The Future of OSINT and the Intelligence Community with Jason Barrett

Dr. Andrew Hammond: Welcome to SpyCast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Hammond, the museum's historian and curator. Every week, we explore some aspect of the past, present, or future of intelligence and espionage. If you're enjoying the show, please consider leaving us a five-star review. It will take literally less than a minute of your time, and it will really help other listeners to find us. Coming up next on SpyCast.

Jason Barrett: The open source community can often times deliver information faster, cheaper, and just as good as something that might take weeks, and a lot more resources to accomplish from the classified-from a very exclusive collection perspective. [ Music ]

Dr. Andrew Hammond: The rise of open source intelligence, that does information publicly or commercially available online, is being described as an intelligence revolution. To be sure, open source intelligence was conducted way back. For example, by the allies during World War II, reading German newspapers, listening to the radio, and so forth. But the digital age has meant that volumes of information previously undreamed of never existed on the internet. To further explore the past, present and future of open source intelligence, or as it is called in the digital age, OSINT, I was joined by Jason Barrett, the current open source intelligence executive at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He's the first person to ever hold this role, speaking the growing importance of OSINT, to the American intelligence community and beyond. Jason's career in intelligence has spanned two decades, ranging from serving as an analyst in the Defense Intelligence Agency, to being the unit chief of the FBI Cyber Division, and even serving as a Presidential daily briefer to the National Security Advisor. In this week's episode, we discussed historical examples of OSINT, the evolution of open source intelligence, the challenges and unique opportunities OSINT presents, and the future of OSINT within the intelligence community. The original podcast on intelligence since 2006, we are SpyCast. Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. >> Well, thanks ever so much for joining me, Jason. I'm really looking forward to speaking to you about open source Intelligence.

Jason Barrett: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to talk, and we're excited.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: I think a good place to start off would be, some things people say to me-when has intelligence ever really mattered. They give us an example where we can see how it is really counted in the world. So I quite often offered the example of the Battle of Midway, where the tracking of JN25, the Japanese Naval [inaudible 00:03:13], albeit a smaller and less experienced U.S. Navy to ambush and defeat the Japanese Navy and really turn the tide in the Pacific, as we all now know. Was there some kind of example of open source intelligence that can help people that are maybe new to the term to get their heads around it?

Jason Barrett: Yeah, sure, and I appreciate the question. You know, if you look back at the history of the intelligence community, you look at almost every decade. There are really strong examples of how open source intelligence has provided not just leading edge indicators, but has provided often times the bulk of our knowledge base, when it comes to certain topics. So take for instance in the 40s, right after World War II, there was a growing need for more insight into what was going on in the Far East. And there was an interesting, at least within the D.C. area, of doing more analytic production and development on kind of how the world was evolving at that point. And if you really go back and look at the archives within the IC, what you'll see is a strong interest in analysis on Japan, and on the region, and how reconstruction was going, and different post-war efforts were going, but really poor analysis by the IC, and by frankly our counterparts over in the UK. And a critique that ended up coming from one sinologist up at Harvard, who expressed his frustration with the poor analysis that he was seeing, from some of the allies, frankly, and he expressed that frustration to William Donovan, the head of the OSS at the time, right before it became CIA, and in the course of that exchange, Donovan had turned around and actually said, alright, well, why don't you go, and help us figure this out. Because during that, during the exchange of information, what he'd actually said to Donovan was if your folks actually did more careful scrutiny of what the Japanese press was actually saying, they would have a much better understanding of the day to day life, and insights in the region. And you could get as much if not more fidelity on the environment there, through careful scrutiny of the press, that would offer the right context. Again, after hearing that, and understanding this individual's expertise, and the fact that he was teaching at Harvard, Donovan then hired him and sent him out there, and ultimately he spent I believe nearly 50 years working on behalf of, or in some way, shape or form, with the U.S. Government in that way. If you fast forward to the 60s, the open source intelligence was making up roughly 75%. There are various estimates from individuals at the time that open source intelligence was making up between 75 to 90% of the bulk of U.S. knowledge, U.S. intelligence knowledge, when it came to Soviet activity. And so I think it gives you a sense of, over time, the importance of having not just fidelity of what's freely available out there, but it's super important to have the context. If you aren't able to describe the context in which something is happening, you're not going to be able to really have credibility in the story, and so one of the things that really comes through when you look back at, again, the archives for the U.S. intelligence community, it is the importance, not just from a foundational perspective, but the majority of our knowledge base, and how it is built on that open source context.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: Mm-hm. It's interesting that you mention Donovan. I came across this quote by Donovan, "even a regimented press will again and again betray their nation's interest to a painstaking observer," so [laughing] if you just watch--

