The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has tapped its current Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Ramesh Menon to serve in the additional role of the agency’s chief artificial intelligence officer (CAIO), with plans to release an agency-wide AI strategy next week.
At the GovAI Summit on Wednesday afternoon in Arlington, Va., Menon said that DIA Director Scott Berrier signed off on the AI strategy this Monday, and DIA plans to publicly release it next week at its Department of Defense Intelligence Information System (DoDIIS) Worldwide Conference in Portland, Ore.
Menon said that the strategy is “holistic,” and DIA held listening sessions with every single combatant command to help develop it.
“It’s a good step,” he said of the strategy. “We took a sign to get and listen to different perspectives, and it’s very much aligned to the NSCAI [National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence] recommendation for us as a nation to build the necessary capabilities for speed and scale across different dimensions for us to be competitive with AI.”
The new CAIO said the strategy looks primarily across five pillars: talent and skills, platforms and tools, tradecraft, mission priorities, and partnerships.
“How do we holistically create a strategy that meets our national security priorities, and we can create a sustainable capability? Because we do a good job with projects, but every project has a beginning and an end,” Menon explained. “We want to really make sure we create a capability for the country working in collaboration with other agencies.”
“In short, it’s very much aligned to the NSCAI recommendations – not too much off. It’s 95 percent aligned to NSCAI recommendations,” he added.
The NSCIA was established in 2018 as a temporary, independent Federal agency to make recommendations to the President and Congress on AI. The agency released a report in 2021 with over 60 AI recommendations, including appointing responsible AI leads within agencies.
Similarly, the White House’s recent AI executive order (EO) instructed agencies to designate chief AI officers who will serve as the senior AI advisors to agency leadership.
In fact, Menon said the new CAIOs are holding their first meeting on Friday at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
While Menon did not offer any more details on the meeting, he did say that an important question that the agency AI leaders will consider is “How do we shift our portfolios to effectively operationalize AI?”
