From Secrets to Sensors: Why Open Source Data Must Drive Modern Intelligence (Renee Pruneau Novakoff, 2/05/26, The Cipher Brief)
The intelligence community has struggled with adopting the reality that to remain relevant, it must embrace publicly and commercially available data into its threat and warning process and use the powerful technologies that the commercial world is developing to sift through that data. There has been much work in this area across the intelligence community and some of it has been groundbreaking but the work has not been comprehensive, integrated, or fast. There are boutique enterprises that have developed their own high-tech way forward but when it comes to scaling such technology across the intelligence community or within the Defense Intelligence Enterprise, the hurdles are huge. Each intelligence agency claims its own security issues and erects fences against cross intelligence technology modernization. Even organizations like the Defense Innovation Unit or IN-Q-TEL focus on discreet requirements, not the wholesale cultural change needed to bring in the latest commercial technology that can support warning and security. Neither the Director of National Intelligence nor the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security have been able to lead the intelligence community to making this cultural and technology change a key priority. As the largest part of the intelligence community, the Defense Intelligence Enterprise needs to lead the way in developing a high tech, open source, data rich environment for its customer base. Military commanders need a real-time, complete, and high-quality battlespace picture to quickly make informed decisions, take direct actions, and assess the high volume of potential targets and threats.
The capabilities that are available for plugging into this warning and targeting picture are endless. For example:…