Abstract: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency occupies a leading position in creatively cultivating artificial intelligence technology. The development of data intelligence promotes the change of operational theory and the intellectualization of equipment, which brings opportunities and challenges to national security governance. This paper discusses the conceptual relationship among data intelligence, data science, artificial intelligence and related strategic planning, analyzes ten typical national defense pre-research projects in data intelligence, and summarizes the development characteristics and trends of defense pre-research from the perspectives of enabling technology, knowledge reasoning, adaptive algorithm and man-machine symbiosis. In the new era of transformation and upgrading of national defense industry, China should focus on solving the bottleneck problems of basic research in data intelligence and strive to be at the forefront of theory studies, accelerate the research of common technology in data intelligence to ensure complete autonomy and controllability, and design the application scenarios of data intelligence achievements and create new national defense capabilities.

Key words: DARPA, Data Intelligence, Machine Learning, Intelligence Analysis