Uh oh, the future of open intelligence analysis will be in the hands of bots? Somehow, that doesn’t sound reassuring. DARPA (U.S. defence research) is reportedly to spend $30 million on a bot that can digest the web, and automatically churn out potted reports and data-sets for humans.

Still, it’s said there might be civilian spin-offs…

“However, BBN also expects the program to enable a plethora of new civilian applications, everything from intelligent bots to personal tutors. The system could provide unprecedented access and automated analysis of the world’s libraries, allowing for vastly expanded cultural awareness and historical research”

If you’d like to have your own mini intelligence agency on your desktop, the free Maltego 2.0 application is fun to play with, although oddly lacking in a basic means of identifying which website is hosted in which nation.