Exclusive: Tech race with China is top intel priority, deputy CIA director says
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CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis. Screengrab via Axios
The top priority for the CIA's new leadership is China, and in particular helping U.S. companies maintain "a decisive technological advantage" in areas like AI, chips, biotech and battery technology, Deputy Director Michael Ellis told Axios' Colin Demarest in a rare interview.
Why it matters: Ellis and CIA Director John Ratcliffe have pledged to restructure the agency and shift its priorities. Ellis offered insight into how exactly they plan to go about it.
Breaking it down: "China is the existential threat to American security in a way we really have never confronted before," Ellis said.
- Russia will still be a challenge and a priority for intelligence collection, Ellis said, along with adversaries like Iran and North Korea.
- But Ellis said the CIA will put much more emphasis on drug cartels, elevating the counter-narcotics division that had been something of an internal backwater.
Zoom in: Ellis also contended that the CIA's workforce and the tactics it employs need to evolve to fit the times and President Trump's priorities.
- Cold War-era human intelligence techniques may still have some role, but they're getting much harder to use successfully due in part to adversaries' surveillance tech, Ellis said.
- "We need more people with technical backgrounds," Ellis said. "More STEM grads."
The intrigue: Ellis mentioned inviting Elon Musk to visit the CIA, and said there were "a lot of efficiencies that we can gain" by learning from private sector leaders like him.
- Ellis said looming staff cuts were "actually an opportunity in some ways" to "reshape" the workforce.
- "We cannot have weaponization or politicization of the intelligence community," Ellis said, in an apparent reference to Trump's repeated claims that the "deep state" had been working against him.
- It's time to "really get rid of the distractions and biases that I think may have existed in the past," Ellis said, without offering specific examples. Other senior officials like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have railed against "woke" ideology in their departments.
