investment in R&D makes
clear the need for close partnership between the government and the private
sector. The dramatic array of products and services emerging from private
industry have more relevance than ever before for the IC, particularly in AI. But
quicker access to products is not everything; knowledge sharing, constructive
relationships with people and trust are essential to national security.
Some national security leaders believe that in areas such as AI and
biosynthesis, private firms are ahead of the government in innovation.52 Sue
Gordon, former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (“PDDNI”),
has suggested that for certain technological innovations, the government
should seek not to lead in innovation, but to be a “fast follower”.53 In a
competitive context in which adversaries like China are moving fast, the United
States should, at the very least, seek to be not just a fast follower, but the
fastest follower. But the IC cannot assume that private industry will share
products, ideas and research openly with government by default. For the
22
government to keep abreast of and benefit from these innovations, it must be
a partner and a customer.
Suspicion and tension between the private sector and the government
has, particularly in the last decade, impeded the trust and relationships
required for a healthy innovation ecosystem. Concerns about how the U.S.
government – and the IC specifically – respects privacy rights; how foreign
adversaries have manipulated technology platforms to interfere in politics; and
unauthorized disclosures revealing to the public the breadth of information
being turned over to the government by the private sector have all
exacerbated distrust.54
Apple’s refusal to assist the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) in
unlocking the iPhone belonging to the deceased terrorist who carried out the
2015 San Bernardino terror attacks created concern in the minds of many
national security professionals. Shortly after, Twitter instructed Dataminr – a
company in which Twitter held a 5% stake – to cease a pilot data-sharing
program with the IC, in which the IC was receiving Dataminr’s curated,
algorithm-driven feeds of public Twitter posts.55 The protest mounted by
thousands of Google employees against their company’s participation in DOD’s
Project Maven in 2018 resulting in the withdrawal of Google from the project
and from its work to run the DOD’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure
cloud computing effort also raised concerns.56 It was not lost on many national
security professionals that Google continues to assist foreign countries, such as
China, with their technological development.
In order to reduce tension and build trust, the IC must speak more
openly and publicly about its mission, values and challenges. IC leaders must
be more accessible and public-facing. The NSA’s former Director of Research,
Dr. Deborah Frincke, for example, made a priority of speaking publicly about
NSA’s research mission when she took the helm of the Research Directorate.57
Given the stakes, her approach involved risk, required care, and undoubtedly
raised eyebrows. But she succeeded, and her speeches – memorialized on
YouTube and elsewhere – are persuasive arguments for the IC’s mission that
will pay dividends in the long-run.
Another prominent confidence building measure that has improved the
tenor of the IC-private sector relationship is the Vulnerabilities Equities Process
(the “VEP”). The VEP is an interagency process that weighs the public interest

23
for the disclosure of a cybersecurity vulnerability identified by the U.S. national
security community. Although its proceedings are classified, the White House
has spoken publicly about the VEP, and there is open dialogue between the
VEP membership and Congress about its work. The VEP has streamlined
communication between government and industry by providing a framework
for the government to deliberate and ultimately provide a coherent, united
assessment on cyber vulnerabilities to the private sector and the
public.58 Notably, its resulted in the disclosure to Microsoft of a highly
problematic bug in its operating system that undermined the reliability of the
software’s certification. In layman’s terms, without the patch, hackers could
spoof a user’s certificate to trick the operating system to grant the hackers
access to the system. Microsoft released a patch in January of 2020 and
attributed its discovery to NSA.59
When she was PDDNI, Sue Gordon often spoke about the need for more
interaction between the IC and the private sector, and promoted the concept
of a public-private partnership to address shared challenges, such as how to
apply an ethical framework to the use of AI. Gordon has frequently argued
that IC leaders should seek opportunities to act as ambassadors to the private
sector.60
The Subcommittee believes that IC leaders should be more recognizable
to the public, but that they must also establish personal relationships with
industry and academic leaders. IC leaders deliver speeches at events like RSA,
Black Hat, and the Aspen Ideas Festival, and interact with other prominent
leaders on the margins of those events.61 These engagements serve an
important purpose from a public relations perspective, but trust and
relationships grow deeper in private settings. The IC and private industry and
academia will not – and should not – agree on all of the complicated issues
surrounding the IC’s work, but building relationships of trust is still important.
Unlike other government officials who may come in from the private sector at
senior levels, many current IC leaders have spent decades in military or civilian
federal service, with few opportunities to develop strong networks outside of
government circles.62
Strengthening personal relationships will catalyze information sharing,
problem solving, and collaboration. We recommend that, in a manner that is
consistent with federal ethics and contracting laws, the top three officials at

