WASHINGTON — The CIA is headed to the South By Southwest festival to share tips on finding innovative solutions to complex challenges.
America’s preeminent spy agency will deliver a presentation Sunday on creative problem solving at the annual SXSW music festival and tech conference held in Austin, Texas, the CIA announced Monday.
The typically tight-lipped agency said a CIA historian and one of the agency’s public affairs officers will deliver the talk, entitled “Mission Possible: The Spies’ Guide to Creative Problem Solving.”
Sunday’s presentation from the CIA comes during the first weekend of the event, which brings together thousands of artists, technology experts, business leaders and entrepreneurs.
The agency said its tips on creative problem solving are designed to be helpful to anyone, even if their particular challenges don’t include running covert surveillance, organizing clandestine meetups or sniffing out double agents.
“Come learn how creative problem-solving has helped resolve complex challenges we’ve faced in protecting national security, and how you can apply creative thinking to your own seemingly impossible missions,” the agency wrote in a social media post promoting the talk.
This month’s presentation comes at a tumultuous time for America’s intelligence community. The agency recently offered buyout offers to employees as part of President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts to shrink and reshape the federal government.
Trump has long criticized America’s intelligence agencies, and his CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has promised big changes, claiming the agency has strayed from its original focus on human-collected intelligence.
Ratcliffe is a former congressman and one-time director of national intelligence.