A NEW REPORT SHOWS HOW OSINT CAN SAVE THE WORLD

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was one of Europe’s darkest moments since the end of World War 2. For the US and UK intelligence communities (ICs), the attack served as a vindication, as they had warned publicly and specifically about Russia’s intentions. But the war has also been the proving ground for modern open source intelligence (OSINT) efforts. A recent report from the UK’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the Open Source Centre (OSC) and the Economic and Security Council of Ukraine (ESCU) – “Ore to Ordnance: Disrupting Russia’s Artillery Supply Chains” – provides granular detail and critical intelligence about the inner workings Russia’s war machine. It demonstrates how civil society efforts – something Russia’s regime utterly lacks – can be NATO’s wonder weapons, laying bare Russian vulnerabilities while issuing a public challenge to Western governments to act decisively to hobble the Russian war machine and, for the first time in a decade of war, give our Ukrainian allies the ability to deliver a decisive victory on the battlefield. It is a proof of concept that can help us transform how intelligence is used in democratic societies if we can overcome the shibboleth that only classified information has tactical or strategic value. 

It is indisputable that, in Ukraine, the US and UK ICs have overcome decades of high-profile debacles – the inability to see that “the system was blinking red” before 9-11 was a catastrophic IC failure with aftershocks that are still rumbling a quarter century later. As the current war has progressed, the deep cooperation among Ukrainian, US and NATO intelligence services has been critical to Ukraine’s war effort – even as its soldiers and civilians have alone paid the bloody price of defending not just their own sovereignty but all of NATO’s eastern flank from Vladimir Putin’s genocidal nationalist project. On a tactical level, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (known by its Ukrainian acronym of HUR) has savaged Russian logistics with one audacious operation after another, presumably informed by a steady flow of signals and human intelligence. 

But it is also clear that classified intelligence will not provide the pathway to victory in Ukraine. Of course, it is not intended to do so, and the demands made of the IC are already overwhelming in the post-Cold War national security state. The IC’s job is to inform elected policymakers in making decisions. Yet the phenomenon of “overclassification overkill,” where around 50 million documents a year are classified by the US Government (USG), and more than 4 million security clearances of different levels are issued to USG employees and contractors, points to an existential problem. It has always been clear that the Ukraine war cannot be won amid what analyst Oleksiy Goncharenko has dubbed “a surreal sense of business as usual in much of the West”. This points to the economic war being waged globally. Sanctions are a key (but far from the only) weapon in this effort and the US, and its allies, have imposed them on some 16,000 entities since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. But Russia’s global supply chain, feeding the vast maw of its arms industry, is a moving target. It reconstitutes these networks as quickly as they are designated. Rule of law means imposing them in each instance requires a legal underpinning and they can be appealed – and this means that classified information cannot practically drive this process.

Making the case

OSINT can provide the myriad alphabet agencies charged with fighting this economic war (including the Department of the Treasury’s Office for Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) and Financial Crimes and Enforcement Network (FINCEN), the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), and the State Department’s Office of Economic Sanctions Policy and Implementation) with data about the people and companies in dozens of countries who enable Russia’s military and industrial complex that is timely, accurate, and  – critically – traceable through chain of custody. With OSINT, this can be done without compromising sources and methods.

There is an ongoing revolution in OSINT that the private sector and civil society groups have largely driven. Groups like Bellingcat have demonstrated that civilian analysts using technologies available to the public can sift through vast amounts of data to carry out complex investigations. Its OSINT case against Russia over the shootdown of MH17 has belied a decade of Russian misinformation over the murder of 283 civilians. Journalist Christo Grozev combined an analysis of Russian intelligence leaks and publicly available data to demonstrate how, where and when Russian agents used nerve agent Novichok to poison opposition politician Alexei Navalny. Companies like Palantir and Sayari provide powerful analytical and visualization tools, including artificial intelligence tools, to both private and government customers that can interrogate vast data sets. Never have civilian analysts had access to so much information or the ability to analyze it to draw actionable conclusions.

To its credit, the US IC has recognized the importance of OSINT and the persistent lack of strategic focus at the Open Source Enterprise (OSE), the main existing agency for this purpose. It is not an issue of capacity, but how OSINT is treated in the IC and government more widely, where clandestine intelligence has long been prioritized. To address this, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has published an OSINT Strategy for 2024-26, which calls for building “an integrated and agile OSINT community” and building a “highly skilled OSINT workforce”. There is a deep irony, of course, that its declassified version appears “thin on details”, to quote Emily Harding of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Importantly, the ODNI’s strategy focuses on creating an OSINT hub to serve the IC. But there’s a strong argument to be made that any such agency needs to have a strong public service component that provides data and analysis not for public discussion of policies that impact the national security of the US and its allies.

Disruption

The Ore to Ordnance report is a case study for the value of OSINT for simultaneously informing military and intelligence work and public policy. Importantly, it is not a product of a US organization; rather the report reflects a multinational effort involving researchers and analysts in the UK, Ukraine, Bulgaria and elsewhere. It relies on vast data sets to reconstruct the Russian artillery supply chain from raw materials, like cotton cellulose produced in Central Asia, to the delivery of shells from one of Russia’s vast ammunition plants to the front. Beyond the scope and depth of its research is its straightforward set of conclusions. First, it notes that Russia’s artillery supply chain is complex but requires procurement of key raw materials and components from abroad. Second, the report underlines the scale of Russia’s ammunition production, requiring a coordinated, systematic and sustained campaign of global disruption, rather than an action disabling a single plant, to achieve long-term material degradation of the Russian war effort. And third, it reports on Russia’s concerted drive to expand existing plants, increasing its capacity but also creating the potential for bottlenecks.

For the US government, there are aspects of this research that suggest a wide range of clandestine actions – some of which may have already taken place – from the preclusive buying of raw materials like cotton cellulose and chromium on the international market to kinetic action against facilities. There are also public actions that can be taken – from the designation of the dozens of intermediary firms that enable the import of raw materials, to export controls and targeted action to prevent the transfer of complex nitrating equipment and complex machine tools for new ammunition production lines. For the US public, the report allows us to hold the current and incoming administrations to account: We know how this artillery supply chain, responsible for 70% of Ukrainian casualties in the war, works, and can disrupt it through enforcement. Failure to do so becomes a specific political liability, not a classified matter confined to IC briefings. 

The report also informs a critical debate in both Europe and the US about the dire state of the munitions industry in NATO countries compared to rising Russian output. A recent Reuters investigation concluded: “A decade of strategic, funding and production mistakes played a far greater role in the shell shortage than did the recent U.S. congressional delays of aid, Reuters found.” Profound policy failures include a reliance on China and India for raw materials (mirroring Russian dependence on imports). Ironically, US TNT supplies also relied on a plant in Ukraine the Russians seized in the full-scale invasion. Journalistic work like the Reuters investigation holds government to account, ringing the alarm in Europe about shortages of munitions or drones or underground battlefield hospitals, while OSINT research like the Ore to Ordnance report demonstrates how civil society can empower government with the information needed to confront and contain Russia. OSINT is one weapon that closed societies like Russia and China cannot replicate because of the absence of civil society and their inability to accept the exposure of graft and failure. We can mobilize this weapon by building an OSINT agency that, unlike the rest of the IC, does not classify anything, is designed to actively collaborate with civil society groups like those that produced this report, and serves to inform the public and the state alike. Most critically, the interagency needs to adapt its policies and practices to the new era so that it can make full use of such an agency. The US government needs to get more comfortable not merely collecting OSINT, but acting on it — and civil society can help.