Army Counterintelligence Races to Modernize, Integrate AI

The Army Counterintelligence Command (ACIC) is pushing forward with modernization and technology adoption to better conduct investigations and counterintelligence, officials said Wednesday. ACIC needs to update its Army Counterintelligence Operations Portal(ACOP), officials said, to enhance operational efficacy.

“ACOP is our system of record. It is what we put all of our counterintelligence reporting into. It is how we are audited,” said CW4 Ernest Maxey, senior technical advisor, ACIC, Wednesday during a roundtable with reporters at AUSA’s Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C. “Our current system is very antiquated.”

Lt. Gen. Anthony Hale, deputy chief of staff for Intelligence, G-2, Army added that the ACIC’s system is “embarrassing” and needs an update.

AI is a part of the ACOP modernization effort, Maxey said. He added that automation is already being used to streamline tasks such as drafting memoranda and enhancing data processing.

“We are using AI as much as we can,” he added. “When we’re looking at our ACOP solution, that is definitely something that we want to have incorporated into that system.”

ACIC officials told reporters that the modernization push extends to protecting Army technology from foreign exploitation. Scott Grovatt, region special agent in charge of the Northeastern U.S., said that ACIC embeds agents with units receiving new equipment to stop adversaries from stealing technology.

“From development through delivery, counterintelligence is part of the process,” Grovatt said. “Our job is to protect that maneuver force and our technology.”

ACIC officials said that they engage with defense industrial base partners at venues like AUSA to identify vulnerabilities before adversaries can exploit them, Hale added.

“These venues are being targeted,” Hale said. “People are taking pictures all day long [on the AUSA exhibition floor]. Army CI supports all those events.”

Grovatt said that the changing pace of battlefield tech presents ACIC with challenges to protect innovations in AI, autonomy and unmanned aerial vehicles.

“When you look at the technology you see on this floor, [adversaries] are here to copy, steal, mimic, reverse engineer the next generation of lethality that will save a soldier’s life and win our wars,” Grovatt said during a panel discussion earlier Wednesday.

ACIC also operates digitally with federal law enforcement partners, Grovatt said, when it is authorized to do so under the recently enacted U.S. Code section 7377, which gives ACIC agents the power to conduct searches, execute warrants and make arrests off of military installations, including in cyberspace.

“When that authority is vested in us, we will have the full power … to investigate, arrest and prosecute in any venue or any platform that the adversary shows up,” Grovatt said. “We will do it in any space that is out there.”

Despite concerns about shrinking budgets and staffing in government, ACIC officials said their operational tempo remains high.

“We’re doing more now than we have ever done in the past 24 years,” Maxey said. “The Army counterintelligence enterprise is better postured to get after the threat than we have ever been.”