Jason Barrett: Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: Patiently, and listen-stuff gets divulged at almost despite anybody's-almost despite themselves.

Jason Barrett: That's a-that's a great example. Case in point of just careful observation, right? And it doesn't take someone sitting in a skiff, a secure compartmented room. You could be sitting anywhere, frankly, and just observing, but also I think what that speaks to is the ability to be able to understand in the local language what's going on in certain circumstances. Right? So technology is evolving to the point at which there is going to be-or there already is-real-time translation capabilities. But if you're-if you don't understand the local context, it's, you're not able to really fully appreciate the story, and so having the language, and linguistic capability to, and the ability to also listen in on those news reports, or to read news articles, that is such a critical element to I think the story of open source over the last 70 years.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: That's interesting that you bring that up, because this is almost anthropological or area of studies sort of take on a deep immersion in a cultural context and understanding of the language, these are pre-conditions for really understanding what's going on, but you don't hear those things that often when you hear people talk about OSINT. It's more just people sitting in front of computers that could be relatively-it could be anywhere, and they're just like consuming data, which makes it sound very neutral. But you're saying that there can be something deeper going on there?

Jason Barrett: I think there absolutely can be, but if you also look at open source work and the intelligence community, the evolution of our work has really tracked with technology over the last 70 years, so obviously you look in the forties, and open source at the time, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which is the predecessor ultimately to what is now the Open Source enterprise, at the time, it was focused on shortwave radio. And you know that was how you got most of-from a technological perspective-insight in near real time to what was going on. Obviously you could get newspaper articles, but the timeliness of them was lacking, and it would often times take days, weeks to be able to get the print copy back to the DC area. But shortwave radio was different you were able to get a little bit more fidelity, much faster. And if you track that over time, and especially in harder to collect on locations, the soviet block, in the fifties, sixties and seventies, certain places, and on, into the 80s, certain places were extremely difficult to penetrate when it came to traditional types of clandestine collection. But there was always a need for propaganda, right? And for a really good analyst who understands the region, or the country, to be able to understand linguistically what's going on, understanding over time how the story is evolving, how the propaganda is evolving, understand how pictures are depicting certain important-the importance of certain individuals. You know, all of those things together can portray a really important story, and having that context is critical and doesn't require, again, penetrating some impossible or extremely difficult country from a clandestine perspective. But what it does do is it also arms individuals who do that kind of work with much better context, so they can operate much more effectively in the clandestine space. So I think that's the other part here is from a collection perspective, open source intelligence is hugely relevant to policymakers without going through anything else. So we should be able to turn around into an analytic product, and provide that context to policymakers in rapid time. But it is also useful in feeding all of the other intelligence disciplines, because it allows them to-whether it signals intelligence and tipping and cueing what the signals intelligence architecture is doing, or whether it is geospatial, and some of the commercial capabilities that have been developed, and how that is helping inform them what we do on the sensitive side, or whether that is human, and being able to arm our case officers and our assets with more context. It's just a hugely important element to all of that.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: I think it will be useful at this point just to go up to thirty thousand feet-so just for anybody that is trying to orient themselves within this conversation, when we speak about open source intelligence, or OSINT, what exactly are we talking about?

