Left of “Boom”: Intel and AI

WASHINGTON DC 3OCT2026

LEFT OF BOOM INTELLIGENCE

Returning Intelligence to Its Original Purpose

How AI Can Help the Intelligence Community Remember What It Was Created to Do

The United States intelligence system was created to prevent strategic surprise.

Its founding purpose was warning.

Pearl Harbor was the lesson. Strategic warning was the mission. During the Cold War, entire disciplines were built around identifying threats before they materialized, most notably the warning tradition developed by analysts such as Cynthia Grabo and the U.S. Watch Committee.

Over time, however, intelligence increasingly became optimized for a different function:

Explaining events rather than anticipating them.

Reporting rather than warning.

Current intelligence rather than strategic warning. [onedrive.live.com]

Left of Boom Intelligence is a plan to reverse that drift. [onedrive.live.com]