At a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) questioned FBI Director Kash Patel about the use of artificial intelligence at the FBI.
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00:00Senator Capoteau.
00:01Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and thank you, Director Patel, for being here.
00:05I know on April 17th you traveled to West Virginia to visit the CJIS facility.
00:11I'm sorry I couldn't join you in there.
00:12I had a conflict.
00:14But for those of you who are unaware, this is where all the background checks but also the fingerprint for purchase of firearms.
00:21And the numbers are quite staggering when you see how many applications are processed every month.
00:29I think it's amazing the work that they do out there.
00:32I would like to know, you know, the employees out there really appreciated your visit.
00:37You've already mentioned that maybe some of the diffusing of some of the D.C. FBI would be going to hopefully into the Clarksburg facility.
00:45What was your impression when you were there?
00:47Or do they have the resources to do everything they need to do?
00:50There's a DOD facility right next door where they cross-use information, share information.
00:59Just what was your general impression and how can we get the resources there that they might need through this budget?
01:05Thank you, Senator.
01:06My general impression aligns with yours.
01:09I was wildly impressed with the work that's done out there.
01:12It's the unsexy work that the FBI does on a daily basis, whether it's gun background checks, national criminal information background checks, state and local law enforcement relies on us.
01:21And every time they have a traffic stop to call in and adjudicate the individual they're confronting or when they're going to get a search warrant.
01:29We have about 1,000 acres out there, if I'm correct.
01:31It's a beautiful property.
01:33It is available for expansion.
01:35We are almost maxed out when it comes to how many people we can currently put there.
01:40We are putting some more folks there throughout this reorientation program.
01:46But, you know, you can never have enough computer data being ingested.
01:53And what I'm working on specifically to improve CJIS, which will improve the work that happens in every single state, is the reporting in data cycle from state and local authorities.
02:02Because without that, CJIS doesn't work.
02:04It only works as well as with our state and local law enforcement.
02:07So I'm working on that to move to some of those folks and make sure that they are reporting in.
02:12But we would love to continue to expand the footprint there.
02:15Well, anything we can do there, I think the work they do is phenomenal.
02:18And I know it's been increased over the last several years because of the new requirements that we had in the School Safety Act to be able to look at juvenile records for the 18 to 21-year-olds,
02:30which I think has been a very successful effort and prevented several hundreds of people from obtaining a firearm that really should not be eligible for that privilege.
02:41So thank you for that.
02:43Drugs, obviously, is a huge issue in our state and our country.
02:47I know that when you mentioned the obstruction of child traffickers, everything's tied to drugs.
02:57It's the purveyor of the money.
02:59It provides the money for people to be able to traffic and abuse children.
03:02I mean, the drug, if you ask a local judge how many percent of cases do you have in front of you, have some intersection with drug abuse or selling drugs.
03:13It's 80 percent.
03:15So I would encourage you to do everything, and you are, to prevent the drug smuggling and working against the transnational criminal organizations.
03:26Are you finding when you got there, are you finding you have enough capacity to – it's such a far-reaching and daunting challenge.
03:33Do you have the capacity within this budget to be able to be as aggressive as you want to be?
03:37Ma'am, I think we do – what I think – what I am working on is changing how we apply AI to the ingestion of information we have.
03:48We simply cannot hire enough human beings to triage the data that's coming into systems like SEGIS.
03:54We need to rely on private sector engagement to work with the FBI so that we can triage what is not useful and focus on what is.
04:03And I think that's what we're doing within our limits here.
04:05Let me ask you just a quick question.
04:08I don't know – I know you're in a constant hiring position because people leave, people retire.
04:14Maybe you're not hiring up to the 38,000 that you said, but you want to keep a steady flow here.
04:19Are you finding – I think law enforcement over the last several years really suffered from a lack of interest or even –
04:27people weren't even applying for jobs in certain, like, border patrol and local law enforcement because of the besmirching of that terrific occupation of law enforcement and keeping us safe.
04:40What are you finding in your recruitment efforts?
04:41So, in terms of recruitment, it's been a big focus, ma'am.
04:44Thank you for asking.
04:45Over the last couple of years, the average application pool per month for 1811's Federal Bureau of Investigation new agents per month was about 2,700.
04:54In the first two full months that I've been the FBI director, we have doubled that to 5,700 applicants per month, which is a record for FBI history.
05:02That's terrific.
05:04Thank you, Senator Capito.
05:05We're privileged to have the ranking member, the vice chair of the full committee with us today, Senator Murray, you are –