Jason Barrett: So we released about two months ago the first intelligence community open source strategy, and at the very beginning of that, that strategy, you'll see a definition of open source intelligence that is new for the IC, and it specifically says open source intelligence is information derived exclusively from publicly and commercially available information. Why is that relevant to anybody? Well, historically, people have always understood or those who have followed the intelligence community have understood that open source intelligence is publicly available, right? And I think the open source community of today, even outside of government, is quite passionate about what that means. But within the IC, it's really important that commercial information also be specifically called out, because in today's world, it is increasingly relevant to the work that we do. It is also purchasable by anyone with the resources that might be required, but anyone can go purchase certain types of commercial data sets, and so in our view, that is also an open source kind of stream of information. And so when you think about in the macro sense, all of the different types of information that might fall within open source intelligence, you've got obviously the traditional news, you've got social media, you've got the national news of various countries, the official news outlets, the unofficial news outlets, the traditional print media, the new media, you've also then got a variety of other types of data, and in this sense, I would start to look at it in a layered perspective, right? So, what I've just talked about is really the obvious layer of information, but then, if you look at, and that's the stuff that you could search on the internet, and anybody could go and easily do that without really practically having to do any sort of applying these sort of tradecraft.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: There's Index, that's on Google--

Jason Barrett: Sure.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: You can find it all from that browser, yeah.

Jason Barrett: That's right, and I think if you stepped then below that, that's really where you're going to start to get in the practitioner wheelhouse. So anybody can do the other stuff, and a lot of people do, and they don't even realize they're doing it, right? that's open source, kind of study. But when you get into open source intelligence, and the real practitioners in the IC, what you are talking about there is the ability to then get into the deep web. Not the dark web, the deep web. So certain types of forms, files, company information, filings, you're getting into certain government data that has been posted online, but people just don't realize it, it's more obscure. You're getting into, again, a variety of different subscription services even at that point. And that would comprise what often times is euphemistically referred to as the deep web, but it is enormous, and frankly, it's where the bulk of the information is that is, that makes up the broad internet. It's just also an area where most people don't go, because they don't see a day to day need for it. But that information is often times critical to piecing together a story, in particular, if someone is interested in what a-so let's say a picture is posted online, and it has to do with an individual that we're really interested in. We want to be able to understand the full context of that picture, what's behind it. You know, what's in there? What are the insignias? And going through all different parts of that photo and not just the human element, but everything, the objects around it, there are so many different threads you can pull, and then being able to then do the research on what some of those things signify, it might take you down certain rabbit holes in the deep web that ultimately you're able to realize, oh, wait, that insignia means that they work for that department. That department has certain filings that we can get to. So there's-and they're all publicly available. You just have to have the wherewithal to find it, figure that out. So I think there has been some phenomenal work outside of government for a nonprofit, journalistic perspective in this space. A huge growth industry in this area from just volunteers, as well as journalists. But we have a pretty good cadre of folks across the IC and DOD who are doing this work as well.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: Mm-hm. I was just thinking of a couple of examples of OSINT that came to me when you were talking there. One was, I remember, reading during the second world war apparently some British analysts would read the Berlin newspapers and they would see what operas had been canceled, and from that, they would infer how effective some of the bombing raids over Berlin were, because if it was targeting the right areas, for example, then that meant that it was effective, if it wasn't then, they needed to adjust how they were bombing, and a more recent example, and the war on Ukraine, that's Russian submarine commander [inaudible 00:19:23] his Strava Heat Maps of where he's running and let's just say he's no longer with us [chuckling]--

Jason Barrett: Right.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: So those are the kinds of things that can be used for [inaudible 00:19:35] and it's kind of fascinating really when you think about it, and these are examples that are on the surface, they're not submerged with talking about the newspaper, we're talking about a Strava Heat Map that is just out there for anybody to find on Google. So it's kind of fascinating, right?