24
each IC element take at least one private meeting a month with industry and
academic leaders.
The IC should also consider how to better leverage the remarkable In-Q-
Tel model. In-Q-Tel is an IC-funded non-profit established to identify and
enable technology startups and facilitate ready-soon technology adoption for
national security purposes.63 In-Q-Tel’s extensive relationships in the venture
capital and technology communities provide it a unique perspective into trends
in cutting-edge technologies and the ability to translate between the
operational requirements of the IC, the technical expertise of a startup, and
the investment language of venture capital.64
In-Q-Tel also delivers technologies to the IC at great value to taxpayers.
Each dollar of taxpayer funds invested by In-Q-Tel in technology startups
leverages an average $16 of private venture capital. While the investments it
makes are small relative to the investment from traditional venture capital
firms, its investment dollars are a signal to others of a company’s viability.65
Furthermore, nearly 70% of investments made by In-Q-Tel result in field-tested
capabilities by IC customers.66
We recommend that the IC identify ways to leverage In-Q-Tel’s unique
position and connections with innovators outside the traditional Defense
Industrial Base to broaden the pool of partners the IC can utilize to accomplish
its missions. We also recommend that the IC assess whether (or how) to
leverage In-Q-Tel’s visibility into tech startups and the investment community
for broader situational awareness of domestic and foreign technology trends.
Learn Software Development Fast
The history of the national security establishment, and of DOD in
particular, of building and acquiring software over budget and behind schedule
is a worrying case study for how legacy government processes can impede
innovation.67 It has long been considered industry best practice to develop
software in an “agile” way, developing and releasing features in small
iterations and then incorporating user feedback into future iterations.68 DOD
seems to have too often failed to follow this and other best practices, running
the risk that vulnerabilities remain unpatched and the software is outdated by
the time it is deployed.69 As far back as 1987, the Defense Science Board noted
the importance of these practices as well as the DoD’s resistance to using

25
them.70 In its 2019 Software Acquisition and Practices Report, the DIB noted
that remarkably little had changed in the intervening 30 years.71
For DOD, the result of this inaction has been numerous software
programs that are delayed or over budget, and in some cases cancelled
outright.72 While culture and inertia play a role, it is clear from the DIB’s work
that structural limitations prevent DOD from innovating at the speed of
mission. In addition to creating security risks, outdated software practices
threaten the IC’s ability to manage its exponentially increasing quantities of
data and its ability to develop automation and artificial intelligence.73
The Subcommittee believes that these challenges exist in the IC, but to a
lesser extent, since the IC, and particularly NSA, has always relied extensively
on software and its rapid creation and deployment, as well as considering itself
its own systems integrator. It is clear that different IC elements are evolving to
private industry’s “DevSecOps” approach at different rates, so the
Subcommittee urges renewed focus on this critical change and on models for
success.
One of the more remarkable models of software development success is
Kessel Run. In 2017, the Air Force established Kessel Run as an experimental
program to enlist software engineers, designers, and product managers from
San Francisco-based Pivotal, Inc. to work collaboratively with Airmen and steep
them in the practices of the technology sector.74 The success of Kessel Run’s
model stems in large part from its willingness to challenge longstanding
cultural norms in the DOD and to adopt best practices from the technology
industry. Its extensive use of Direct-Hire Authority to expedite the hiring of
engineers, designers, and others with the skills essential to drive software
innovation is but one example.75 Congress established this authority in 2002,
but its growth has been slow and uneven, in part due to cultural resistance.76
Kessel Run shifted DOD information technology security processes to
more closely align with industry best practices. By automating the process of
testing its software for bugs and security issues, Kessel Run can update its
software multiple times per day rather than in months-long cycles, improving
both the value and security of its products.77 The first project Kessel Run
tackled saved the Air Force several million dollars per week for an estimated
investment of just $2.2 million.78 The Air Force and DOD are now replicating
the success of Kessel Run as they establish new software factories.79

26
Photo: A software development team conducts an Iteration Planning Meeting about a software project in the office
of Kessel Run. Photo credit: U.S. Air Force photo by J.M. Eddins Jr. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC
2.0) Photo link. License link. Disclaimer: The authors of this article are not responsible for and do not endorse any
content found on flickr.com or creativecommons.org. No changes made.

