Did you ever delve deeply into the technical capabilities of that EP-3 that was captured by China several years ago? It seems it was transcribing conversations between high officials, and even labeling each side of the conversation to show who said what. The text recordings were saved in both Chinese and English. If they can pack that into a plane, imagine what can be done with acres of computers.
When we talk about “sifting” it's true that the data can be sifted now ... but not on the scale that makes it readily available.
We are talking about
MOUNTAINS
of data.
Soon it will be possible to screen all that data in real time and correlate it with years of stored data.
I think we are close ... but not there yet.
At the rate speed is increasing it could be tomorrow ... or it could be yesterday.
... just the view from the window I'm looking through ...