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In April 2022, the CIA decided to move Nand Mulchandani to the right, appointing him as its first Chief Technology Officer. It was a good look for the CIA. Mulchandani, who previously served as CTO and acting director of the Defense Department’s Artificial Intelligence Center, is a rare breed in Washington. Before becoming a government employee, he co-founded and was CEO at a series of Bay Area outfits with almost comical Silicon Valley names: Oblix, Determina, OpenDNS, and ScaleXtreme, each of them co-founded by a tech titan (Oracle, VMWare, Cisco and Citrix, respectively).
Mulchandani could soon be surrounded by founders and technologists as the Trump Administration lands in Washington with powerful advisers like Elon Musk.
We spoke recently with Mulchandani about that change and its possible impacts – and whether he hopes to be a part of it. That’s a lingering question, given that Mulchandani was not handpicked by the president and that his boss, CIA director William Burns, resigned, replaced by John Ratcliffe, a former congressman from Texas who was the director of the President-elect Trump’s national intelligence. during Trump’s first term.
The following has been edited for length.
What are the conversations happening now before the Trump administration comes in?
The big picture is that no one thinks there is a big change coming in terms of technology and China. When Director Burns joined, his focus and redirection and emphasis for this agency was basically on high power competition. The way we like to talk about it is that, obviously, kinetic wars (ie conventional combat) and things happen in the world all the time. But the next generation of competition is economic competition and at the core is technological competition. So the way he set the strategic priorities for the agency was basically a focus on China and, again, this pivot towards technology. Then launched (two new mission centers in 2021, one focused on China and another dedicated to transnational and technological threats) and after the creation of the role of CTO were the major organizational changes he made. And in all honesty…those will probably be priorities for any incoming administration….
Obviously, we’ve heard a lot about DOGE and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s plans to reduce—or at least offer their suggestions for how to reduce—the size of government. Has anyone from Musk’s camp talked to anyone at the CIA? Jared Birchall, the head of Musk’s family office, spoke, for example, of State Department nominees.
I can’t talk about specific presidential transitions going on across the government. What I can talk about – while it is not quite a comment on DOGE itself, but one of the key themes that we have pushed – is the technological enablement of government and government processes. . . and using AI and other pieces to bring precision and scale to our businesses. So I can’t comment specifically on what they are trying to achieve. Is it expensive? Is the development of technology at scale? Our focus is kind of all of the above. . . . I mean, it would be crazy not to really focus on that in a big way, and we’re still focusing on that.
In any transition, you have people coming in who are trying to assess what needs to be prioritized. To the CIA, what do you say these priorities should be?
There are evergreen issues that will be there in perpetuity. One is our focus on data insights, and I know it sounds like buzzword bingo, but AI in particular – get that implemented (the right way should be a priority). If we had a blackboard, what we would draw for you is the data funnel that is in the world and growing. As an intelligence agency, we are very, very hungry for data, be it the collection of human intelligence, electronic, geo . . . It is the heart of an intelligence service. The problem is that the funnel and the scope and the size and the scale of the data are growing every day, and you can always find more data to vacuum up and bring in – some good, some garbage. With that endlessly growing funnel, we need to continually retool our infrastructure and systems and applications. . .
Number two (links to) the growing side of defense technology and the idea of disruptive Silicon Valley companies now relying on military technology and relying on national security and serving us with products and services. This trend is important for us to continue to support.
Another of the big (related) initiatives that we’ve taken on that has been scaled up is: how do we drastically lower the bar for business technology incorporation? This is what we call the inbound arc. The other part of it is, how do we project our needs? So as a spy agency, as an intelligence agency, we are culturally not attuned to talk externally about our problems and issues and initiatives and strategic things; traditionally we have been very quiet or very cagey about this kind of thing. Obviously we have to keep our work classified, but we now have another initiative that we will launch in the next month or so where we will have very direct conversations with investors, VCs and startups (about these. needs). . . as opposed to a tactical focus solely on procurement or procurement or other pieces.
Speaking of VCs, what do you think on a personal level of people like Marc Andreessen advice President-elect Trump on hiring? Obviously, he’s a very smart guy, but sometimes skill sets aren’t transferable to other industries.
I’d say it’s out of my paycheck. I mean, I know a lot of these people, and obviously they’re incredibly smart. I’ll give you my personal experience – and obviously I’m not consulting the president directly on non-tech stuff. But what ends up happening is that as a former CEO, as an entrepreneur, what I often talk about in the agency at our leadership level is business models. My CS degree hopefully qualifies me to talk about (technology). The other part of the experience that I bring to the table is having run these businesses and made business decisions, and my feeling is that that experience and that point of view is incredibly valuable in Washington. Sometimes I feel that in government, we don’t talk often enough about business models and how to really do things efficiently, how to scale, how technology destroys business models, how it can enable new business models. Many of the projects that I have led in or have been involved in, I always try to open with: how does our business model change at the CIA? As a human intelligence organization in the world of technology, in the world of AI, in the world of high power competition, in the world of hard target areas for us to continue to continue our activities, what will the CIA’s business model look like in five, 10, 20 years from now, and how will it change?
You are not a political appointee. Do you want to stay if that’s an option or are you ready to go back to Silicon Valley? I know you’ve been traveling between coasts for the past five years.
It’s a discussion I have with my wife and kids almost every day. I’m actually in the East Bay (of San Francisco) now, where we live. My wife had her career. Our children are well settled. We have close relatives. So I spent almost every week in Washington or other places that the agency, and the DOD (before that), sent me or needed. And I have to be honest with you, the mileage shows now. . .
The broader issue that I think is still a concern is that there aren’t enough people from the Valley in DC, and that’s something that worries me a lot personally. When I look around in DC, I can literally count the number of people who have been in positions like myself, meaning (they have) deep roots in the Valley. It is a big commitment, especially for people with children and families.
Can you see one day the CIA setting up a second center on the West Coast?
For now, we are well settled in our headquarters (in Langley, Virginia). But if they are essentially bringing fresh thinking into this administration, and they want more technology people involved, who knows?