Those IC elements that struggle with software development are

encouraged to seek out partnerships with the private sector to absorb best
practices. While Kessel Run’s model may not be a perfect match, IC elements
should seek to adopt the best practices of DevSecOps in appropriate ways.
Good software also requires good infrastructure. While the IC is a government
leader in areas like cloud computing, it still faces challenges migrating legacy
systems and data to the cloud, and continued work is necessary.80
In order to facilitate greater awareness of software best practices and
provide incentives for their adoption, we recommend the IC explore creating a
pilot to automatically track and report metrics on software programs’
adherence to modern best practices.
Rethink Acquisition Procedures and Culture
The IC should strive for improved agility in areas beyond software
development. It should rethink how it purchases other systems, goods, and
services. In his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in April
of 2018, Dr. Eric Schmidt, the first Chairman of the DIB and former CEO of
Google, opined that DOD “does not have an innovation problem; it has an
innovation adoption problem.”81 Schmidt’s insight was driven by his
observation that the military has many entrepreneurial members, and a variety
27
of innovative units (like Kessel Run), but that sclerotic processes, systems and
incentive structures make it very hard for innovation to reach the warfighter.
He identified acquisition and procurement as a brake on adoption.
The IC is not the Pentagon and does not undertake major systems
acquisitions in the routine way the DOD does for aircraft carriers, submarines,
and F-35 jets over generations-long acquisitions and procurement cycles. In
fact, the Pentagon’s FY20 procurement budget of some $140 billion was nearly
double the entire budget of the IC the same year.82 Nonetheless, acquisition
and procurement are critical for the IC in today’s technology-driven world, and
therefore many of Dr. Schmidt’s observations are also germane to the IC’s
acquisition of systems, goods, and services.
The barrier to entry for companies to work with the IC is particularly high
– potential suppliers must understand a complex web of federal contracts,
acquisitions processes, and export controls, and have the necessary
infrastructure in place to provide its systems, goods, or services to its
government customer.83 They must also meet security and background check
requirements, and, depending on the nature of the work product, have
personnel with high-level security clearances.84
More versatile models that could help the IC work with nontraditional
partners often go underutilized. For example, Other Transaction Authority
(“OTA”) – a flexible acquisition authority with origins in the space race – is
often avoided because lawyers and acquisition officials are less unfamiliar with
it relative to more traditional acquisition vehicles.85
In order to more fully understand how the IC is (or isn’t) leveraging OTA,
we recommend that the IC produce a report that examines the use of OTA by IC
elements on a yearly basis and provide that report to this Committee.
Invest in Open Source Intelligence
As the international community’s tracking and analysis of the spread of
COVID-19 has graphically demonstrated, intelligence collection must not be
confined to traditional methods like secret meetings and technical means at
Langley or Fort Meade. Historically, the IC’s open source intelligence (“OSINT”)
mission was conducted by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which
compiled and translated foreign broadcast reports relevant to the IC’s mission.
Many of these reports were subsequently made public, enriching the United
States’ collective understanding of the plans and intentions of our adversaries.
28
The evolution of the foreign media landscape, digitization of information, and
worldwide connectivity is still under-appreciated in the IC as a key collection
opportunity.
Over the years, IC OSINT capacity has been repeatedly reorganized,
including the establishment and subsequent dissolution of the Open Source
Center. This has raised questions about the overall level of priority placed upon
its mission. Just as open source information can generate valuable intelligence
about foreign cyber actors’ intentions and activities against commercial and
private networks, so too can open source provide the sort of lead information
and context to drive the IC’s S&T intelligence analysis. Analysis of investments
in start-ups, the establishment of academic partnerships with top-notch
researchers, and even scrutinizing the members of a social networking group
contribute to the IC’s assessments of adversary capabilities on S&T, which in
turn will help counter those advances.
The Subcommittee sees a strong future for OSINT within the IC, so long
as it receives the appropriate attention and resourcing. Coupled with AI and
machine learning, there are exciting new possibilities for the development of
open source intelligence programs.
Consequently, the Committee’s FY21 IAA commissions an independent
study on open source intelligence, to develop recommendations for the future
governance of OSINT within the IC.
Leverage and Nurture the Federal Labs
The FFDRCs and the University Affiliated Research Centers (“UARCs”)
originated in the Manhattan Project and other federal R&D efforts during
World War II.86 The IC currently benefits from the talent of the Department of
Energy (“DOE”) National Laboratory FFRDCs under the umbrella of the
Strategic Intelligence Partnership Program (“SIPP”).87 Although the SIPP
enables DOE National Laboratory personnel to support unique, vital IC-
sponsored research, the Subcommittee believes that there is insufficient
strategic direction, which hinders the National Labs from fully addressing the
hardest national security problems.

29
 Photo credit: Sandia Lab photo by Randy Montoya. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0
Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Photo link. License. Disclaimer: The authors of this article are not responsible
for and do not endorse any content found on flickr.com or creativecommons.org. No changes made.

For example, while DOE’s Office Intelligence and Counterintelligence

(“DOE-IN”) plays a centralizing function between the DOE National
Laboratories and sponsoring elements from the IC, its responsibilities are, as a
matter of staffing and practice, largely constrained to administrative
processing of project submissions. The Subcommittee sees an opportunity for
DOE-IN or another appropriate body to adopt a more assertive role in strategic
coordination, deconfliction, administrative processing, and even technical
advisement, to improve the alignment of IC needs with National Laboratory
capabilities.
The Subcommittee also found that IC sponsors and their National
Laboratory counterparts rely on professional relationships to develop
prospective SIPP projects.88 Although the Subcommittee views this avenue as
beneficial, it believes that increased formality would help ensure that IC
elements fully utilize the wealth of top-tier science and technology talent and
capabilities available across the FFRDC community.
We recommend that Congress require DOE, DOD, and the IC to conduct a
joint review of their respective roles in administration, oversight, coordination,
and deconfliction to ensure the IC best leverages the expertise of the FFRDC and
30
UARC community. Such a review could also inform how the IC and the DOD
access the wider federal lab community to tackle additional national security
challenges.
Collaborate with Foreign Partners
The IC does and should continue to use foreign intelligence relationships
as a force multiplier in developing emerging technologies. Many alliance and
partnership frameworks exist to bring countries together. Most notably, the
Five Eyes Alliance – the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and
New Zealand – was founded upon a shared mathematical endeavor to break
German encryption. NATO was originally established to protect its Member
States from further attacks by the Soviet Union after World War II. Since then,
the IC has leveraged international relationships to achieve significant
intelligence successes, and this cooperation should be expanded into greater
scientific and technological R&D collaboration.89

Photo: NATO Headquarters, Belgium. Photo Credit: NATO

One indicative example is the NATO Innovation Hub, which provides

both a virtual and physical platform for outside experts, who do not usually
work with the defense and security community, to propose and design
innovative technological solutions to some of NATO’s most pressing security
challenges such as human-machine teaming, autonomous systems, and cyber
security.90 Similarly, NATO recently created an Innovation Advisory Board of