Jason Barrett: Well, and that's, it's a good example of how, in certain cases, you can get to the answer much faster and far cheaper, and much more effectively using publicly available, commercially available information. And the other thing that really jumps off the page when you research over the last 70 years, very passionate OSINT practitioners as well as people who have been in very senior positions across the U.S. government, what is a consistent theme, you can almost hear it every decade is the volume of information is more than we've ever had, right? It's greater than it has ever been. And it's just impossible to really sift through it all, and if people just realize that 80% of the information base for the ICU is open source, they would, this would be so much more heavily invested in, and you could invest in it, in a way that would deliver a return on investment that was significant, and frankly compared to maybe some of the more expensive work that we do in the classified realm. But I think what is also clear is that it's not an either/or situation, you can't just invest in classified, to the detriment of open source intelligence work or you can't just say that open source could get you the 80% solution so why are we even doing the classified work? There's got to be a balance, and I think we've struggled with that, as an intelligence community over the last 60 to 70 years, there have been times when it has been leaned on heavily, more so than anything else. But there have been long periods where it has been frankly under supported, under developed, and I think now we've got an opportunity in the last year. And frankly, looking forward, to really think about how to set the IC up for success long-term and do so in a way that delivers for the taxpayer, and that's frankly what I'm focused on, is how are we using taxpayer dollars most effectively. How can we ensure that we're delivering for the American people in a way that they would be proud of, but also that protects their privacy, right? And that's why the work that we do is focused on our adversaries, and areas where frankly U.S. intelligence does not have a huge footprint, because we just have to prioritize some of our more exquisite collection. but there's opportunities there for us to not be surprised by events that emerge, maybe in developing nations, or developing parts of the world. [ Music ]

Dr. Andrew Hammond: In thinking about open source intelligence, I'd like you to take a massive step back to think about the interrelationship between humanity, information and technology. Our existence on earth, and of our species, has always been conditioned by the information that we have about the world around us, which in turn has been conditioned by the technology available for the dissemination of that information. We can think about the modern digital age or we can also think about the revolution ushered in by the invention of the printing press, or the Guttenberg Press, invented by the German craftsman Johannes Guttenberg in 1455 which radically changed the distribution and flow of information for our species. This, in turn, had all kinds of knock on effects. Formerly laborious, time-consuming, and therefore very expensive book printing can now be done at a much greater scale, and a timely manner, and at very low cost. The sheer volume of books in circulation would quickly go from thousands to millions to billions. This affected the renaissance, the reformation, the scientific revolution, mass literacy, political discourse, the economic system, the development of the nation state, and much more besides. It is the press, certainly, Guttenberg said, but a spring of truth shall flow from it, like a new star, it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light hitherto unknown, to shine amongst men. Now, think about this statement and the context of contemporary debates surrounding misinformation, disinformation, and information warfare. [ Music ] [ Machine Tones ] [ Typing Sounds ] I think it would be good, just briefly, could you tell our listeners that their friends, between commercially available information and publicly available information, I know it sounds kind of obvious, but just a few sentences?

Jason Barrett: Yeah, so publicly available information is information that anyone could obtain through print, traditional media sources, we're talking about TV, internet, the online news, books, if you were to go to the library, those types of things. It also covers a whole range of other content, when it comes to what people have posted online and kind of the let's call it vlogs, or the whole range of content on the internet, that is kind of easily searchable, or requires some additional kind of OSINT related tools. But we're talking about the stuff that comes to mind for everybody, news media, print, and then the various rabbit holes you can go down on the internet. Commercial data, on the other hand, is data that comes out of the industry, it comes out of private industry, and there has been an explosion of it, over the last 15 to 20 years, as companies start to have realized that the value of the information that they are obtaining every single day from users, from mobile phone users, from desktop computer users, from proprietary data sources, it's all going different places, and then it's being repackaged and sold, and is available for purchase. There is understandably really, I would think, I think passionate views on the value of this information and the need to protect people's privacy, we agree entirely with that. We also agree, though, that as long as the current environment is the way it is, and this data is being sold to anyone, that includes our adversaries whether or not it's direct, or through cutouts, it is available for sale. And so it's really important that we have a sense not of what Americans are doing, but what we can understand from our adversaries, and from the environment in which our adversaries are operating. And so this is hugely important to the work we do, not just in the open source community, but it's frankly important, and foundational to the work that all the intelligence community is doing across all intelligence disciplines, so without that insight, we would be at a significant deficit.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: So, for the commercially available information is that something that like a listener could get hold of, or is this type of stuff only sold to other companies, or to governments, or is it entities that are going to protect the legal footing, or just anybody who has the money could get access to this, so it's literally completely open source?

