Classified Estimates Show the NSA Is Paying Billions to Test AI Models
by rdmuser on 9/25/2026, 3:27:35 PM
https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/classified-estimates-nsa-paying-billions-to-test-ai-models
Comments
by: paimapi
I feel like any AI regulation passed wouldn't have enough teeth to rein in the NSA because not even the Fourth Amendment seems applicable to the agency. let's not forget the ex-post-facto legalization of mass wiretapping and surveillance [0] with both establishment political parties supporting it on 'national security' concerns [1]. whatever monitoring or testing they're doing today will be similarly hand-waved away in the name of security theater<p>this is just how the empire has always operated - we have always been at war with Eastasia<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(2001%E2%80%932007)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/fact-check-obamas-misleading-answer-about-warrantless-wiretapping-daily-show" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/fact-check-obamas-misl...</a>
9/25/2026, 3:46:00 PM
by: 6thbit
Hopefully they're better at sandboxing than private companies. Or perhaps that's a feature and not a bug here for them.
9/25/2026, 5:05:29 PM
by: rdtsc
I guess I would be more surprised if the headline said "turns out NSA dropped the ball on AI and haven't even fired up a single LLM instance yet".<p>It's mostly about "testing" and "billions". But I am sure "testing" here is in quotes just like I wrote it. They are not going to get an itemized list unless it's coming from Snowden 2.0<p>- We "tested AI" on this Russian nuclear silo command and control center. It worked out pretty ok.
9/25/2026, 3:51:01 PM
by: bhouston
"Testing"? Sure, Jan.<p>They would have to be incompetent if they were not using them both for security penetration as well as social engineering / election meddling as everyone else is.
9/25/2026, 3:42:10 PM
by: hosel
Why wouldn’t they be? How is this surprising. A drop in the bucket.
9/25/2026, 3:44:28 PM
by: jawiggins
An underappreciated aspect of LLMs is how good they are at zero-shot classification. I'd expect this is extremely good at monitoring communications streams, particularly in foreign languages.
9/25/2026, 4:25:34 PM
by: rand846633
Does anyone here happen to know the ballpark number of how much the three letters agencies are currently paying OpenAI/antropic/who ever per year/month..?
9/25/2026, 3:52:36 PM
by: autoexec
Obviously. The amount of data they hold on the American public alone is massive. They can't possibly read it all, they need a system that can pull out "dangerous" people, and find dirt on whoever they want to target, and AI will happily do that, badly. I just hope they actually take the time to review what it gives them for accuracy so that they don't end up doing the NSA equivalent of bombing and murdering a bunch of elementary school children. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_attack" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_attack</a><p>The NSA aren't the only ones with massive troves of very personal data on large numbers of people. Many companies are excited to use AI to help them use all of that information to their maximum advantage and you can bet that they won't care about spending the time/money on perfect accuracy as long as over the long run they get positive results.
9/25/2026, 3:59:01 PM
by: clueless
My guess is, the US government (aka DJT) won't really acknowledge AI risks until folks at NSA start to freak out while using latest models for various tasks...
9/25/2026, 3:53:46 PM
by: conorcleary
Yeah at some point they're going to seriously undervalue their own currency.
9/25/2026, 3:56:43 PM
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9/25/2026, 4:03:52 PM
by: OutOfHere
This should remind us why it is inappropriate to pay a dollar more in taxes than you absolutely minimally have to by any means necessary. A fraction from every dollar you pay goes toward taking away your rights. You pay to have yourself oppressed.<p>I will note here two words that the NSA really likes to monitor across all devices: Trump, Monero.
9/25/2026, 4:55:37 PM
by: binlog
Willing to bet any amount of money that these testing contracts are going to companies that the Trump family has invested in.
9/25/2026, 4:01:08 PM
by: ck2
the day NSA cracks AES the world is going to get soooo weird<p>I wonder how long it takes to decrypt 20 years worth of stored internet traffic<p>day per year? week? certainly not a month per year<p>everyone is focused on "AI" but there have been some significant quantum computer advancements
9/25/2026, 4:24:37 PM