CBP Grows AI Uses Amid Cloud, Cyber Modernization

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Assistant Commissioner and CIO Sonny Bhagowalia is a longstanding leader in federal government and industry. By trade, his roots are in engineering — which has largely shaped how he views technology’s and especially artificial intelligence’s impact across various government missions.

With technology being pervasive in “everything we do,” Bhagowalia breaks down where he sees AI helping the agency counter cyber threats, tag video and image data automatically, detect patterns and even reduce human exposure to dangerous situations.

He describes how his office’s “cloud first” and “mobile first” mentality is driving initiatives like digitalization, streamlining public-facing services and processing the 172 petabytes of data it handles every day. Plus, he discusses where industry partnerships are going to make a difference. In the future, he’s excited about the potential for quantum safe and quantum processing, as well as a number of cybersecurity tools he’s exploring to keep ahead of the changing tech landscape.