CIA chief says agency will take smart risks with artificial intelligence

At the AWS Summit in Washington, John Ratcliffe said the CIA will take “smart risks” with artificial intelligence while keeping people in control, using a technology overhaul to push the agency faster into AI, quantum computing and other emerging tools. Ratcliffe said the agency’s priorities now center on cyber operations and state competition, not the post-9/11 counterterrorism model.

Ratcliffe said the CIA wants to finish most technology acquisitions within six months, a pace he cast as a sharp break from the previous average of 24 months plus another nine months for security assessment. He said the agency had already completed nearly 400 technology acquisitions in the past six months under a new acquisition framework the CIA announced on February 9, 2026, to speed adoption and deepen collaboration with the private sector.

The reorganization has also changed the agency’s tech structure. The CIA renamed the Directorate of Digital Innovation as the Directorate of Mission Systems and elevated the Center for Cyber Intelligence to mission-center status, a move that gave it more direct access to Ratcliffe and priority access to staffing and resources. CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons said the cyber elevation was meant to strengthen cyber operations in support of the president’s priorities and improve intelligence on foreign cyber threats. The White House’s National Cyber Strategy calls for the United States to deploy the full suite of defensive and offensive cyber operations against foreign adversaries.

In April, CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis said the agency had used AI to generate its first autonomous intelligence report and planned to build AI “co-workers” into analytic platforms within a few years, while still reserving key decisions for human officers.