Old-school spycraft could make a comeback as AI undermines trust

Artificial intelligence is widely expected to revolutionize intelligence gathering, enabling faster, cheaper and more scalable collection of information. But a new analysis suggests the technology may also spur a return to some of espionage’s oldest methods.

The recent article published in Studies in Intelligence, the CIA-backed academic journal, argues that, as AI degrades the reliability of digital communications like text messages and video calls, traditional human intelligence tradecraft — like dead drops, brush passes and in-person meetings — could regain renewed importance.

The same technologies that enhance intelligence gathering may ironically make it harder to trust the data those tools produce or transmit, argues the author, Thomas Mulligan, a RAND Corporation researcher who served in the CIA from 2008 to 2014.

AI is already being used to generate convincing deepfakes and fabricate messages. These tools, his paper argues, introduce a new source of “noise” into digital communications, which he says is making it harder to distinguish between authentic and synthetic signals.

That erosion has implications for how spies communicate with their sources.

“If my friend tells me, face-to-face, that he is in trouble and needs money, I can be confident that that’s true,” Mulligan writes. But when the same message is delivered through an electronic medium, it becomes “more likely a scam than a bona fide plea for help.”

That dynamic elevates the value of communication methods that are not mediated through electronic means. 

A properly executed dead drop, for instance, allows an intelligence officer to securely receive information while also verifying that it came from a specific human source, rather than an AI-generated deception, he says. A dead drop involves a secret location used to exchange information or physical items between people without requiring them to meet face-to-face.

The same logic applies to brief, in-person exchanges like brush passes, in which spies and sources pass materials to one another during a quick, seemingly routine encounter in public.

The argument runs counter to assumptions that advances in AI will diminish the role of human intelligence, or HUMINT, in favor of more technical collection methods.

Long before the advent of spy satellites and tailored computer hacking kits, human intelligence dominated espionage as the world’s oldest form of spying. From royal couriers and informants in the Persian Empire carrying sensitive information across imperial networks to the Culper Spy Ring’s use of invisible ink and dead drops during the American Revolutionary War, intelligence once solely moved through people.

In recent months, the Trump administration has made it a point to highlight contributions that CIA operatives have made toward its national security achievements, including efforts targeting the government of ousted Venezuela leader Nicolás Maduro. The agency has also taken a more public-facing posture, releasing recruitment videos aimed at sourcing in China. And in the months leading up to the Iran war, agency spies had been reportedly tracking the movements of now deceased Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

At any given time, the CIA, the nation’s primary human intelligence agency, may be operating across dozens of countries worldwide to collect foreign intelligence or conduct covert action — activities intended to influence political, economic or security conditions abroad, while concealing the U.S. government’s role.

Mulligan’s paper also comes as the tech industry has pushed for AI adoption across government agencies, including offices focused on national security and intelligence. In February, the CIA announced a major overhaul of its technology procurement process, as part of an effort to more quickly adopt leading-edge capabilities for use in its missions.

In a phone interview, Mulligan said AI may play a more permanent role in helping human spies craft better-sounding communications, just as cyber experts have argued that AI tools greatly enhance and scale bad actors’ phishing campaigns.

“A core part of being a case officer and human intelligence operations is persuasion, talking to a prospective agent or a recruited agent and trying to convince him or her to do things that can be difficult, can be dangerous and can be stressful,” he said. “I think AI has a constructive role to play, from the point of view of a case officer, in enhancing his or her ability to persuade.”

But there’s a prevailing question about how much intelligence practitioners risk when they outsource tasks to AI. Gathering intelligence from other people “is a human business at the end of the day, and it does involve an agent and a case officer as a team engaging in a difficult and sometimes dangerous relationship,” Mulligan said. 

“My view,” he added, “is that [HUMINT] will have to have a human element — a real, essential human element — for the foreseeable future.”