The Intersect

The Intersect is a fictional secret technology appearing in the television series Chuck. Within the series, it is used to house and analyze large quantities of encoded data. The term refers to the computer in its manufactured form ("We built the Intersect") as well as its presence in a human brain ("He has the Intersect in his head"), and can also be used to refer to the human who has downloaded it ("The Intersect will observe and report on what he sees", "He's the human Intersect"). It was originally developed by the United States intelligence community.

Following 9/11, the CIA and NSA were instructed to "play nice" and share their intelligence, in turn making it easier to track and identify threats to national security, and the manufactured Intersect is "how (they) did that". They put "every scrap of data (they) had" into the computer, and the Intersect "saw" patterns in the data that the agencies had not. For example, Chuck describes in "Chuck Versus the Intersect" that multiple agencies had picked up information suggesting a bombing attempt against General Stanfield during the speech he was due to give, but the CIA and NSA each only had part of the picture. The Intersect cross-checked and combined both groups' intelligence to determine the full nature of the threat. Dr. Howard Busgang (code name Perseus) was one of the technicians involved in its design and development, as was Dr. Jonas Zarnow. The chief designer is Stephen J. Bartowski (code name Orion), Chuck's father. Hartley Winterbottom and Ted Roark were the two other lead designers on the Intersect project.

It is revealed in "Chuck Versus the Goodbye" that the Intersect was originally built as a teaching tool. Stephen, Hartley and Ted created a device known as 'The Key', which allowed them to modify the Intersect's properties. Realising the potential danger if The Key was to fall into the wrong hands, the components of The Key were split between its three designers.

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