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When Baghdad\u2019s night sky erupted in tracer fire and explosions in 1991, it meant more than just Operation Desert Storm\u2019s commencement. The resulting CNN effect\u2014whereby 24\/7 news reporting covered events in real-time\u2014threatened centuries-old modes of diplomacy and espionage. If US presidents could see what was happening live on their TV, why did they need spies or ambassadors?<\/p>\n
As it happened, that revolution in awareness and sense-making did not (wholly) come to pass. But today it\u2019s journalism as we know it that\u2019s under almost-existential threat, from AI and its emerging effect on how people consume information and generate knowledge. The forces unleashed will also have profound consequences for the intelligence business. Those consequences are being explored in a new ASPI research project.<\/p>\n
In January, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism published Journalism and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026<\/a>. That report highlighted profound changes AI is expected to bring to newsrooms, publications and channels internationally\u2014changes directly relevant to intelligence. In 1991 the media and intelligence community were framed as competitors. Now they\u2019re facing the same (potentially existential) challenge, as well as tackling their respective customers\u2019 acute attention deficiency.<\/p>\n Intelligence communities haven\u2019t been sleeping on AI. Australia\u2019s 2024 Independent Intelligence Review<\/a> observed that AI represents, \u2018the technology with the most far-reaching implications\u2019 and that AI \u2018will reshape the threat environment [and create] opportunities to enhance agency operations as well as address long-term workforce pressures\u2019. Those implications have been explored in pioneering work such as ASPI\u2019s joint project<\/a> with the US Special Competitive Studies Project.<\/p>\n However, to date, consideration of AI\u2019s effect has focused inwards, on how AI might transform intelligence production\u2014namely collection and, especially, analysis. That consideration has proven naturally conservative, reflecting shop-floor concerns about potentially adverse impacts on analytical tradecraft and professionalism.<\/p>\n Likewise, for a time, journalism thought it could just harness AI for discrete task automation. But as the Reuters Institute report demonstrates so vividly, this constraint has proven illusory. Instead, AI is turning the media\u2019s legacy business model inside-out.<\/p>\n Indeed, in considering AI\u2019s potential effect on intelligence, it\u2019s the intelligence customer (and their evolution in tastes and preferences) that\u2019s been missing from consideration. This is unsurprising, for a certain insularity can characterise Australia\u2019s National Intelligence Community (NIC), a forgetfulness of \u2018what it\u2019s all for\u2019 and a falling back on habit and reputation.<\/p>\n Today, intelligence reporting still means essentially the same documentary presentation familiar to the NIC\u2019s pioneers in the 1950s\u2014only now (usually) in electronic form. For the senior-most readers in Canberra\u2014in Russell and Barton, and at Parliament House\u2014that\u2019s a blizzard of single-source reports and finished assessments, typically still hardcopy and in documentary form. It can also include curated summaries and digests. But all are fundamentally one-way in transmission and with limited personalisation. Security concerns and resource constraints keep Australian intelligence reporting in aspic.<\/p>\n Given this, how will ubiquitous AI in the non-classified world transform how future intelligence customers wish to consume and process information? How might their needs and preferences change? What will they demand of the NIC in response? And what might happen if they don\u2019t get what they want? And if they do, could AI end up collapsing the intelligence cycle that implies sequential tasking of requirements-collection-analysis-reporting-consumption-feedback-requirements ad infinitum?<\/p>\n The Reuters Institute report foreshadows two distinct kinds of potential effects.<\/p>\n The first is indirect, coming through the evolution of other media that intelligence customers will consume and which will shape them in turn. This includes preferencing video and audio over text (that is, forms of commercial media content more resistant to AI fragmentation); the trend towards individual rather than brand credibility; and increased demand for verification-style reporting and analysis (ironically propelled by AI\u2019s own destruction of trust).<\/p>\n Then there is the prospect of frictionless links. If a consumer can jump from information to \u2018what does this mean for me\u2019 or \u2019what should I do\u2019, why couldn\u2019t AI in the classified world immediately bridge intelligence to policymaking, further collapsing the intelligence cycle?<\/p>\n The ability to rewire media preferences is very real\u2014hence why venerable publications such as The Economist are suddenly adopting vertical video content (emulating TikTok), something inconceivable five minutes ago.<\/p>\n There are also more direct likely effects, through changes in how customers interact with information and process knowledge. For example, a \u2018Google search\u2019, ubiquitous for 25 years, reshaped how humans sought out information, and it normalised and prioritised hitherto obscure database mechanics. And Wikipedia kept more encyclopaedic practice alive.<\/p>\n If \u2018searching\u2019 is fading away, as surveys and forecasts suggest, how will moving to a single curated answer from an \u2018answer machine\u2019 (but with endless personal refinement through chat and prompt) change expectations? Will a non-chat interface have any more resonance in the future than microfiche today? If \u2018articles\u2019 are dead, will intelligence reports follow soon after? If AI-powered browsers and devices become standard\u2014able to, for example, summarise and personalise what\u2019s otherwise presented by the originating author\u2014will that extend to the classified environment also?<\/p>\n Potential effects are broad ranging, across origins, content, format and presentation. And these effects will only be accelerated by generational change and preference\u2014particularly if a generation gap emerges between intelligence users and the closed, older, more conservative public sector generating intelligence.<\/p>\n So, there\u2019s a need for the NIC to prepare and adapt. All while negotiating potentially confronting questions\u2014such as whether or not intelligence drawn out by generative AI is intelligence at all. That\u2019s why ASPI is embarking on an important new research project, spurred by previous work on NIC innovation<\/a> and related ideas<\/a>, and generously supported by Fivecast<\/a> and KPMG<\/a>.<\/p>\n The project is intended to generate new ideas, explore possible or probable scenarios and inform future NIC planning, and will do so by drawing on a range of inputs and thinking from both inside and outside the national-security space.<\/p>\n This is a unique opportunity to dive deeply into issues of profound consequence for the intelligence business. And to look from the outside in, in a way that the NIC isn\u2019t itself readily able to, being preoccupied dealing with everyday pressures as well as changes, especially in the aftermath of the Bondi atrocity and resulting royal commission.<\/p>\n If Australia is to effectively evolve from having a national intelligence community to possessing national intelligence power, it will need to more effectively meet its customers where they are now, or indeed where they will be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Baghdad\u2019s night sky erupted in tracer fire and explosions in 1991, it meant more than just Operation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-552908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}