The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) stands at the forefront of America's intelligence capabilities, providing critical geospatial intelligence that shapes national security decisions and military operations worldwide. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Rear Admiral Michael L. Baker, Associate Director for Operations at NGA on The Business of Government Hour, who offered insights into the agency's evolution, operational priorities and objectives.
His perspective reveals an organization contending with the paradoxes of modern intelligence work while maintaining its foundational mission.
The Evolution and Mission of Modern Geospatial Intelligence
NGA's transformation into a unified intelligence organization represents one of the most significant consolidations in the intelligence community's history. As Baker explained, "NGA evolved and developed over time culminating in NGA in 2003. The government decided to bring together a variety of disparate parts that were all really related." This consolidation brought together the Defense Mapping Agency, National Photographic Interpretation Center, Central Imagery Office, and Defense Dissemination Program Office, along with elements from the CIA, DIA, and National Reconnaissance Office.
The creation of NGA established geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) as a newly defined intelligence discipline for the United States, with NGA serving as the functional manager to "coordinate the nation's business in geospatial intelligence." This coordination fundamentally involves "bringing in imagery, imagery analysis and geospatial information" to serve national strategic needs across all government departments, particularly the Department of Defense.
Baker underscores NGA's core mission that reflects the agency's comprehensive scope: "We're the nation's leaders of GEOINT, and we do it in order to defend our homeland, protect Americans, prepare, fight and win wars and inform national decision making for the advantage of the United States."
This mission statement encompasses both the defensive and offensive capabilities that modern geospatial intelligence provides to national security.
Operational Leadership and the Data-Intelligence Paradox
As Associate Director for Operations, Baker oversees "the totality of NGA's operational mission output," including tasking and collection of imagery, processing and analyzing that imagery, and transforming it into actionable intelligence products for warning, targeting, and operational use. His team is also responsible for creating maps, charts, and publications that support navigation and safety operations globally.
Baker identified what he considers the agency's most pressing challenge: a fundamental paradox in modern intelligence operations. "We are in time where we have a seeming contradiction of having too much data to handle, but at the same time not having enough data," he explained. "I think that's our biggest challenge."
This paradox reflects the exponential growth in available imagery and data sources, which creates both unprecedented opportunities and complex operational challenges. The core difficulty, as Baker articulated it, centers on processing massive volumes of information efficiently: "It's how to deal with the terabytes of imagery that we are drawing in and move through it quickly so that we don't miss something so that we can develop our imagery analysis and our GEOINT delivered at the right point of need."
The challenge is further compounded by an increasingly competitive intelligence environment. "Our adversaries are not resting still," Baker noted. "They're working to try to catch up. They're working to try to get ahead of us, and they're increasingly putting more capacity into space and into the air."
This dynamic creates pressure for NGA to simultaneously process more data faster while also expanding collection capabilities to maintain intelligence advantages.
Multi-Domain Collection and Global Orchestration
NGA's collection capabilities extend far beyond the traditional satellite imagery that many associate with the agency. Baker emphasized that "geospatial intelligence imagery comes from a wide variety of sources," including space-based, airborne, sea-based, and land-based collection platforms. This multi-domain approach reflects the complex operational environment in which modern intelligence must operate.
The agency serves as "the focal point" for "global demand" and "global orchestration of the capabilities for the nation." This orchestration includes national technical means, commercial sources, military platforms, and international partnerships. Baker noted that NGA has developed "systems that we use" and "long standing practices" to create daily strategies that "allow us to optimize how we can collect and process and then exploit and disseminate this imagery."
The Joint Mission Management Center (JMC) plays a crucial role in this orchestration process. Baker described it as "the place where we decrease the gap between collection request and delivery where we collaborate across multiple partners inside of the federal government and inside of DoD and where we then really optimize the best asset to get the requirement that's coming across the entire enterprise." The JMC represents NGA's partnership with Space Force, which Baker characterized as "a really great partner for us, particularly as new DoD systems come online."
Innovation Through Crisis: The NGA Approach to Technological Advancement
Baker's discussion of innovation at NGA reveals an organization that thrives on operational pressure and crisis-driven innovation. "We are in crisis almost all the time at one scale or another. And what we really try to do is learn from each of these crises and think afterwards: What is it that I could have done better and what could have helped me do the job better?"
This crisis-driven innovation creates what Baker described as "a good virtuous circle for us." When crises emerge, the operational demands for speed, scale, and accuracy drive rapid technological advancement and process improvement. "When you hit that crisis, you need to be faster, you have to have bigger scale and you still have to have accuracy and it's sometimes even more accuracy, so it drives that innovation and becomes a good virtuous circle for us."
The agency's research teams, and internal engineers rapidly develop solutions to operational challenges, while acquisition teams identify external technologies that can enhance capabilities. This approach has produced significant operational improvements, including automation capabilities that have dramatically accelerated traditional processes.
Baker cited an example where "we were in some cases recently had to generate a new set of maps that would have normally taken us about 8 to 10 years to do and we did it in eight months, so it's that kind of speed that we're gaining from automation."
