The Central Intelligence Agency announced Monday the launch of its first-ever federal lab, a new internal organization that will allow its officers to obtain patents and licenses for intellectual property they create while working at the agency. The new office, called CIA Labs, will be an in-house research and development office through which the spy agency will develop the future technology it needs for intelligence collection for national security, while also helping U.S. economic security, according to Dawn Meyerriecks, head of CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology, in an agency press release. In a speech last week at the Intelligence and National Security Summit, Meyerriecks listed several broad areas where the agency has intellectual property that could "change the conversation" around key emerging technologies. She listed 5G, battery technology, augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning, computation, geospatial information representation, navigation, and analytics as areas of focus. "It's an endless list that we collectively own, but the world desperately needs," Meyerriecks said.

The US Central Intelligence Agency has launched a research and development wing, dubbed'CIA Labs'. In a press statement, the Agency stated that this initiative is an effort to bring together private sector academia and CIA operatives to develop and produce tech solutions along various streams. Specifically, the research would take place across several spheres, including Blockchain, DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology), Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Analytics. The CIA Labs project aims to conduct research, development, and testing in multiple disciplines to address new challenges It will also adapt or improve existing solutions to technological problems. This multifaceted research will focus on several technological ideas that have not been fully developed yet.