THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2023 19 The deal’s very existence demonstrates that the two countries are engaged in shadow diplomacy— conducted through intermediaries including Oman and Qatar—to reach agreements on a range of issues while avoiding open deals that could be undermined by opponents on both sides, Bloomberg wrote. The U.S. and Iran remain at odds over the Iranian nuclear program, Tehran’s support for regional Shi’ite militias, its provision of drones and other weapons to Russia for the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, and the government’s broad crackdown on women’s rights. The backchannel negotiations may offer an avenue to deescalate tensions in the Middle East over Iran’s nuclear gains, keep oil prices low, and secure the release of U.S. hostages. AI-Assisted Declassification As hundreds of thousands of 25-year-old State Department cables reach the declassification stage, the onerous task of manually reviewing each one may soon be offset by artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Through a small-scale AI pilot, the department is automating the review process in preparation for the large volume of electronic records that will need to be reviewed in the next few years. The pilot was developed in a collaboration across three offices, according to FedScoop. Historically, manual page-by- page review, conducted year-round by a team of six, has been the only way to determine if information can be declassified for public release or is exempt from declassification to protect national security. L aunched in May, this weekly podcast is hosted by the journalist who nabbed the first TV interview with Osama bin Laden in a cave in Afghanistan in 1997. CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen invites listeners to sit in on his conversations with important figures in geopolitics. Self-described as the antidote to “conflicting narratives and sensationalism” in the news, Bergen’s program delivers objective analysis on current events and narrative storytelling that makes each episode an easy listen. Previous episodes have covered Havana syndrome, the fentanyl epidemic, and UFOs. A noteworthy two-part episode released in August on the anniversary of the Kabul airlift revisits the final days of the U.S. presence in the country, interviewing Ross Wilson, chargé d’affaires in Afghanistan during the evacuation, as well as Afghan national security adviser Matin Bek, and Breshna Musazai, a young survivor of a Taliban attack. Podcast of the Month: In the Room with Peter Bergen (https://peterbergen.com/podcast) The appearance of a particular site or podcast is for information only and does not constitute an endorsement. The rapidly increasing volume of documents, however, renders the manual review process unsustainable. Around 100,000 classified cables were created each year between 1995 and 2003. The number of classified emails doubles every two years after 2001, rising to more than 12 million emails in 2018. The Bureau of Administration’s Office of Global Information Services (A/GIS), the Office of Management Strategy and Solutions’ Center for Analytics (M/SS CfA), and the Bureau of Information Resource Management’s (IRM) Messaging Systems Office are now moving toward production-scale deployment of AI to augment the procedure. With AI assistance, the workload stands to be reduced by more than 65 percent, according to the results of a three-month pilot program in which a model was trained using human decisions made for more than 300,000 cables in previous years. The AI’s document review matched previous human declassification decisions at a rate of more than 97 percent. The AI tool will not replace jobs, because it requires human reviewers to participate in the decision-making process and conduct quality control. Nevertheless, the project significantly reduces personnel hours and should save almost $8 million in labor costs over the next 10 years of reviews, according to Matthew Graviss, chief data and AI officer at the State Department and director of the agency’s Center for Analytics; Samuel Stehle, data scientist in the Center for Analytics; and Eric Stein, the deputy assistant Secretary for Global Information Services. n This edition of Talking Points was compiled by Julia Wohlers.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODIyMDU=