Bloomberg Surveillance · Thursday, October 1, 2026
Jack Devine expresses concern about the increasing reliance on AI in intelligence operations, highlighting the risk of losing human oversight, particularly in critical decision-making processes like warfare. He contrasts the concentration of information favored by China with the U.S. tendency towards compartmentalization, which he fears could slow down intelligence analysis and operations.
“What you have is the incredible concentration of information. I remember the first time I walked into the agency and they gave us a tour. They took us down to the records room, a football field of index cards. And then they took us to a room with all the files. And they were all labeled in different colors. And their job was to integrate it. But when you got into the system, you found that it was highly stovepipe. So what we're looking at, there are two big threats that I think we need to concentrate. One is how centralized are we going to make this work? powerful tool in the intelligence business. And the Chinese are going for concentration.”
“The second big risk is the speed of decision-making. So the new world of intelligence, in the core part that Tom and I were talking, is still there. But the how you handle warfare... How you handle operations are all going to be AI driven. And where do you get the human in there? And how do you keep the human in, for example, the finger on the nuclear weapon? It's scary, but it's irresistible.”