CIA-backed IT firm offers view into the future. Recorded Future?

A CIA-backed Swedish-American company claims that it’s new technology can predict disease, terrorist threats, economic swings and resource shortages. The Local’s Karen Holst explores.

A look into the future may no longer require palm readings, star alignments or tarot cards after the release of a new technology purporting to be an all-encompassing oracle of the future.

The Swedish-American software company, Recorded Future, has developed a program that specialises in predictive analysis and with backers including the CIA investment arm In-Q-Tel, it is hoped that averting terrorist attacks could be one of its uses.

“It is a useful aid but prediction is always difficult. The world we face has wicked problems, and it’s important to understand that people like (Anders Behring) Breivik and Al-Qaeda are pretty savvy in concealing themselves through code words and disguised meanings,” says Magnus Ranstorp, Research Director of the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College (Försvarshögskolan) and one of Sweden’s foremost experts on Islamic terrorism.

http://www.thelocal.se/36384/20110927/