31
advisors and academics to help NATO “accelerate the pace of development
and integration of unmanned systems in Allied and Partner navies.”91
Each of these collaborative frameworks share similar principles. First,
they were “opt-in”; no state was required to participate, but the collaborative
benefits enjoyed by those who did participate often brought in more
participation. Second, these groups regarded technological innovation as not
exclusively a national security issue, but also an economic one. Therefore,
rather than limiting participation to individuals with national security
backgrounds, the groups encouraged an array of perspectives. The Innovation
Advisory Board is comprised not just of policymakers, but of academics and
corporate executives in fields such as consumer products, defense, and
technology.
International partnerships also allow countries to leverage their
comparative advantages, as different countries often excel in specific and
strategically important technology areas. Australia is a leader in quantum
technology; Germany excels in additive manufacturing; Canada, France,
Singapore, and Switzerland are home to some of the most advanced biotech
firms in the world; and Israel, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and several
Nordic countries excel in telecommunications infrastructure.92 By working
closely with these countries, and many others, the United States can build a
coalition capable of leading global R&D. Only by working together can these
long-time allies succeed, as CSET notes:
America’s future lies in technical alliances. Taken together, the R&D
spending of the United States and just six like-minded nations with a true
commitment to R&D funding represents more than 50 percent of global
R&D investment... China, on the other hand, makes up approximately 26
percent of global R&D, with other competitors like Russia contributing
only two percent.93
We recommend that IC elements conduct comprehensive reviews of their
foreign partnerships, and identify in a report to Congress specific areas ripe for
further collaboration with foreign partners on scientific and technological R&D.
The IC should also encourage programs that expand opportunities for
collaboration with foreign partner governments, private industry, and
academic institutions, such as through exchange programs and fellowships.

32
 Congress, Heal Thyself
The Subcommittee would be remiss if we did not also acknowledge the
role Congress has played in creating many of the barriers to technology
adoption identified throughout this report. Amongst the many powers
enumerated in Article I of the Constitution, two are particularly salient in this
case – (1) Congress’s “power of the purse” and (2) its stature as a co-equal
branch of the U.S. government responsible as a “check and balance” on the
Executive Branch. And the ways Congress has interpreted these powers – both
in how it exercises them and in how Congress organizes itself – have created
unique institutional challenges that impede innovation.
First, Congress jealously guards its “power of the purse” and is loath to
cede any of its authority in this regard to the Executive Branch. Congress
employs mechanisms that maximize its opportunities for oversight and
management – some might say “micromanagement” – of Executive Branch
spending of appropriated funds. These mechanisms range from limiting the
availability of funds (some funds expire if not expended at the end of the fiscal
year) to separating funds into different “colors” of money (e.g., funds
authorized and appropriated for R&D may not be used to maintain or sustain a
program). Combined with a rigid adherence to the annual budgeting and
appropriations cycle, Congressional processes stymie the agility and flexibility
needed to match dollars to the pace of rapid technological evolution.
Second, in executing its duty to oversee that the Executive Branch is a
responsible steward of taxpayer dollars, Congress must ensure that
departments and agencies are not taking unnecessary risks with those funds.
As a result, Congress seeks to mitigate cost and program risk as much as
possible and is rarely inclined to authorize or appropriate funding for programs
that have uncertain time schedules and imprecise cost estimates. Program
failures are often met with harsh penalties and very public rebukes from
Congress which often fails to appreciate that not all failures are the same.
Especially with cutting-edge research in technologies of the kind discussed in
this report, early failures are a near certainty and, so long as they are not due
to negligence, should be considered learning opportunities. In fact, failing fast
and adapting quickly is a critical part of innovation.

33
 Photo: United States Capitol

Lastly, Congress is not structured for cohesion or strategic unity. There is

no single office responsible for ensuring that all the committees of jurisdiction
for the various departments and agencies of the federal government are
consistent in their funding approaches to emerging technologies, even though
these technologies impact every single aspect of American life. Such a
disparate approach means that often, committees spend more time
adjudicating who has jurisdiction over a problem rather than how to actually
solve the problem.
Congress should address these issues through existing, but underutilized
mechanisms. For example, Congress has explicitly provided the Executive
Branch multi-year “transfer funds” to address emergent and unpredictable
requirements, such as natural disasters. These funds are large enough to
ensure predictable and sustainable funding over time, and flexible enough that
departments and agencies can draw upon them to address rapidly changing
requirements outside of the annual budgeting and appropriations process.
Because these types of funds are inherently flexible, they have been subject to
mismanagement by departments and agencies; Congress sometimes derides
these as “slush funds.” This problem should be solvable through the

34
imposition of stringent notification and approval requirements on the use of
these types of funds to mitigate the risk of abuse.
Finally, Congress would be a much better partner in innovation if its
overall level of technical literacy were higher. Cutting edge technology, and the
way in which it is developed, is often exotic to lawmakers. To address this, and
to help break jurisdictional barriers, Congress should consider reviving the
Office of Technology Assessment, which provided Congressional Members and
committees with objective and authoritative assessments and analyses of
complex scientific and technical issues. The Office was shuttered in 1995.

