DARPA's 'GUARD-DOG' Aims to Replace Human Intelligence

In an effort to provide a faster turnaround, the U.S. Army could replace some human intelligence officers in war zones with a complex system of computers. According to Wired, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, or the freaky arm of the US Military) is hosting a workshop for a new project dubbed Graph Understanding and Analysis for Rapid Detection - Deployed on the Ground, or GUARD-DOG. (Yes, that's really the acronym they came up with.) It can take as long as 48 hours for intelligence to be analyzed after it's collected in the field, which causes about 80-percent of the intelligence that's collected to become useless by the time somebody acts on it.

With GUARD-DOG, the Army could analyze social networks and cultural tendencies much faster by using graphs, algorithms and other computer advancements to predict human behavior. A proposal by the agency states, "GUARD DOG will provid[e] dismounted soldiers with real-time assessments of the human networks relevant to their local battlespace, including threats, vulnerabilities, and uncertainties; and cues on engaging the people they encounter." It would replace the current system, HUMINT, which involves having trained interrogators on the ground, and fill in the blanks where human intel leaves off.

GUARD-DOG might sound like a pie-in-the-sky idea, filled with difficulties and kinks. However, if the Army can pull it off, it would not only speed up and improve the work of intelligence officers, but it may save some lives, too.