As the alarms start to go off globally about the spread of the covid virus in China, official authorities in Washington are now concerned about the threat the virus may pose in America. In regards to this, they have turned to U.S. intelligence for insight.
Although, according to a recent congressional review of classified reports from December 2019 and January 2020, the most prevalent early warnings did not come from spies or intercepts. Instead, officials relied on citizen journalists, reporting public, and diplomatic cables, as well as analysis from medical professionals – some instances of the so-called open-source intelligence (OSINT).
Predicting the next potential pandemic or the next government to fall will require better utilization of open-source materials, the review noted.
In a review conducted by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, the authors wrote, “There is little indication that the Intelligence Community’s exquisite collection capabilities were generating information that was valuable to policymakers.”
This echoes what numerous current and former intelligence officials are increasingly alerting of, i.e. As opponents like China boost their efforts, the $90 billion U.S. spy infrastructure is falling behind because it has not embraced gathering open-source intelligence.
Traditional Intelligence is Still Prevalent
While open-source intelligence has become an important tactic in recent times, this does not budge the relevance of conventional intelligence. Spy agencies have unique powers in order to penetrate global communications and cultivate agents. For instance, when the Biden administration made the intelligence conclusions indicating Russian President Vladimir Putin intended to invade Ukraine public, they achieved a high-profile accomplishment.
Nonetheless, officials and professionals have raised concerns over the fact that the U.S. did not invest sufficient people or finance in analyzing publicly available data. They as well claim that the U.S. did not efficiently utilize advanced technologies in order to yield critical insights.
Commercial satellite images, social media, and other web data have increased the ability of private enterprises and unbiased analysts to disclose state secrets. And there are rising concerns in Washington about Beijing's influence over popular apps like TikTok, as it is well known that Beijing has stolen or gained control over vast amounts of data on Americans.
"Open source is really a bellwether for whether the intelligence community can protect the country […] We collectively as a nation aren't preparing a defense for the ammunition that our adversaries are stockpiling," says Kristin Wood, a former senior official at the CIA, currently a chief executive at the Grist Mill Exchange, a commercial data platform.
Barriers Concerning Open-Source
Intelligence agencies have noted several barriers in regard to open-source intelligence. Some are technological. For instance, access to unclassified internet or open data sources is frequently difficult for officers working on classified networks. Concerns about civil liberties and upholding First Amendment rights are also present.
While some experts also raise questions about whether agencies are held back by the reflexive belief that top-secret information is far more valuable.
Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat, and longtime Intelligence Committee member says that he believed there is needed to be “some cultural change inside places like the CIA where people are doing what they’re doing for the excitement of stealing critical secrets as opposed to reviewing social media pages.”
Open-Source Capability of the U.S.
According to Frederick Kagan, a senior authority at the American Institute who looks after the creation of those reports, “There is a lot of open-source capability that the U.S. intelligence community can pretty much rely on to be there […] What it needs to do is figure out how to leverage that ecosystem instead of trying to buy it.”
Of the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, most of them utilize open-source programs, from the CIA’s Open-Source Enterprise to a 10-person program in the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence arm.
Although, the top officials do acknowledge the lack of consistency across those programs in the way they analyze open-source information or how they use and share it. In regards to the same, Avril Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence has said, “We’re not paying enough attention to each other and so we’re not learning the lessons that different parts of the (intelligence community) are learning, and we’re not scaling solutions, and we’re not taking advantage of some of the outside expertise and information and work that could be taken advantage of.”