FBI Seeks Predictive AI to Flag ‘Pre-Crime’ Threats on Watch List

The FBI wants artificial intelligence to help it decide who might be a threat before any crime is committed. A procurement request from the bureau's Threat Screening Center is now on the street, and it is pulling in some of the largest names in defense tech and cloud AI.

What the FBI is asking for

The FBI office in charge of maintaining the terrorist watch list is seeking an artificial intelligence system for pre-crime policing, according to procurement documents obtained by Reason. The request for information for vendors, posted by the FBI's procurement division in March, solicits potential bidders for a project that would supercharge the Threat Screening Center (TSC) with new predictive AI capabilities.

The solicitation, filed under the reference Threat Screening Center AI Enhancement, lists ‘Predictive Modeling Using Enhanced Data with Traceable Lineage’ as one of six core requirements. In plain terms, the system would study patterns across federal databases and predict which people warrant a closer look, automating work that analysts now do by hand.

Scale of the watch list

While the watch list has always aimed to stop threats before they happen, the main difference now is scale. The current list has ballooned to nearly two million names, and the FBI wants AI to sort through them instantaneously.

At the start of President Donald Trump's second term, fewer than 10,000 people on the watch list were American citizens. That number could soon climb under new federal rules.

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Policy backdrop

The FBI's request specifically points to National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, signed in September 2025. The directive tells federal agencies to target domestic extremism tied to ‘anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,’ as well as views on race, gender, and migration.

‘I've got every major tech company in the world embedded in the FBI,’ FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News, describing an effort to bring artificial intelligence into counter-terrorism work for ‘instantaneous results’.

Civil liberties pushback

The Brennan Center for Justice has found that guidance under both the Biden and Trump administrations rated predictive, data-fusion systems as high-risk for bias and indiscriminate surveillance. Trump has since removed bias-testing requirements from federal AI purchases.

Options market and stocks to watch

Federal predictive-AI contracts tend to flow to a short list of incumbents and cloud providers. Traders should watch how flow reacts if a formal award follows this RFI.

• PLTR: Palantir is the default name for federal predictive analytics and data fusion work. Watch for flow tied to any TSC-adjacent award.
• MSFT: Azure Government hosts a large share of federal AI workloads. Watch for cloud-contract commentary on the next earnings call.
• AMZN: AWS competes directly for classified and law-enforcement AI infrastructure. Watch GovCloud references.
• GOOGL: Google Public Sector has been expanding federal AI deals. Watch for any TSC or DOJ partnership disclosures.
• BAH: Booz Allen Hamilton is a frequent integrator on FBI and intelligence-community AI programs. Watch backlog trends.

For more on federal AI spending and defense contracts, see other news.

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