35
Recommendation 4: Improve IC Strategy and Vision
The Subcommittee’s many discussions with IC elements surfaced
satisfaction with the flow of S&T personnel across those elements and general
agreement that the IC has made real progress against the stove-piping of
innovative efforts across its 17 elements. However, the Subcommittee believes
that while there may be some nominal level of oversight at ODNI over the
entire IC R&D portfolio, there is a gap in the alignment of strategic thought
leadership and prioritization of R&D activities in the overall IC. Rather than a
single voice conveying the IC’s priorities to policymakers and lawmakers, each
IC element advocates for its own needs which can be niche or tactical in
nature. Such strategic leadership is needed to ensure that the most critical
programs receive the resources they need, and that the urgent does not win
over the important.94
Focus IC Strategic Leadership
At present, the Director of Science and Technology of the ODNI, along
with a nominal coordinating body, the National Intelligence Science and
Technology Committee – established by Congress in 2004 – is tasked with
overseeing the IC’s scientific R&D portfolio.95 Additionally, there is a body at
the National Intelligence Council responsible for coordinating intelligence
analysis on adversarial scientific research endeavors.96 However, neither
appear to have sufficient authority or resources to accomplish their rapidly
growing missions.97
The Subcommittee also believes that a full appreciation of our
adversaries’ S&T activities is critical to success, and thus the ODNI’s Director of
Science and Technology should play an advisory role in the IC’s analytic work
on adversarial achievements. Finally, we acknowledge that additional layers of
bureaucracy on S&T R&D could have the unintended effect of stymieing
innovation, and thus our recommendations are modulated to create a clear
line of strategic leadership on S&T, while leaving unchanged the organizations
that conduct R&D.
Consistent with legislation in the FY 2021 IAA, we recommend that
Congress strengthen the authorities of the DNI’s Director of Science and
Technology and the National Intelligence Science and Technology Committee,
and require annual reports to Congress containing both the IC’s strategy and
priorities for scientific R&D as well as assessments of adversaries’ scientific R&D
36
activities. Such information will aid policymakers and Congress in funding,
authorizing, and enabling the advancement of this critical mission.
Establish an Intelligence Innovation Board
Successful catalysts of innovation in DOD offer useful lessons for the IC.
As with the IC, significant cultural rifts exist between the DOD and private
sector.98 The DIB, conceived by then-Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter in
2016, exposes senior industry and academic leaders to DOD challenges, and
applies its outside expertise to help craft the DOD’s emerging technology
strategies and initiatives.99 The DIB’s notable successes in this area include the
creation of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and the DIB Software
Acquisition and Practices study which meaningfully improved DOD’s software
development and acquisition.100 The DIB has also addressed tensions between
the private sector and DOD through initiatives like its AI ethics principles, which
have now been formally adopted by the DOD.101
An Intelligence Innovation Board, modeled after the DIB, could bridge
similar gaps for the IC. It could also identify best practices from industry and
academia and recommend how to adapt these to the constraints imposed by
the IC’s missions. A dedicated board will allow its members to build the
expertise and connections necessary to provide tailored and actionable
recommendations to unique IC problems.
Therefore, the Subcommittee recommends the IC establish an Intelligence
Innovation Board to bring fresh thinking to the IC, identify ways to improve
cooperation with the private sector and help the IC become a better partner
and customer.