Jason Barrett: Yeah, the vast majority of it is purchasable, by anyone, and I think that's really important to underscore, because there is this sense that some may be concerned that the intelligence community is only getting stuff that nobody else could get, and that we're circumventing privacy protections in order to do that, and that's just not the case. We are operating in a legal space. We welcome additional discussions on what this means. And what it looks like to protect privacy rights in going forward over the next 10 years. But that is a discussion that is bigger than just us. I think the American people are increasingly aware of how much data they are giving away every single day, and this is why you've seen growing interest in Europe, in the U.S., and elsewhere, in better informing customers of the tools that they're using, and the capabilities that they obviously appreciate, but the flip side is, how that is informing not just governments, but frankly, that is informing how companies are marketing to them. How they're selling certain types of information. So again, commercial-there's commercial data. But there is also commercial platforms, right? And so what we don't want to do is spend taxpayer dollars building in-house capabilities that frankly the commercial side industry can build faster, often times cheaper, and many times better than what we might be able to do within government, and so we often times partner with commercial entities who have not just data, but platforms, that are depicting that information, visualizing that information for us, in a much more powerful way. So it allows us to cut through and filter certain types of things, and really get to the bottom line faster.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: So with open source intelligence, I spoke to someone a couple of years ago on the podcast, and they are former CIA, and they are now working commercial space. And they said with around 200 people, we can probably get about 80% of what the IC could get, just by doing OSINT, so to me, IC needs to be reformed, so the IC has got the people that are getting the 80%, but the vast majority of it needs to be reoriented to worth the 20%. So that-I know that's like [chuckling] that's like a big debate there, but I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that as the OSINT guy at ODNI?

Jason Barrett: So, the short answer is the way with data volumes growing the way they are, and the ability to gather as much as we have at our fingertips now, we could probably recreate the majority of the information for the IC. What we could not do, however, which is kind of the key part, that I think people would miss in that debate, or at least initially, is the most exquisite insights are often times the things that are going to give us the actual context that is important, or the missing piece of whatever we don't have in that open source world. I mean, and vice-versa. But you can't do one or the other, it has got to be both. But to the argument that was made by your previous interviewee, it is something that I am pretty passionate about, when it comes to how we are allocating our resources. If you look at how the USIC is allocating resources, I think there is a huge opportunity for growth that is responsible and does not cost or costs a fraction of what it would be other intelligence disciplines. But responsible growth within the open source community that would, at the same time, allow us to have a more distributed work force to be more transparent to the American people. You know, because of the maturity of what we would be trying to strive for, and it would give us frankly the ability to have a more diverse work force from who we're hiring, because we-there are certain things that maybe we don't have to worry about near as much if we're having a distributed work force working open source issues. So I think there's huge opportunities there. It is a classic DC thing, where we have to say just give us more, instead of let's be more thoughtful about it. This is a good time to really think about what are we trying to accomplish, right? And if our business in the intelligence world, and it is a business, to some extent, is knowledge. Intelligence is knowledge. If you look at the father of the intelligence community's analytic trade craft, Sherman Kent, he would, his quote in one of his earlier writings is "intelligence is knowledge." Well knowledge without credibility means very little. So what we are offering to our customers is not just the knowledge, but the credibility that comes with that knowledge. That's the only reason we have cache. If we don't have credibility in what we're saying, we don't have anything. We don't have access. And so if we could get the vast majority of our knowledge, and our intelligence, from open source, the policymakers don't care. Our war fighters don't care. What they want is accuracy and credibility. And if we can do that, and do it through Open Source, and save more money, or save money period, in a comparative sense, we should be thinking about that. And we should really think through what it means to orient the IC long-term towards that goal.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: Mm-hm, and I'm wondering, as well, if there's also opportunity to, whether it be time, or cost, or just duplication if you want to put it like that, so across the different intelligence agencies, we could think of say the DIA, and the CIA, and if you have maybe in the old system where you have them, there's maybe a degree of-I'm not saying those agencies specifically, I'm just using them as an example-but imagine there's a degree of mistrust this is our turf, this is what we do, that's your turf, that's what you do, etc. And then they generate products and that gives a general picture, and there's pieces of it where people are doing things that are very rare, or exceptional or unique, or exquisite, across both of them. So I guess the question is, if you're doing an open source, and it's something that can just be filled across the whole IC, literally it's just open source, so we don't-you don't need to do that any longer. We don't all need to do the same thing, and for it to be hid behind here where's our stovepipes, or however you want to describe it, so therefore, that's something that we can all really forget about. It's something that is getting taken care of. Let's just say it's some interagency group that's taking care of all that. Our sole purpose now is to focus on not trying to present like what is it uniquely that DIA can deliver for the 20 percent? What is it uniquely that CIA can deliver, what is it uniquely that NSA can deliver or whatever? So I guess I'm just saying is there a way to also eliminate some redundancy or some duplication of effort, and I'm guessing the answer is yes?

