Wal-Mart, the massive retail chain, has established its own “intelligence” unit to conduct threat assessments, and to perform intelligence collection and analysis.
And it has been recruiting senior personnel from U.S. intelligence agencies to staff its operation.
“I’ve had a number of people contact me who have purely law enforcement / security investigative backgrounds,” wrote one Wal-Mart recruiter in a January 2007 bulletin board posting. “That is not what the company is looking for.”
“The primary screening criteria for the positions is [sic] formal training and experience in intelligence analysis. If an individual does not possess that minimal criteria, then he will not be considered.”
See “Wal-Mart Recruits Intelligence Officers” by Marcus Kabel, Associated Press, April 24.
See also “Wal-Mart Defends Itself with New Intel Unit” by Jason Goodwin, Government Security News, February 2006.
The clearinghouse will also neutrally mediate the assignment of auditors to audits—strengthening independence, trust, and ethical governance across the AI ecosystem.
The potential implication of these evidence gaps becomes more consequential when you look at how institutions actually make decisions day to day.
Every new institution inherits something – existing incentives, existing staff, decades of prior investment that shaped what’s possible.
This is not the first time Google has agreed to censor imagery at the behest of governments, but be warned: obfuscation at this broad level poses a direct threat to the public’s ability to monitor and scrutinize government operations.