In an age when the volume of human threat exceeds the capacity of human attention, the FBI has turned to artificial intelligence to do what no team of analysts could: sort the signal from the noise at the speed danger demands. Deputy Director Christopher Raia's account of this transformation — weeks of investigation compressed into hours, credible threats surfaced from thousands of daily tips — arrives alongside the most encouraging violent crime statistics America has seen in two decades. Yet the same tools that may be shortening the distance between threat and justice are also shortening the
FBI Using AI to Slash Threat Response Time From Weeks to Minutes
Zachary Charles Newell was sentenced to two years in federal prison for posting online threats to harm children at a preschool.
Somebody has to police the police, right?
Mark
So the FBI is using AI to sort through thousands of tips a day. How does that actually work in practice?
Mimi
The National Threat Operations Center feeds incoming tips into algorithms that score them for credibility and urgency. The highest-scoring cases bubble up to the top of the queue so field agents see them first instead of buried in a backlog.
Luke
But who built those algorithms, and what are they actually measuring? Is "credibility" defined the same way across all cases, or does it shift?
Mimi
Raia didn't specify the technical details. He just said the system works—they've cut response time from weeks to minutes in some cases.
Mark
He gave one example: the Zachary Newell case, the online threats to a preschool. That's a clear-cut threat. But what about murkier cases where intent is ambiguous?
Luke
Exactly. One example proves the system can work on obvious threats. It doesn't tell us how often the algorithm flags false positives, or whether it's biased toward certain types of threats or certain communities.
Mimi
Raia did address civil liberties concerns. He said the FBI has submitted 50,000 pages of documents to oversight boards in the past year and a half.
Luke
That's a volume number, not a transparency measure. We don't know what those documents say, whether the oversight actually caught problems, or whether it's just a paper trail.
Mark
What about the Flock cameras—the license plate readers? Are those part of the AI system?
Mimi
They're separate but connected. Flock supplies data to 6,000 law enforcement agencies, and that data flows to federal agencies including the FBI. Raia called them vital for investigations.
Luke
And privacy advocates are concerned about that data sharing. The question is whether people know their license plates are being tracked and that information is being shared across agencies.
Mark
So the crime numbers are real—murder at a 20-year low, robbery down 18.5 percent. But we can't say AI caused that.
Mimi
Raia credits multiple things: state and local police, border security, renewed focus on violent crime. AI is one piece of a larger shift.
Luke
And we don't have data yet on whether AI-driven investigations are actually solving more crimes or just responding faster to the same cases. Speed isn't the same as effectiveness.
Der Puls
- The FBI receives hundreds to thousands of tips daily — a volume that once overwhelmed human analysts and allowed dangerous threats to age in queues for weeks before action could be taken.
- AI algorithms now triage that flood in real time, and the consequences are concrete: a man who posted online threats to shoot up a Black preschool in North Carolina was identified, investigated, and arrested with a swiftness that Raia says would have been impossible before.
- Violent crime statistics released three weeks before Raia's interview show murder at a 20-year low, robbery down 18.5% in a single year — the largest one-year drop on record — lending weight to the argument that the new approach is working.
- Civil liberties advocates are not reassured: the use of Flock license plate readers by 6,000 agencies, with data flowing to federal authorities, raises questions about surveillance creep that FBI transparency pledges have not yet quieted.
- A new interagency task force — combining the FBI, DEA, DHS, Treasury, and the Defense Department — has already produced charges against 81 alleged gang members in Puerto Rico, signaling that AI-driven policing is one piece of a broader, more coordinated law enforcement architecture taking shape.
In an age when the volume of human threat exceeds the capacity of human attention, the FBI has turned to artificial intelligence to do what no team of analysts could: sort the signal from the noise at the speed danger demands. Deputy Director Christopher Raia's account of this transformation — weeks of investigation compressed into hours, credible threats surfaced from thousands of daily tips — arrives alongside the most encouraging violent crime statistics America has seen in two decades. Yet the same tools that may be shortening the distance between threat and justice are also shortening the distance between the state and the private lives of citizens, a tension as old as the idea of security itself.
Christopher Raia, the FBI's deputy director, sat down with CBS News this week to explain how artificial intelligence has reshaped the bureau's most fundamental work: deciding which threats are real, which are imminent, and which demand immediate action. The change is not incremental. Investigations that once took weeks now resolve in hours or minutes, because AI algorithms handle the sorting of hundreds or thousands of daily tips that no human team could process manually.