Jason Barrett: Well, we've had no choice. To be honest with you, burden sharing in the open source space has been literally what we needed to do. Because we didn't have a choice. There has been, I think, challenges in the relationships between the different agencies over the last decade or two. It is one of the reasons why my position exists at all. So it's a brand new position that was created last year. I started in October. I'm the first IC OSINT executive. But I'm really privileged, because my partners at CIA and DIA, my counterparts, Randy and Brad, we have really developed a close working relationship. Everybody understands the importance of what we're doing, and we're passionate about the work. We also understand that the only way we're going to generate buy in, and appreciation for the need to mature the enterprise, through financial support, or greater role, a greater role, is if people see us, not just internally, but on the hill and elsewhere, really putting into practice this burden sharing concept, so there is I think-and we've had these conversations with staffers on the hill-we have really worked hard over the last year to identify ways in which we are not duplicating effort, and in fact, we're synchronizing the activities, so that DIA's effort is feeding into CIA's effort, and then I'm able to help work with both in certain circumstances. But I also think it's important that people understand that those two, CIA in particular, is the largest open source element for the IC, DIA is the next largest. Both from a resourcing and a staffing perspective. But if you look out across the IC, we've got some phenomenal work going on at different IC elements, and both if you look at state INR, and the strategy that they just released, I was really happy to see that. And I think it really hits at that, that the importance, the impact that open source information and intelligence can offer to diplomacy efforts. But the Army and the Air Force have been long-standing open source partners for decades, and in some cases, the work that they've been doing has been cutting edge and leading edge for the entire IC in this space. The translation work that they did in the fifties-forties, fifties, and sixties. The technical collections that they both put that the Air Force in particular has. These are critical components to our larger knowledge base. And one of the things that we are stressing in the work and in our strategy, that we're putting together, is that it's really important that we leverage all of what is available now, instead of building out duplicative lines of effort, let's make our dollar go further. And I think we're getting there. One area that we still have room to grow, and it's not just the open source community but it's across the IC, it's working with commercial partners, and industry partners. So we are really trying to rethink how we are acquiring commercially available information so that we're not across the IC purchasing the same data multiple times. And in fact, we're not just having single contracts, right? But we are finding ways to use a single touch point to hit hundreds of companies. It's really important that we think differently about how we are using our resources to acquire the information we need, and that we are doing due diligence to make sure that the information we're getting is actually what we need.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: Mm-hm. [ Music ] One major problem of the modern age for open source intelligence analysts is the explosion of information, and when I say explosion I mean explosion with a capital E. The Library of Congress is the world's largest library, with over 175 million items in its collection, including over 25 million books. The entire printed collection of the library would take up approximately 10 terabytes. Yet, around 403 terabytes of information are created every single day. To put this in context, each day over 40 times the volume of data contained by the world's largest library is created. That's 282 times that library every week, and 14,700 times that library every year. Imagine trying to stay on top of all of that information, but also imagine the picture of the world you can build up, if you can mine this information effectively. This the challenge the intelligence community faces today. [ Music ] [ Static, beeping ] [ Typing Sounds ] I was just wondering as well, like just for our listeners, so they can get their heads around open source, so I'm just thinking of sources and methods, so the sources you've hopefully explained that they're open, does that mean that the methods also have to be open, or can they sometimes be closed? So I'm thinking like you can release the report, but you don't necessarily have to say this is like the specific thing, I mean, there might even be some part of how you can find information that the other side doesn't know about, and it's not that it's like a big secret, but you're just like, we would actually just prefer to keep our-you know we've got a talented team that are leveraging information in unique ways, and we would just rather keep that to ourselves for a while, if that's okay with everyone. Help me understand the difference between sources and methods, and OSINT?

