An American strike package takes off from Barksdale Air Force Base in the middle of the night. A Russian shadow fleet tanker makes a port call in North Korea. Chinese vessels sail into sovereign waters in the South Pacific.
A small but visible online community watches, scrupulously monitoring and synthesizing available data from aircraft and shipping radars, satellite imagery, media reports, military blogs, court filings, and a reservoir of other open source tools. One online account spotted a midnight traffic buildup on a key road between Russia and Eastern Ukraine and predicted an impending invasion. Another exposed Saudi Arabia importing Western-sanctioned grain. Christo Grozev’s OSINT reporting earned him a position on Russia’s “most wanted list.” OSINT accounts have accrued millions of online followers. Others, such as Bellingcat, are cited in The New York Times and the Financial Times.
Online OSINT is a big tent. Some are social media accounts that deliver snappy headlines: “Commercial satellite images reveal three additional B-52 stealth bombers positioned at NSF Diego Garcia.” Others are investigative journalists that publish months-long investigations. OSINT Defender, a particularly popular social media account, was spotted on a background television in the makeshift war room at Mar-a-Lago during the American capture of Nicholas Maduro. American national security officials likely knew who would report the breaking news first: the chronically attentive OSINTers.
The world is replete with sensors capable of documenting and sharing state behavior. Cellphones record and disseminate videos instantaneously. Satellites capture footage from Earth’s orbit. Surveillance cameras record roadways, public spaces, and sensitive locations. The near ubiquity of sensors,
combined with sophisticated technology capable of analyzing open source data, yields stunning analytic results. The London-based Open Source Centre conducts Battle Damage Assessments in the Russia-Ukraine war with remarkable precision. Geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) analysts use satellite imagery, maps, and other geospatial tools to evaluate threats to civilians, migration flows, humanitarian crises, and battlefield developments.
OSINT’s online proliferation has several implications. One stands out as the most profound: once-hidden state actions can now be uncovered by anyone who knows where (and how) to look. A carrier strike group cannot hide from a satellite. A government committing human rights abuses cannot mask its atrocities from a cellphone camera. OSINT makes the opaque maneuvering of international security more accessible, more visual, more digestible to civilians.
Military and intelligence technology of the 20th century created an international system wherein states could seamlessly surveil one another. Washington captured photos of Soviet military installations and nuclear facilities. Moscow did the same. Technology dictated the rules of the game, the facts of competition.
Surveillance technology has once again changed, and so too has the world. States no longer enjoy unbridled secrecy from the interested public. Conventional militaries, intelligence services, and special operations forces no longer operate completely in the shadows free from public scrutiny. State activity can be spotted, recorded, published, shared, and consumed. Once-classified satellite imagery is now a public, viral post. Significant international developments no longer exist exclusively in newspaper headlines. They can be watched, listened to, and experienced. OSINT makes this possible.
Still, there exist grounds for skepticism. Experts predicted the internet would democratize information such that the forces of misinformation and falsehood would be extinguished. Their predictions were wrong. With this lesson in hand, we must be clear-eyed about the shortcomings of OSINT. Like the internet, OSINT can be manipulated, constrained, and misguided by governments. Satellite images and battlefield videos can be doctored to fit narratives and foment chaos. OSINT is not immune from being used as an instrument of misinformation.
More time is necessary to determine how online OSINT may alter the calculus of states. Nevertheless, critical questions remain: Could OSINT hobbyists unintentionally uncover an impending operation? Might low-income countries rely on OSINT in lieu of expending resources on intelligence capabilities? Will OSINT be used by nefarious non-state actors or criminal enterprises? OSINT’s inexorable rise is evidence of the irreducible power of data, diffusion of information, and public curiosity. If data really is the principal currency of the 21st century, it will be OSINT that leads the way.
Written by Liam Walsh