DIA’s artificial intelligence chief envisions ‘agent-to-agents’ interactions that support military operations

The Defense Intelligence Agency’s chief AI officer is anticipating a future in which digital agents work together across a combatant command to help the military and intelligence community achieve mission success.

DIA is currently undertaking a 90-day “sprint” to build out an AI enterprise platform service, Maj. Gen. Robert Kinney said Wednesday during a panel at the DODIIS Worldwide conference in Tampa, Florida.

Another “deliverable” in the works is a model context protocol, or MCP, that will provide “a more universal way” to be able to access intel data, he noted.

MCP is the technical framework that allows for AI tools to connect with external systems and data sources.

“Building on top of that, though — and I’ve estimated, you know, I’m not going to overpromise and underdeliver per se — but thinking about it in the next year, building agents and then agents-with-agents is the direction that we want to go. And there’s a whole other side to that on the compliance side, the security side, the zero-trust side that we’re going to work with our CIO teammates on,” Kinney said.

Thinking about the next two-to-five years, he suggested there will be a focus on MCP and AI “agent-to-agents” interaction capabilities.

“Imagine a day where … you’re in a combatant command and an agent that is a collection management agent is talking to an agent in the 3 [directorate] in operations and fires agents potentially, talking to a contested logistics agent in the 4 [directorate], talking to another agent in the 6 [directorate for command, control, communications and cyber] or the 5 [directorate] in the planning side. That’s where this is going,” Kinney said.

However, officials need to consider how best to set up guardrails to mitigate risks associated with the potential outputs of the technology. A key consideration will be whether the potential effects of the capabilities are reversible or irreversible in certain scenarios, he suggested.

“There certainly are, I think, mission areas … that you can accept a bit more risk in and have a human on the loop versus in the loop. But your more irreversible mission areas — you can pick ’em, fires, etc. — you always have a human in the loop as the capabilities get better and better. It’s going to have to have that as an agent to check,” Kinney said.

DIA is currently working on laying the digital foundation and “pipes” that will support data access and the building of new agents.

Officials are also thinking about “the tradecraft piece of that and how to responsibly be able to use agents interacting with agents and not necessarily over-rely on the technology and have a certain set of parameters of which we can operate within,” Kinney said.