Jason Barrett: Yeah, I think that's, I mean, it's a great question, I've given this a lot of thought, and I think what's really I think is a misnomer is that the trade craft itself is classified. And in a lot of ways, the trade craft, even sensitive aspects of it, is very consistent with what any high level outside expert, the same trade craft that they would apply if they were trying to pursue a story, and it required them to be very sensitive to their target's ability to track them, right? So we want to be very careful that we are not, through our tradecraft, divulging what our interests are. I think that's-we are what is sensitive is the who, the what, the why. Who are we interested in? What are we interested in? And why? How we get that information is less, I would say, classified, than it is-we don't need to really go through all of the intricate details, but I would just say it's not particularly sensitive, in the sense that it's unique to just the IC. Anybody who wants to go out and collect information on another person could apply many of the same tradecraft practices, but the difference is that's a private citizen doing that, right? As opposed to the U.S. government. And in that sense, we have to be very careful that we apply our tradecraft against the right places, people, and for the right reasons, that are legal. And so that, I think, is what is important. When you're talking about sources and methods in tradecraft, our approach needs to be consistent with U.S. law. It needs to be consistent with IC policy, and we don't want to divulge through sloppy tradecraft who we are interested in and why, right? Because maybe we've been tasked with something to find out more information on what's going on in a certain country or between certain individuals. We need to be able to do that in a way that is circumspect, but allows us to get the answer fast. So we can do that. But we have to apply sometimes some obfuscation in our collection. And you can do that in an open source world, without tripping into that clandestine classified space.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: I'm just thinking more broadly as well now, so open source intelligence, how much if at all is that an equalizer. So, for example, I'm a small country, and the satellites in space I can't develop planes that are going to fly 80,000 feet, but with a few hundred people that are well trained, I can do OSINT pretty well, and is there a sense that for countries like that, they are maybe, you can now [inaudible 00:47:49] more above their weight, and compared to the past, when things were different? Or is it, I mean, there's obviously the United States is a big country, with a lot of money and a lot of people on this thing, so they're actually as economies of scale, and when you have a lot of people working on this, you can do way more than you can't, respectfully, small countries. I like what you're doing, but you're not going to get close to what we are doing, just because of the size, and the resources, and so forth. Help me understand that, is it an equalizer, or how does that affect the equilibrium of the global politics, I guess? That's the question.

Jason Barrett: So, it's an equalizer in the sense that it would give smaller countries a greater ability to understand the threats to them, but it may not give them, to your point, the ability to go and engage everywhere else. Maybe like we do, like the U.S., and our allies have the ability to do. So that scale, that economy of scale that you're talking about gives us the ability to have a global footprint, and coverage, and awareness, that would not be-that could not be-replicated by a smaller country, but maybe that country because of just dealing with less threats has the ability to through an open source perspective-they have a much easier ability to have indicators and warning of potential threats to them. Because they can spend relatively smaller resources compared to us through open source intelligence. And so I think that is definitely a truism, but I wouldn't just put the smaller countries into that category. What's interesting is just the growth of non-state entities in general. So when you think about corporations, multinational companies, you know, the ability to understand what's going on, in many cases, some of those organizations are larger than many countries, right? And if they want to, they can put together an intelligence picture that helps inform them in a number of ways that is very similar to the approach that we would be interested in. So I think that is a growing area of importance for people to realize, and has certain implications. But I think the other thing that I would add to this conversation is one of the areas that I'm interested in really accentuating with the open source community is the ability to develop common bonds and transparency. So, it's really important as we go through updating our USIC standards, and our overarching kind of approach to how we do open source intelligence and the standards that we apply the methodology, so to speak, that we apply. We have an opportunity to really be transparent about that. Maybe we can't open back up everything from a production standpoint that we are producing, but we can certainly be more transparent about how we're doing it, and I think there's an opportunity there to establish more of a consistent approach like the open source community does, outside of government, where they're working in a much more transparent sense, and towards, you know, common-with a common purpose. And I think when we're living in an age where credibility and trust is really important to build, this is an opportunity for the IC to really build that trust. I think in important ways. So it's an area I think you will see more of, us being more transparent in our work, and that I think offers a huge juxtaposition when you look at how many of the authoritarian regimes are moving, and operating. So our Chinese counterparts are closing walls, right? And making it harder for people to understand what is going on on a day-to-day basis. Even internally. And what we want to do is we want to show people the benefit of Western democracy, and the freedom and transparency that comes with that.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: And one thing that I wanted to ask was it's obvious that you're really passionate about open source intelligence, and I feel like most of the people that I speak to, who are involved in open source intelligence, they almost have a slight-- in the best sense of the term-- a slight evangelical kind of component to them. And like what is it about open source intelligence that sort of really does it for you? Why do you find it so compelling and so interesting?