37
Recommendation 5: Lead in the Development of Norms and
Standards
Framing the security challenge posed by innovation exclusively as a race
to be “won” is a mistake. Technological races rarely stay won, and technology
and knowledge disseminate. Sometimes this is to our advantage: the memory
of Americans looking up from the comfort of their homes at Sputnik in October
of 1957 is unpleasant but instructive, inasmuch as the United States quickly
demonstrated its ability to be a fast follower and to ultimately pull ahead of
the Soviet Union in space exploration.
Today, Huawei’s commercial lead in 5G technology and a Chinese
scientist’s shocking genetic editing of human twins in 2018 are just two
reminders that the United States is not in control of global technological
research—we don’t determine the participants or even the direction of many
proverbial races.102
Fortunately, there is ample precedent for the United States and the
world to agree on rules, ethics and international structures that seek to
regulate the development, use and spread of dangerous technology. From the
development of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1968
to the Geneva Conventions of the early 20th century, to the many centuries of
the elaboration of concepts of “just war” and the laws of armed conflict, there
is a rich tradition of friends and foe alike cooperating on mutually beneficial
norms.
Prudence and morality alike dictate that the United States must lead not
only in the research, acquisition, and employment of emerging technologies
but also in the development of standards and norms for their ethical use.
Energetic U.S. commitment to a rules-based liberal order is not only necessary
for countering alternative frameworks favored by oppressive regimes: it will
also provide a competitive advantage for democracies and open societies,
which thrive in an environment of transparency, rule of law, and
institutionalized fairness.
The cyber realm offers the most comprehensive example of the world
trying to come to terms with previously unknown risks and challenges.
Capabilities that were once available only to sophisticated actors are now
readily available to anyone with a smart phone and an internet connection.
While some cyber intrusions have targeted the U.S. federal government and
38
U.S. elections, such as Moscow’s digital assault on the 2016 U.S. election or
China’s hack of the Office of Personnel Management, many others have
targeted a wide variety of non-government entities.103 These events include
attacks on private companies like Marriott, Target, Capital One, and Quest
Diagnostics, as well as unrelenting identity theft and ransomware attacks on
private citizens.104 Because cyberattacks currently transcend the usual bounds
of national security to threaten almost all aspects of modern life, the United
States must create and promulgate globally accepted norms in the emerging
technology arena.
In fact, there have been efforts for years to establish basic “rules of the
road,” beginning most notably with the Tallinn Manual and extending through
the recommendations of the recently released report from the United States
Cyberspace Solarium Commission (“CSC”) this year.105 For years, the United
Nations (“UN”) has advanced multilateral discussions around the need for
established cyber norms and principles. In 2018, the UN established its latest
Group of Governmental Experts (“GGE”). This GGE’s scope — “Advancing
responsible State behaviour in cyberspace in the context of international
security” — explicitly builds on prior GGEs and is tasked to:
…continue to study, with a view to promoting common understandings
and effective implementation, possible cooperative measures to address
existing and potential threats in the sphere of information security,
including norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviour of States,
confidence-building measures and capacity-building, as well as how
international law applies to the use of information and communications
technologies by States…106
The GGE construct can be awkward, as demonstrated by its
predecessor’s failure in 2017 to adopt a consensus report after two years of
work.107 There is the additional complication in the parallel, if not overlapping,
Open-Ended Working Group (“OEWG”) – of which Russia was a key proponent
– on developments in the field of Information and Communications Technology
in the context of international security.108 How the GGE and the OEWG will
reconcile their efforts, and whether each group’s findings will be at odds with
the other’s, remains to be seen. The United States’ participation and leadership
in such efforts, with key allies including the United Kingdom, France, Australia,
and Canada, signals important commitment to proactively shape dialogue and
progress.109
39
 The realm of AI will also require substantial focus as technologies
emerge and mature. AI poses ethical questions regarding inadvertent bias and
auditability, as well as questions of human control and intervention. In
response, several organizations have offered potential frameworks for the use
of AI:
● ODNI has released both a Principles of AI Ethics for the IC as well as an IC
AI Ethics Framework, which provides technical guidance for IC personnel
to apply the Principles.110
● The DIB recently published its AI principles for DOD “for the design,
development, and deployment of AI for both combat and non-combat
purposes.”111
The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (“NSCAI”) is
also examining this issue, as noted in its interim report: “[t]here is an ethical
imperative to accelerate the fielding of safe, reliable, and secure AI systems
that can be demonstrated to protect the American people, minimize
operational dangers to U.S. service members, and make warfare more
discriminating…The American way of AI must reflect American values—
including having the rule of law at its core.” 112
While the NSCAI’s remit is limited to AI, we consider this conclusion
broadly applicable to other areas of emerging technology: “The state or group
of states that achieves technical leadership will have unique opportunities to
set standards, build guard rails, and generate global support for what is
acceptable and what is not in AI’s future.”113 To accomplish this, the United
States must exercise greater leadership and work more closely with its
international partners. CSIS agrees: “The United States should undertake
broad, sustained diplomatic engagement to advance collaboration on
emerging technologies, norms, and standard setting. This will require clearer
articulation of U.S. policies and standards on multiple issues.”114
Unlike AI or cyber, biotechnologies directly implicate the human
condition, carrying life-saving medical promise on the one hand, and the
potential for amoral overreach and malign use on the other.115 In 2009,
Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama described both the fragmentary
national-level approach to biotechnology regulation and the lack of consensus
among nation-states about how — or even if — to create international rules or
governance mechanisms around such technologies.116
40
 Unlike the digital and cyber realms, the UN’s current approaches to
bioethics and biotechnology fall under the UNESCO umbrella, with the latter
scoped primarily to the positive opportunities for achieving national
development goals or fighting diseases.117 Meanwhile, China’s People’s
Liberation Army (“PLA”) has both stated and acted on its interest in harnessing
biotechnology advances to provide a potential edge in warfare — with perhaps
minimal regard for the ethical implications.118 In the absence of a Washington-
led effort to start the vital conversations with other global scientific powers
about the norms and appropriate boundaries for biotechnology’s applications,
the vacuum will pose unacceptable risks to both U.S. values and national
security interests.
Lessons from the AI and cyber arenas — which themselves are still
evolving and nowhere approaching enshrinement in international law by treaty
or binding consensus akin to the Law of Armed Conflict or the UN Convention
for the Law of the Sea119 — may help in establishing norms for biotechnology.
Finally, the intent of rogue or other non-state actors in acquiring
innovative technology unites nation-states in a quest to deny such technology
to those who ignore international norms or who are not subject to deterrence.
Technological innovation that requires substantial investment or specialized
knowledge is not likely to be achieved by actors with limited resources.
However, non-state actors will be very interested in applying the fruits of such
innovation for their desired ends. Just as terrorists have explored acquiring
nuclear technology, we should expect that terrorists or transnational criminals
might seek to steal, or in some cases simply purchase the products of synthetic
biology or AI.120
The United States should help develop ethical and normative frameworks
for emerging dual-use technologies.
It should also engage with authoritarian adversaries such as China and
Russia to find common ground and set the terms of the debate, without
compromising U.S. values or principles. Doing so can increase the odds that it
will have the backing of the global community to forcefully counter any
unethical or amoral applications of these technologies carried out by malign
actors, sovereign or otherwise.

