CIA eyes ‘more technical’ workforce amid cyber, AI challenges | #hacking | #cybersecurity | #infosec | #comptia | #pentest | #ransomware | #cybersecurity | #hacker

The CIA is pushing to bring more scientific and technical expertise into its workforce, with a top official touting a big year for hiring despite widespread cuts across the intelligence community over the past year.

Michael Ellis, the deputy director of the CIA, said the spy agency is seeking to recruit more employees with backgrounds in science and technology. Ellis described a STEM background as not a prerequisite for intelligence in work in 2026, but “it sure helps make things easier.”

“When I think about, you know, where we want the CIA workforce to be five years from now, it’s an elite workforce,” Ellis said at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in Washington on Tuesday. “It’s a nimble workforce. It’s one that has more technical background than it has today, and it’s one that is motivated by mission.”

Earlier in his remarks, Ellis described how the CIA is grappling with the implications of the “dual use technology race” with the Chinese government. He said that while the spy agency still needs to focus on traditional military and political targets, there is a new imperative to collect foreign intelligence relevant to “economic security” as well.

“It means we need a different kind of workforce,” Ellis said. “It also means we need to have different kinds of intelligence targets because that kind of information, whether it’s semiconductors or biotech … it’s not found in the same places that political or military foreign intelligence would be found.”

Earlier this year, CIA Director John Ratcliffe announced a major reorganization of the agency’s technology centers, as well new acquisition and industry partnership initiatives. The goal is to improve how the CIA uses artificial intelligence and other digital technologies.

Ellis referenced those reforms, highlighting how CIA leaders want to acquire cutting edge tools quickly.

He also said the CIA is on track to meet all its hiring goals for fiscal 2026, though he didn’t cite specific numbers. The Washington Post reported in August that a major exodus of CIA staff under the Trump administration’s voluntary retirement programs has left new retirees waiting months for benefits.

“We are actually bringing on the largest class of directorate of operations officers at CIA in the past 20 years,” Ellis said. “We are steering towards that goal of more aggressive operations and more technical proficiency, and we’re going to make progress every year.”

NSA looks to tighten industry partnerships

The National Security Agency is also looking to work more closely with private industry to defend against AI-driven cyber vulnerabilities and exploits.

David Imbordino, director of the NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate, said government is relying on industry to quickly address the software patching and remediation cycles that are being upended by AI capabilities.

“We’re really relying on industry for that, and I think you know the trust between the government, sometimes some industry partners lack that trust,” Imbordino said during a panel discussion at the Billington conference. “We’re here to try to solve this together, and we want to be providing the insights that we have into adversary intent, capabilities, et cetera, to help feed what the solutions will be moving forward.”

While federal agencies, including the NSA, have sought to improve cyber threat intelligence sharing in recent years, industry groups have frequently complained that they are asked to share sensitive data with the government while receiving little in return.

But with AI compressing cyber attack timelines, Imbordino said the NSA is looking at “what we could share, as much as we could share, even if it might not be as high confidence, and where industry could then take that and act upon it, or adjust their tooling, adjust their products, and feed things back to the government so we could work upstream.”

“I don’t know if I have the perfect solution there,” he said. “It’s going to be an iterative process, but it’s something we’ll continue to improve upon.”

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