Intelligence in America, With AI’s grey cells and AWS’s synapses

Can bureaucracy be strengthened or diluted with IT? Can classified areas, document filtering and secret departments find new allies in AI and Cloud? At the 15th annual AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, DC, AWS shared its support for national security and defence, as well as updates on AWS’s custom chips and other announcements.

There are pigeons. And there are owls and hawks. The information can be sent both ways. But the routes, grip, wings and flight-time vary so much between a soft-staple bird and a sharp-eyed aviator. Handling documents in classified areas and rigid bureaucracies is no different. It would be fascinating to see what kind of wings AWS is choosing here, and where they are parking themselves.

From DC to AI

It was a conversation that first ferried the audience back towards 1791, right after the American Revolution. The picture was sketched well. It sent people’s imaginations to a park called Jones Point. The spot where surveyors laid the first building block marked the first outline of DC boundaries. It’s this South cornerstone, set in 1791, which also bears a sign—DC’s first building block. One cannot help but wonder if those people who laid that first mark envisioned what this city would become. They may have a sense for that. But regardless, they had to build something. Nothing could have explained technology as a cornerstone for the PSU revolution better. This example set the tone for an interesting chat that was to follow. It’s time to build and lay the foundation for the future.

The person across the table, in the spotlight and commanding the horse’s mouth, was none other than Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who has served in the Hawaii State Legislature, the Hawaii National Guard, the US Army Reserve, and the US House of Representatives.

The top intelligence official in the United States went for the most sensitive jugular vein the right way. And talked about how critical and fragile technology can become when being wielded in bureaucracies and intelligence communities.

“All of you here are familiar with bureaucracies and dealing with them, and unfortunately, with bureaucracies, they’re not inherently negative, but unfortunately, processes get in the way of the delivery of outcomes and solutions. So really, the primary focus of mine has been—also across the intelligence community—is making sure that we are solely focused on what our core mission is, which is to deliver that quality intelligence that’s relevant, timely and objective to those who need it, whether they be out in the field. Also, those who are decision-makers for most of which, of course, is the President of the United States. We take a first principles approach in assessing my organisation and the intelligence community elements is—how do we look at the available tools that exist, largely in the private sector, to make it so that our intelligence professionals, both collectors and analysts, can focus their time and energy on the things that only they can do. This is where we know that a lot of the work we’re doing with AWS and other organisations really involves searching for those tools that we know are available and how we can best apply them to ensure that we’re accomplishing our core mission. And then, of course, focusing on, on what are the greatest threats that we face, and how can we maximise our intelligence collection and analysis capabilities to have the best oversight and visibility, again, to inform our policy makers best so we can ensure, ultimately, the safety, security and freedom of the American people.”

Tulsi also shared a peek at how the intelligence community is deploying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning today. “We’ve made progress, but there, there’s so much room for growth and more application of AI and ML. As you know, an intelligence community chatbot has been deployed across the enterprise, opening up and making it possible for us to use AI applications in top-secret clouds, which has been a game-changer. Once again, looking across all the IC elements, these are tools that help us better achieve our mission. We’ve seen, in some ways, in some of the intelligence community elements, but perhaps not others, how AI is being used with HR, with the kind of basic systems that we need. And so, what we’re looking at is whether they’re working. Are there better tools? If we already have the right tools, we can save a significant amount of money. So there’s much opportunity.”

The People Part in Big Pivots

Tulsi also stressed that one of the key things she has been pushing the workforce to do is take a step back and re-examine these problem sets, asking the question that they might not have asked for a long time: why are we doing it this way? “Are there better ways to accomplish what we are trying to do, and being creative and open-minded, and what solutions are available that we may not know about? One of the things that we’re doing that, again, sounds very simple, these problems that are sometimes presented as very complex, when we say let’s break it down and be very, very simple in how we’re approaching them.”

She provided an example here. One thing we’re doing right now is creating unclassified spaces—when people need to go out and have a Zoom call with someone, they have to sit in the car outside and take the call. “There are rules in place that make it very difficult for people working in the private sector to come in and meet with our professionals and have meaningful discussions about exactly this. What solutions are you bringing to our work to help us better achieve our mission? So we’re making it harder for ourselves than necessary, and something as simple as creating unclassified spaces in our building is one of the ways we’re aiming to address that.”

An intelligence community chatbot has been deployed across the enterprise, opening up and making it possible for us to use AI applications in top-secret clouds, which has been a game-changer.

— Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence

Tulsi also discussed the Directors’ Initiative group and the topics of classification and declassification of documents, highlighting how AI and ML have contributed here. In terms of suggestions, she finished with remarks on: “Next year is the 250th anniversary of our country, and it’s a good moment for all of us, whether working in government or not, to truly reflect on the power of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. For us, those documents serve as the North Star in our work, especially around intelligence gathering, ensuring that we operate within the limits set by the Constitution while also being inspired by the ingenuity of our Founding Fathers. I encourage you to continue seeking opportunities to build these partnerships and, under my leadership, move away from the government developing technology solutions for itself, as that’s not where our strengths lie. Instead, we should focus on acquiring solutions wherever possible, allowing our workforce to concentrate on the tasks we excel at and have exclusive responsibilities to fulfil.

Documents, Classified Missions and Silicon

Before this chat, AWS also shared how it is scaling its global infrastructure, which spans more than 3.7 million miles of fibre optic cable, connecting 245 countries and territories across multiple regions, availability zones, and Edge locations. Over the last year, it has expanded its network backbone capacity by 80% to support low-latency data transfer, meeting resource needs and powering all AWS building blocks, as the company shared at the summit.

This also included mention of AWS custom silicon advancements across Graviton, Inferentia and Tranium. The company also shared examples of how some government agencies utilise AWS Machine Learning to enhance open-source analysis with translation, transcription, segmentation, and object detection. Other examples utilise machine learning to reduce the time needed to analyse printed and scanned documents. These capabilities significantly accelerate analysis, helping to minimise errors and discover more profound insights.

At this insightful session, it was also announced that AWS is extending support for the US government’s classified missions with the new AWF secret West region. Amazon intends to launch this second secret region by the end of the year. These regions are accredited to support workloads up to the secret classification level.

Recently, AWS also took a snapshot of the AWS Public Sector Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Impact Initiative, a two-year, $50 million investment aimed at helping public sector organisations accelerate innovation using AWS generative AI services. The Impact Initiative has already assisted nearly 300 public sector organisations in innovating with AWS generative AI services and infrastructure. AWS shared in a press report examples such as Palantir Technologies Inc. and Anthropic, which collaborated with AWS to provide US intelligence and defence agencies access to the Claude 3 and 3.5 family of models.

It seems a new landscape of information is forming, with contours that might include secret tunnels and tricky warrens this time. There are pigeons in the sky, but also owls of the soil—rabbits and squirrels that work efficiently underground—secretly yet swiftly. Since some landscapes are simply different and demand extraordinary creatures to navigate them, AWS is perhaps making every effort to equip these eyes and feet.

(The author was a participant in the AWS Summit 2025 in Washington, DC.)