IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 87

ways that can lead to human rights abuses and bad
policy outcomes [49]-[53]. Therefore, choosing to
do intelligence-related work does raise individual
moral and career considerations. With that said, I
have held a security clearance for other policy-oriented
work and have found that it does help me to
understand a variety of contextual factors related
to workplace practices, decision-making, and " how
the sausage gets made; " so, there can be value in
going over to " the dark side. " However, one must
think carefully about the short- and long-term implications
for tenure and promotion in academia of
having an active security clearance and working on
classified projects.
In addition to clearance issues, there can be
Institutional Review Board (IRB) issues with
research involving the IC. In my past work, I have
found that intelligence interviewees with active
security clearances have preferred not to sign an
informed consent document. So, I have previously
sought a waiver of informed consent for this work.
This requires explanation and justification in seeking
IRB approval at one's academic institution and
may involve additional work to ensure that the university
IRB is satisfied with the informed consent
process used and that there are no significant risks
to intelligence interviewees in using the waiver
of consent.
Types of research needed
Assuming the call is accepted to study how the
IC uses IT, what kinds of studies would be valuable?
Currently, because of the dearth of knowledge on
this area, we need more baseline analyses to be able
to better augment our understanding of technical
and social challenges related to the adoption of new
information technologies into intelligence work.
Through a combination of micro-level case studies
coupled with macro-level insights, there could be
a series of studies on the varied set of sociotechnical
issues at stake in the design, development, and
use of big data, AI, and platform technologies in the
future U.S. intelligence analytic workforce.
At the macro level, this could involve intelligence
officials interrogating how these technologies are
being imagined for use within the future intelligence
workforce. One useful conceptual framework
to structure this work would be to use the analytic
lens of sociotechnical imaginaries. Jasanoff and Kim
[54], [55] define national sociotechnical imaginaries
September 2021
as " collectively imagined forms of social life and
social order reflected in the design and fulfillment of
nation-specific, scientific and/or technological projects. "
Policymakers and other decision-makers work
to develop and deploy these imaginaries to both
describe and prescribe a desirable future that should
be pursued and provided investment, with particular
kinds of technological outcomes envisioned. These
kinds of science and technology imaginaries should
be seen not as fantasies or illusions, but as important
cultural resources to enable new forms of life
[56]. As Jasanoff and Kim [54] note, " Such visions,
and the policies built upon them, have the power
to influence technological design, channel public
expenditures, and justify the inclusion or exclusion
of citizens with respect to the benefits of technological
progress. " National policies or national-level
strategy documents regarding specific S&T projects
are useful sites for examining how these imaginaries
get constructed and mobilized, and how they shape
the designs and practices of specific technological
objects. In analyzing these policy documents, one
can see the drivers (positive/negative, hopes/fears,
enablers/constraints) underpinning these policies,
and how different facets of national interest are
defined to promote further investment and development
of these technologies. This kind of analysis
can help shed light on how ethical, social, and political
commitments get built into these technological
projects before they even materialize. These visions,
however, can be contested and redefined at the
local level by different interested actors [57]-[59],
and it can be useful to understand the who, what,
and why of these contestations to better understand
what alternative designs could be possible.
With this idea of sociotechnical imaginaries in
mind, one could study official policy discourses
and decision-making processes on AI strategies
and policies for the U.S. IC. For example, one current
document that would benefit from a careful
empirical examination is the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence's (ODNI) AIM Initiative
[60], which is its community-wide, short-, medium-,
and long-term strategy for how AI and other automated
technologies are to be developed and used
for intelligence work. In examining this document,
some overarching research questions that one could
explore include:
87
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021