Artificial Intelligence and Human-Machine Teaming
NGA's approach to artificial intelligence reflects a sophisticated understanding of both the potential and limitations of AI in intelligence operations. Baker emphasized that "we have been investing in using automation, computer vision and AI for a long time," but noted that the agency is "just at a new point in the capability of those systems that are allowing us to accelerate and do really exciting things with it right now."
The agency's philosophy centers on human-machine teaming rather than AI replacement of human analysts. "All along our history of doing this, humans have been at the center of it. We are humble enough though, as humans here at NGA to know we can use some help," Baker explained. This approach leverages AI as "like a junior analyst for us" that provides initial assessments, which senior analysts then validate and refine.
Baker's rationale for maintaining human centrality in the intelligence process reflects operational realities: "It is easier to trick the computer than it is to trick the human and in a national security environment our adversaries are going to be trying to help fox us and each move develop some new way of spoofing or jamming or tricking our computers and humans right now are better at overcoming those kinds of tricks from the adversary."
The agency has implemented comprehensive training programs to ensure responsible AI use. Through their GREAT (Geospatial Intelligence Responsible and Ethical AI Training) program, NGA trains both developers and users on responsible and ethical AI applications. Baker noted that they are "now training about 100 users per class, up from the original 15 just last quarter," indicating the rapid scaling of AI capabilities across the organization.
Commercial Integration and Open Source Intelligence
NGA has significantly expanded its integration of commercial imagery and analytics capabilities. Baker described recent contract awards totaling "roughly $500 million" to "13 vendors" for commercial analytics combined with AI and machine learning capabilities. This represents what he characterized as "close to a 15-fold increase in our financial commitment to the commercial analysis sector."
This commercial integration serves multiple strategic purposes. Commercial imagery is "inherently unclassified" and can be more advantageous in certain scenarios. Additionally, the diversity of commercial capabilities allows NGA to access different perspectives and innovative approaches that might not emerge from traditional government development paths.
The agency also actively works to validate open source information, addressing the growing challenge of digital deception and misinformation. Baker described NGA's approach to authenticity validation: "We will have a set that says, hey, let me look at what open source is claiming is happening... and we have an ability to look at that and think about can we determine if this is real or not?"
On Leadership
Baker's leadership philosophy centers on three key principles: coherence, focus, and urgency. "My teams will hear me talk about this a lot, coherence, focus and a sense of urgency, particularly when we end up in a crisis, particularly when we're at a high pressure environment with a lot of change. How do we block out the noise, understand really a cohesive vision of where we're going, focus on the right things and move out with urgency."
However, Baker identified care as the fundamental element of effective leadership. "The most important element of leading to me is to care. When you care, you're about 95% of the way there. Care about what you do, care about how you do it and care about why you do it." This care extends to purpose, people, and mission, creating what Baker described as essential elements for building team coherence and unity.
The remaining elements of effective leadership, according to Baker, are "pay attention, be involved and communicate" and "work hard. Don't be afraid of actually doing the work."
This philosophy reflects his operational background and the high-stakes environment in which NGA operates.
International Partnerships and Global Perspective
Baker's background as a foreign area officer and multilingual leader informs his approach to NGA's international partnerships. He described these partnerships as "really mutually beneficial" and noted that they are "productive in two ways, not just the United States supporting a partner, but it really is us leveraging each other's capability, capacity and location."
His global perspective manifests in operational planning through what he described as a "Socratic method of thinking through what's next."
This involves asking critical questions about international implications: "What does this country's perspective going to be on that? Well, have we considered what the next product ought to be that anticipates the step of that partner country or that neighboring country?"
The Future of Geospatial Intelligence: Predictive Capabilities
Looking toward the future, Baker identified a fundamental transformation in how NGA conceptualizes its mission. "As much as we are a GEOINT agency, we're a data agency. We have tremendous, tremendous folds of data and we bring that data and we turn it into intelligence. But we also take our intelligence product and we turn it back into data."
This data-centric approach enables what Baker sees as the next evolutionary step: predictive intelligence. "What I think is the next step and really in the near future for us is taking that data now that has gone into a product and then been turned back into data and becoming predictive." This predictive capability would provide "a decision advantage to our strategists, to our policymakers, and to our warfighting commanders" by helping them "understand what's happening on the Earth, understand what is about to happen on the Earth."
Conclusion: Serious People Doing Serious Work
Baker concluded the interview by channeling his boss, Vice Admiral Whitworth, whose approach to transformation emphasized two fundamental principles: setting the right tone and consistent communication.
The tone centers on the recognition that "we are serious people doing serious work" for the nation, while communication must be "consistent and incredibly transparent, honest, clear and caring" with the workforce.
This philosophy encapsulates NGA's approach to its mission and its people. The agency operates at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and traditional intelligence craft, managing the complexities of multi-domain collection, commercial integration, international partnerships, and emerging AI capabilities while maintaining focus on its core mission to defend the homeland and protect Americans.
Baker's insights reveal an organization that has successfully navigated significant technological and organizational transformations while maintaining operational effectiveness. As geospatial intelligence becomes increasingly critical to national security in an era of great power competition, NGA's evolution under leaders like Baker demonstrates the agency's commitment to innovation, excellence, and service to the nation. The combination of operational focus, technological advancement, and human-centered leadership philosophy positions NGA to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex global security environment while maintaining the trust and confidence of the decision-makers who depend on their intelligence products.