41
IV. Conclusion
When this Subcommittee was created in the 116th Congress, we were
handed a challenging responsibility: focus on, oversee, and evaluate the
Intelligence Community’s development and use of emerging and advanced
technologies. This challenge is as important to the safety and prosperity of the
United States and its allies as it is historically resonant with those who
remember the triumphs and failures of the twentieth century.
The United States got it right when it mobilized the best talent in the
world behind the Manhattan Project to make sure that the forces of freedom
developed nuclear technology before the fascists did. The United States failed
in 1957 when millions of Americans watched a Soviet satellite pass over their
homes and communities. Since then, a sustained effort to maintain a
technological edge has kept the United States and its allies safe and catalyzed
the modern global technology economy.
Once again, the United States finds itself confronting technological
innovation at a pace and scale that demands immediate attention: AI, 5G,
quantum computing, and biosynthesis offer science-fiction like promise, but
also previously unimaginable threats. Will the United States lead in the
development of these technologies, or will it be ambushed, Sputnik-like, by a
cataclysmic technological surprise? Should we work to make the present
conundrum around Huawei’s dominance in 5G technology a rare outlier, or are
we comfortable being reactive to a menu of bad policy choices?
Legislators and other policymakers must look beyond the time-tested
cure-all solution of simply spending more money. Government is far more
complex and bureaucratic than it was during the Manhattan Project, and the
global innovative ecosystem bears almost no similarities to that of the 1940s.
The private sector is now innovating in almost every sphere and undertaking
the lion’s share of U.S. R&D.121 Our global competitors and antagonists are, or
soon will be, our peers in cutting edge technology. Fortunately, so are our allies
and partners.
Leveraging the brainpower, ideas and products of U.S. academics and
entrepreneurs is a complicated bureaucratic endeavor. In order to harness the
best innovative minds distributed throughout the U.S. economy, the
government must continue the sometimes-counterintuitive commitment to
partnership, interaction and openness, even with other countries. Openness is
42
a competitive advantage to democratic societies, even as it threatens
authoritarian ones.
The IC, and the broader national security apparatus, must systematically
reflect on the critical ingredients of American innovation, precisely because
many of those ingredients, like unorthodox thinking, embrace of failure, and
non-hierarchical organizations, are unusual or even anathema to government
culture. Government is not naturally configured to “think different” or to
“move fast and break things”.
Embracing our recommendations may involve some incremental risk. But
that risk must be evaluated in the context of being a technological “also ran,”
with all that that would imply for national security economic growth.
Finally, winning is important, and in some areas, critical; but it isn’t
everything. The United States was fortunate to beat the fascist powers to
nuclear weaponry. But the Soviets tested an atom bomb four years later. The
most powerful AI, like any other software, will be easy to copy, trade, or
steal.122 The United States cannot rely on being in a position of perpetual and
unilateral technological dominance. It is therefore critical that the United
States double down on leading the world in the establishment of ethics and
international norms that guide when, how, and why we use these incredible
technologies. While we may not always be able to outspend or outman our
competitors, we can – and must – do what we’ve always done: lead in the
creation of a better and safer world.

43
 Appendix A: Summary of Relevant and Select Report
Recommendations
National Commission ● Devote greater attention to strategic scientific and technical intelligence and use it to inform R&D
for the Review of plans for the IC.
Research and ● Develop a comprehensive IC R&D strategy and resource allocation process.
Development Programs ● Assess the long-term IC workforce needs in the context of a more competitive private sector and
of the United States global marketplace and develop procedures to recruit and retain the necessary talent.
Intelligence Community ● Increase innovation and sharing with the private sector, academia, and national labs, and create
research opportunities for non-U.S. citizens.123

Defense Innovation ● Reform statutes, regulations, and processes for software, enabling rapid deployment and continuous
Board improvement of software to the field and providing increased insight to reduce the risk of slow,
costly, and overgrown programs. The management and oversight of software development and
acquisition must focus on different measures and adopt a quicker cadence.
● Create and maintain cross-program/cross-service digital infrastructure that enables rapid deployment,
scaling, testing, and optimization of software as an enduring capability; manage them using modern
development methods; and eliminate the existing hardware-centric regulations and other barriers.
● Create new paths for digital talent (especially internal talent) by establishing software development as
a high-visibility, high-priority career track with specialized recruiting, education, promotion,
organization, incentives, and salary.
● Change the practice of how software is procured and developed by adopting modern software
development approaches, prioritizing speed as the critical metric, ensuring cyber protection is an
integrated element of the entire software lifecycle, and purchasing existing commercial software
whenever possible.124

Council on Foreign ● Restore federal funding for R&D from 0.7 percent to 1.1 percent of gross domestic product, from $146
Relations billion to $230 billion.
● Create extensive scholarships and graduate fellowships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math
(STEM) as well as opportunities for short term service in the federal government for STEM personnel.

44
 ● Make it easier for foreign STEM graduates of U.S. universities to remain in the United States and for
immigrants to live in the United States if they start and fund new businesses.
● Improve rapid adoption of commercial and emerging technologies in the federal government through
fast tracks and increased spending.
● Build a network of international science and technology partners with joint R&D efforts and shared
standards.125

Center for Strategic and ● Identify and prioritize “must win” technologies for the United States.
International Studies ● Engage with allies and partners to advance collaboration on emerging technologies, norms, and
standards-setting.
● Experiment with new models for public-private partnerships and build government expertise in
emerging technologies.
● Maximize the effectiveness of existing resources through data releases and funding targeted at
commercial research gaps.
● Increase attention to the human dimensions of emerging technologies, including ethics, education,
recruitment, and immigration.126

Center for a New ● Foster more flexible international technology alliances that emphasize tangible economic benefits,
American Security solving specifically defined problems, and reducing preferences for spending and procuring
domestically.127
● Increase funding for high-risk, high-reward research into areas where private industry has little
incentive to invest but that hold tremendous potential for valuable new knowledge.
● Increase public and private sector STEM training and education, increase federal funding for university
researchers, and create more avenues for high-skilled immigration. 128

Center for Security and ● Foster international partnerships based on R&D collaboration, counterintelligence cooperation,
Emerging Technology shared norms for emerging technology, and coordinated export controls against competitors. 129
● Expand temporary visa and permanent residency options for skilled foreign STEM workers, and create
carefully crafted immigration opportunities for entrepreneurs.130
● Establish direct conversations and initiatives with allies and competitors to create shared norms and
deconfliction mechanisms for emerging technologies.131