The interview arrived three weeks after the FBI published crime data that surprised even optimists. The national murder rate reached a 20-year low in 2025. Aggravated assaults fell 7.2 percent, rapes declined 7.6 percent, and robbery dropped 18.5 percent — the steepest single-year decline on record. Raia credits state and local law enforcement, border security, and a renewed institutional focus on violent crime, but he places AI squarely inside that equation.
He offered a specific case to illustrate the stakes. In March, Zachary Charles Newell of Newport, North Carolina, was sentenced to two years in federal prison for posting online threats to harm children at a Black preschool. Raia said AI prioritization surfaced that tip quickly, enabling an arrest that might otherwise have been delayed by days or weeks of manual review.
The expansion of these tools has not gone unchallenged. Privacy advocates have focused particular attention on Flock, a company supplying automated license plate readers to 6,000 law enforcement agencies whose data has been shared with federal authorities. Raia defended the technology and pointed to the FBI's submission of more than 50,000 pages of documents to Congress and oversight boards over the past eighteen months as evidence of accountability. "Somebody has to police the police," he said — though skeptics argue that transparency after the fact is not the same as restraint before it.
Raia also described a broader structural shift in how the federal government pursues organized crime. A January 2025 executive order created the Homeland Security Task Force, uniting the FBI, DEA, Homeland Security Investigations, Treasury, and the Defense Department under a shared mandate. In August, that collaboration produced charges against 81 alleged members of a violent Puerto Rico gang on drug trafficking and firearms counts — an early signal of what greater interagency coordination may yield.
Christopher Raia, the FBI's deputy director since January, sat down with CBS News this week to describe how artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed the way the bureau processes threats. The transformation is stark: what once took weeks to investigate now takes hours, sometimes minutes. The shift matters because the FBI receives hundreds or thousands of tips daily from around the world, far more than any team of analysts could manually sort through. AI algorithms now do the sorting, flagging the most credible and imminent threats so field agents can act on them immediately.
The timing of Raia's comments is significant. Three weeks earlier, the FBI released crime data showing violent crime in America has dropped dramatically. The nation's murder rate hit a 20-year low in 2025. Aggravated assaults fell 7.2 percent, rapes declined 7.6 percent, and robbery dropped 18.5 percent—the biggest one-year decline on record. Raia credits multiple factors: state and local law enforcement, border security improvements, and what he calls a renewed focus on violent crime. But he also points to AI as a crucial tool in that equation.
The National Threat Operations Center has become the nerve center of this new approach. By deploying algorithms to surface the most dangerous cases, the FBI has freed up human resources to pursue those cases in the field rather than waste time wading through noise. Raia offered a concrete example: in March, Zachary Charles Newell of Newport, North Carolina, was sentenced to two years in federal prison for posting online threats to shoot up a black preschool and harm children. Without AI prioritization, Raia said, the investigation might have taken days or weeks. Instead, the tip rose to the top of the queue and an arrest followed swiftly.
But the expansion of AI in law enforcement has triggered concerns about civil liberties. When asked directly about the risk that increased surveillance technology could infringe on Americans' rights, Raia acknowledged the tension. He said the FBI has been transparent with Congress and oversight boards, submitting at least 50,000 pages of documents for review over the past year and a half. "Somebody has to police the police, right?" he said, adding that the bureau is not taking away privacy or civil liberties through AI or any other means. Privacy advocates, however, remain skeptical—particularly about Flock, a company that supplies automated license plate readers to 6,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide. The data from those cameras has been shared with federal agencies. Raia defended the tool, saying Flock cameras are vital for generating leads and locating suspects.
Beyond AI, Raia also discussed the Trump administration's push against drug cartels and transnational gangs. An executive order in January 2025 created the Homeland Security Task Force, bringing together the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Treasury Department, and the Department of Defense. In August, that collaboration resulted in charges against 81 alleged members of a violent gang in Puerto Rico for drug trafficking and firearms violations. The task force represents a shift toward greater interagency coordination on organized crime—a shift that Raia sees as essential to the bureau's evolving mission.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
We've sprinkled in AI and now these tips rise to the top and we can get them out to the field to action.— Christopher Raia, FBI Deputy Director
We didn't have the manpower to analyze it—the FBI and other agencies were sitting on a bunch of risk given the hundreds or thousands of tips flowing in from around the world on any given day.— Christopher Raia, FBI Deputy Director
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