Jason Barrett: It gets back to this idea that so I've served as the Presidential daily briefer for the National Security Advisor. I've worked for DNI as an exec across multiple different administrations. I've seen the most sensitive information that the IC has, for years. And we have that information, some of that stuff is why I wanted to join the IC in the first place. Okay? There is nothing quite like being able to deliver to the National Security Advisor on a car ride down to the white house, information that is going to really change the course of how they are going to operate that day and potentially help impact decision making from an administrations perspective, and to represent the IC when you're doing that. But I also have seen that the open source community can often times deliver information faster, cheaper, and just as good as something that might take weeks, and a lot more resources to accomplish in a classified, you know, from a very exquisite collection perspective. Back to my earlier comment, policymakers don't care that we don't get brownie points for going the hardest route possible to get the information. What they want is that what the intelligence community is providing is credible, and that is accurate. And it's objective. And if we can do those things, and we can do it through open source intelligence, why aren't we doing that? Of course we should do that more. And I think you know, for me, I don't know that 10 years ago I would have had the same amount of appreciation for this role as what I do now, but having the experiences that I've had working terrorism and cyber and supporting national level leaders, you see then where either gaps have occurred, or frankly where there's an opportunity for cost savings. And I'm excited about the potential to reach the next generation of workforce. If we can do that through the open source ecosystem, I'm stoked about that. It's a huge opportunity for us. And I think one of the things that has really attracted me to this position is the opportunity that it offers. Not just the IC, but policymakers and the war fighter, and to do so without building a bureaucracy that is ridiculous. We can do so with a relatively small footprint, and I think philosophically, I love that idea. What can we do? Where can we really gain the greatest advantage and use the most opportunity but without a huge footprint? And I think that is really where that's at.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: Well, thanks ever so much for your time. It has been a pleasure to speak to you.

Jason Barrett: Likewise, thank you. [ Music ]

Dr. Andrew Hammond: Thanks for listening to this episode of SpyCast. Please follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, please tell your friends and loved ones. Please also consider leaving us a five-star review. Coming up next week on SpyCast.

Speaker 1: So it's all about understanding the world around you, and within it, it has an awful lot of recipes that are very useful for invisible inks. He also writes a book on ontology.

Dr. Andrew Hammond: If you have feedback, you can reach us by email at spycast.spymuseum.org, or on X at INTL SpyCast. If you go to our page at thecyberwire.com, slash podcasts, slash SpyCast, you can find links to further resources, detailed show notes, and full transcripts. I'm your host, Andrew Hammond, and my podcast content partner is Aaron Dietrich. The rest of the team involved in the show is Mike Mincy, Memphis Vaughn III, Emily Collette, Emily Rends, [inaudible 00:57:21], Ariel Samuel, Elliott Pelsman, Trey Hester, and Jenn Ivan. This show is brought to you from the home of the world's preeminent collection of intelligence and espionage related artifacts at the International Spy Easy. [ Music ]