45
 Appendix B. Methodology and List of
Engagements
Over the course of the 116th Congress, the Subcommittee convened roundtables and
formal meetings in Washington, D.C., and held phone-based briefings with current and former
IC and U.S. government personnel with hands-on experience. These personnel offered valuable
insights into further accelerating the adoption of emerging technology to solve national security
problems.
Subcommittee and Committee engagements
• February 12, 2020: Subcommittee Open Hearing, “Emerging Technologies and National
Security: Posturing the U.S. Intelligence Community for Success”.
• April 4, 2019: Committee roundtable with In-Q-Tel Chief Executive Officer, Chris Darby.
• June 12, 2019: Subcommittee Roundtable, Principal Deputy Director of National
Intelligence Sue Gordon
• December 4, 2019: Research Directorate, National Security Agency
December 9, 2019: Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
• January 16, 2020: Defense Advanced Research Project Agency
• March 3, 2020: Directorate of Science and Technology, Central Intelligence Agency
• August 27, 2020: Kessel Run
Staff Engagements
● Jason Matheny, former Director of IARPA and founding director of Georgetown’s Center
for Security and Emerging Technology
● Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics team, Governmental Accountability
Office
● Massachusetts Institute of Technology
● National Institute of Standards and Technology
● Representatives from the Department of Energy’s National Labs, including Sandia
National Lab, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Los Alamos National Lab, Pacific
Northwest National Lab, and Idaho National Lab.
● National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence
● CSIS Task Force
● Cyberspace Solarium Commission

46
Congressional Delegations and Fact-Finding Trips
To ensure that the Subcommittee solicited expert commentary from beyond
Washington, it took trips to New York, Boston, and California:
● The Subcommittee met with venture capitalists in New York for wide-ranging
conversations about geopolitical technological competition between the United States
and China, the strong state of AI R&D in the U.S. private sector, and the suggestion that
Washington create elite “technical teams” modeled on U.S. Special Forces, with
correlating resources and rigor but whose is scoped mission of developing essential
emerging technologies.
● A visit to companies and labs in Massachusetts including MIT’s Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence Lab, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Forge.AI, Gingko Bioworks, and
Forrester Research gave the Subcommittee concrete on-the-ground examples about AI
and its intersections with cybersecurity and synthetic biology with potential relevance to
and applications in IC.
● A pair of trips to California offered the Subcommittee opportunities to solicit inputs
from a mix of private and USG entities, including Apple, Rigetti Computing, Kleiner
Perkins, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and NGA’s Silicon Valley Outpost on topics
including quantum computing, developments in hardware, the and the vital role of
venture capital in spotting and nurturing technologies – and how the U.S. government
can more vigorously adopt lessons from that space.

47
 Endnotes

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38
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Brannen, Haig, Schmidt, and Hicks. “Twin Pillars: Upholding National Security and National Innovation in
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115
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118
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120
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Flynn,. “Recommendations on Export Controls for Artificial Intelligence.”.
123
Ibid.

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124
McQuade, J. Michael, Richard M. Murray, Gilman Louie, Milo Medin, Jennifer Pahlka, and Trae Stephens.
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125
McRaven and Manyika.
126
Brannen, Samuel J., Christian S. Haig, Katherine Schmidt, and Kathleen H. Hicks. “Twin Pillars: Upholding
National Security and National Innovation in Emerging Technologies Governance.” Center for Strategic and
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and-national- innovation-emerging-technologies.
127
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129
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Huang and Arnold, “Immigration Policy and the Global Competition for AI Talent.”
131
Andrew Imbrie and Elsa B. Kania, "AI Safety, Security, and Stability Among Great Powers: Options, Challenges,
and Lessons Learned for Pragmatic Engagement" (Center for Security and Emerging Technology, December 2019),
cset.georgetown.edu/research/ai-safety-security-and-stability-among-great-powers-options-challenges-and-
lessons-learned-for-pragmatic-engagement/.

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MINORITY VIEWS

Report on Rightly Scaled, Carefully Open, Infinitely Agile:

Reconfiguring to Win the Innovation Race in the Intelligence Community

The Majority-led Subcommittee STAR “Report” on Rightly Scaled, Carefully Open,

Infinitely Agile: Reconfiguring to Win the Innovation Race in the Intelligence Community leverages
the findings and recommendations of many existing research papers, commissions and HPSCI
engagements over the past 18 months.
While the report effectively collates areas of improvement for Intelligence Community
innovation, the Minority believes it would have benefited from a discussion on intellectual theft
conducted by China, and other adversary nations and how the IC could address these threats. This
represents a major obstacle to IC efforts to maintain US technological and innovative advantage.
The Minority’s ability to address issues like China’s intellectual theft in the report were
constrained by the Majority’s partisan practices. Minority members and staff were not included in
the creation of the reports’ scoping document, or in planning the oversight activities to collect the
information that would eventually be included in the report. While the Minority members and staff
were invited to events; the events were not “tied” to a report. Notification of events such as
interviews, and travel, were often short notice precluding their involvement due to scheduling
conflicts. In fact, the Minority Ranking member of the STAR Sub-Committee was not aware of the
report itself, until it was handed to him at the conclusion of a committee business meeting
We hope that in the future, Committee reports are worked in a cooperative fashion with full
involvement of the Minority members and staff to ensure a bi-partisan report that achieves its full
potential.

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