Kristin Wood on the intelligence value of open source data "Intelligence Matters"
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In this episode of "Intelligence Matters," host Michael Morell speaks with former senior CIA officer Kristin Wood about the history, value and current applications of open source data to intelligence collection and analysis. Wood, who helped lead the innovation and technology group at CIA's Open Source Center, walks through the types of information available to the public and for purchase through commercial firms that create unique insights into companies, behaviors and events. Morell and Wood discuss the ways in which the U.S. intelligence community has leveraged or failed to leverage some key open source data.
HIGHLIGHTS
Proliferation of open source data:"One of the hallmarks of this moment in open source is that it is no longer just intelligence officers or military officials who have access to phenomenally important information for national security. And it's many of these private organizations that have remarkable data and or data and tools to tell stories about national security that really we could have only dreamed about having a source to collect. So they're a big part of how this has all evolved as companies like Google and Amazon learn a ton about us and as we share, frankly, a lot of information about our personal lives on platforms like Twitter and Facebook and for some TikTok and elsewhere."
Open source being the "INT" of first resort:"Why would we want that? Well, we might want it because it's less expensive. And if we think about launching satellites and the processing capabilities that are required to bring something down for an analyst to review, that can be expensive. The same thing about signals and others. For a human asset, we have to train a case officer and have them trained in language and then send them overseas to find someone to collect the information. Wildly expensive, both in terms of risks to people and time. And so it has the capability now to become our INT, our intelligence tool of first resort, to inform classified systems and information, or frankly, maybe it will prevent us from having to do something we might have had to do otherwise."
Need for an open source government entity: "We definitely need something very serious, very fast. And here's my concern. An open source agency can't happen fast. Congress would have to pass legislation and fund it. New leadership would have to create priorities and strategic plans and mission statements and find space. And then the IC agencies and probably DOD would be taxed to provide part of their budgets and send many hundreds of people to the new agency. And then they would need to get moved and trained and provided tools and data. And that's all going to take years. And I don't think the world is going to wait for us to supersize what we do and empower it with enough staff and tools and funding to compete."
INTELLIGENCE MATTERS KRISTIN WOOD
PRODUCER: OLIVIA GAZIS
MICHAEL MORELL: Kristin, welcome back to Intelligence Matters. It's great to have you on the show again.
KRISTIN WOOD: Michael, it is great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
MICHAEL MORELL: You're welcome. So we are going to talk about something called 'open source intelligence.' This is an extraordinarily important topic, and I know you agree and thank you for agreeing to come on and talk about it. I'm really looking forward to the conversation. This doesn't get the attention that it deserves, and maybe we can help bring a little bit more attention to it.
The place I want to start, Kristin, is to ask you to define it. When people say 'open source,' 'open source intelligence,' what do they mean?
KRISTIN WOOD: So your skill at asking the right question continues. And it's a problem. And starting at a fundamental place like, 'What is it?' because there isn't a universally agreed upon definition. There are pockets of the Defense Department that talk a lot about PAI and so publicly available information and commercially available information. And they say that when you do analysis on that data, then that it becomes intelligence.
I think, or, at the Open Source Center, Open Source Enterprise, it's been the exploitation and analysis of all sorts of data: classic media, TV, newspapers, academic journals, publications, and then really with the advent of social media and online media maybe 20 years ago, it also incorporated those things.
Now, fast forward to now and the definition still uncertain and needs to broaden to include commercial information. That's way beyond the scope of what open source classically used to be. So retail sales information, financial data, information on car sales, information that people share on their cell phones, online shopping information. It goes on and on and on as the digital interconnectivity of devices expands across the globe.
MICHAEL MORELL: What's the difference between publicly available information and commercially available?
KRISTIN WOOD: So publicly available information is generally seen as that you could not Google because there are better tools available to those who are experts than what we would normally do to find a great Indian restaurant. But it is that I can just find, I don't need to pay for it and it is easily available to most people.
Commercially available information is something that you'd have to pay for, generally. So maybe that's a company that has information about financial transactions or a railroad company that sells its data on on-time arrivals of trains, for example. So those are generally the distinctions, although there's not complete agreement about that within the open source community.
MICHAEL MORELL: And then would you put the private sector doing analysis using both of those types of information? Would you consider that to be open source?
KRISTIN WOOD: I would. And I think one of, as we get into the conversation, one of the hallmarks of this moment in open source is that it is no longer just intelligence officers or military officials who have access to phenomenally important information for national security. And it's many of these private organizations that have remarkable data and or data and tools to tell stories about national security that really we could have only dreamed about having a source to collect. So they're a big part of how this has all evolved as companies like Google and Amazon learn a ton about us and as we share, frankly, a lot of information about our personal lives on platforms like Twitter and Facebook and, for some, TikTok and elsewhere.
So it is a rich, rich set of data that is available to tell important stories. So I think we do have to count the private sector, academia as well, and the nonprofit world in this big community related to open source.
MICHAEL MORELL: Okay, Kristin, what's your background with regard to open source?
KRISTIN WOOD: So I think for my 20 years at CIA as an analyst, a brief time in operations, for some time we worked together as a PDB briefer. I used it throughout my career. But for me, for the most part, it was a little b
Wednesday, March 8, 2023 at 11:00 am