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Central Intelligence Agency

also referred to as: cia

11 statements across 3 episodes · 2 bullish · 3 bearish · 3 people on the record · first statement Jan 2, 2019 by Michael Morell · said 83 times in 20 episodes since 2019 · across every show →

Mentions by year

brought up most by Michael Morell (17), Nand Mulchandani (14), Derek Harris (14), Balaji Srinivasan (10), Marc Andreessen (4), Benjamin Wittes (3), Frank Chen (2), Dapper Dan (2)

tap a year for its mentions
0020840152019202020212022202320242025episodesmentions
08152019202020212022202320242025episodes it came up in
00157.530152019202020212022202320242025episodesmentions per episode
2025 14 mentions in 4 episodes 4 per episode
2024 30 mentions in 1 episode
2023 2 mentions in 1 episode
2019 37 mentions in 14 episodes 3 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Central Intelligence Agency, oldest first

Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Morell: CIA stores its top secrets on paper, not digitally
“For CIA's most sensitive information, we don't store it digitally. We store it on paper, in a safe, in a room, with a lock on it, that only a handful of people can get access to.”
Michael Morell Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 19:38 a16z Podcast | For Your Ears Only
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Morell: Intelligence Case for Iraq WMDs Was Stronger Than Bin Laden Case
“And the punchline, right, the punchline was, Mr. President the case that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was stronger than the case that Bin Laden is. You could hear a pin drop in the Situation Room, and it was true, right?”
Michael Morell Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:52 a16z Podcast | For Your Ears Only
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Disclosure
CIA Analysts Estimated 60% to 95% Probability Bin Laden Was in Abbottabad
“So the lead analyst said, 95% chance he's there. And the senior most analyst said, 80% chance. And I was at 60%.”
Michael Morell Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 5:11 a16z Podcast | For Your Ears Only
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Insight
Presidents routinely ask the CIA to solve intractable problems, says Michael Morell
“There is this tendency that In every administration that I've seen, and I saw six of them, three Republican, three Democrat, for when the problem gets really hard to turn to CIA and say, fix this. Using covert action, fix this. And a lot of the times, CIA can'…”
Michael Morell Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 23:18 a16z Podcast | For Your Ears Only
Mar 11, 2024
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mulchandani: AI use in spy operations will continuously escalate
“The democratization of this stuff and the availability we know is going to drive each one of our competitors to be driving this up. We're going to be aware of that. We're going to drive our own stuff up. So there's this aspect of, we don't know where this is g…”
Nand Mulchandani Mar 11, 2024 ▶ 7:57 Intelligence in the Age of AI with new CTO of the CIA
Mar 11, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mulchandani: CIA builds custom software because there is no spy app store
“There is no, as we point out inside many cases, there is no ready app store for spy software. So there are absolutely certain things that we need to build and write inside the agency.”
Nand Mulchandani Mar 11, 2024 ▶ 40:24 Intelligence in the Age of AI with new CTO of the CIA
Mar 11, 2024
Insight
Mulchandani: AI forces explicit decision-making around probabilistic output thresholds
“With these newer algorithms these are still probabilistic algorithms. Except now the probabilities actually stare you in the face in a way that previous systems didn't push, right? So previous application systems never came up with said, do you want the 49%, t…”
Nand Mulchandani Mar 11, 2024 ▶ 26:24 Intelligence in the Age of AI with new CTO of the CIA
Mar 11, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Mulchandani: CIA pivoted focus from counter-terrorism to great power competition
“And the conclusion was actually fairly interesting and not a surprise, was that we had to pivot from CT, which had been the big sort of focus for the agency for a couple of decades, to great power competition.”
Nand Mulchandani Mar 11, 2024 ▶ 3:07 Intelligence in the Age of AI with new CTO of the CIA
Mar 11, 2024 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mulchandani: CIA lacks the compute cycles to modify open-source AI weights
“Anybody's ability to do something with that, those, with that information is limited, because it's not just the numbers. You have to have the expertise you need to Compute. You need all the other pieces. That's my point, which is great. I have that information…”
Nand Mulchandani Mar 11, 2024 ▶ 32:23 Intelligence in the Age of AI with new CTO of the CIA
Mar 11, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Mulchandani: CIA has deployed large language models for open-source intelligence
“We're public with the fact that we actually have LLMs in production at the agency. We have it in production in the open source team.”
Nand Mulchandani Mar 11, 2024 ▶ 15:31 Intelligence in the Age of AI with new CTO of the CIA
Nov 21, 2025 positive
Opinion
Rampell: Prediction markets gather information more efficiently than the CIA
“And this is a much more efficient truth machine than, like, the central intelligence agency, if you think about it.”
Alex Rampell Nov 21, 2025 ▶ 1:02:38 Robinhood CEO: Making Everyone An Owner
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