Directorate of Science and Technology
The Directorate of Science & Technology creates and applies innovative technology in support of the intelligence collection mission. The CIA has always shown a strong interest in how to use advances in technology to enhance its effectiveness. This interest in modern technology came from two main aims: firstly, to harness these techniques its own use, and second to counter any new technologies the Soviet Union might develop. This effort gained impetus in the fifties with the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the USSR. The agency is also extremely interested in computer and information technology. In 1999, the CIA created the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel to help fund and develop technologies of interest to the agency.
Its website mentions its priorities being in:
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- Application Software and Analytics
- Bio, Nuclear, and Chemical Technologies
- Communications and Infrastructure
- Digital Identity and Security
- Embedded Systems and Power
In January 2008, its featured collaboration was with Streambase Systems, makers of a "high-performance Complex Event Processing (CEP) software platform for real-time and historical analysis of high-volume intelligence data", using a new processing paradigm for Structured Query Language (SQL), allowing queries against multiple real-time data streams still updating the data base.
Read more about this topic: Organizational Structure Of The Central Intelligence Agency
Famous quotes containing the words science and/or technology:
“The method of political science ... is the interpretation of life; its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)