CIA Goes High-Tech
The Central Intelligence Agency is setting up a venture capital company in Silicon Valley that will help it keep up with the latest technological inventions and ideas.
"The rapid and unprecedented pace of technological change and the evolution of our national security environment dictates a change in the way the intelligence community does business," said CIA Director George Tenet.
The agency, which normally operates under a cloak of secrecy, received $28.5 million in seed money from Congress to charter "In-Q-It." The company will invest in high-tech firms, share information with universities and form joint ventures to solve such questions as security in the new Internet culture and use of the Web for gathering information.
"We'll work with outside companies. We'll be as nimble as we possibly can. We're trying not to be a laboratory," Gilman Louie, an outsider hired as In-Q-It's chief operating officer, said Wednesday.
Louie, 39, founded his own electronic game company MicroProse Inc. that was later bought by Hasboro. At Hasboro, he has been an executive with the toy company's online business group.
One of the goals will be to bring CIA operatives up to speed on browser security and faster search engines, Louie said.
In-Q-It also will try to support technologies that will help the CIA better organize and use its information.
Louie cited the accidental May 7 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia - a target picked by the CIA - as "the manifestation of the worst result that could happen if you don't have all your information lined up."
The company has a board of directors that includes well-known high-tech figures and former Defense Secretary William Perry. Louie said the company will remain small, with no more than 25 employees.
Louie and the CIA stressed that the company would deal with unclassified projects, at least initially.
The project "grew out of the recognition here of a need to find new ways to harness the capabilities of the private sector to deal with some of the more difficult problems of information technology," said CIA spokesman Bill Harlow.
Louie said the CIA now is the upstart company's only customer, but other private-sector clients might be sought. He said he expected the company to become self-sustaining from its investments, with an eventual annual budget of about $100 million.
The company's board of directors includes Perry; John Seely Brown, director of the Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center; Norm Augustine, chairman of Lockheed Martin; and former AT&T President Alex Mandl.
As for the name, "In" stands for intelligence, "It" stands for information technology, and the Q in the middle is in honor of British gadgets expert "Q" in the James Bond movies.
"We do have a sense of humor," said Harlow.