Former US national security officials form the Open Source Intelligence Foundation to promote analyzing public data like social media posts for intel-gathering
a comprehensive institutional response to the incentives problem is needed.” Check out @ChinmayiSharma's @lawfareblog article on open-source security: https://www.lawfareblog.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... @wsj : A group of former U.S. national security officials has formed a professional association to promote the tradecraft of open-source intelligence, the analysis of available data that has helped Western powers understand and track Russia's war on Ukraine https://www.wsj.com/... Dustin Volz / @dnvolz : New: Former U.S. national security officials have formed a professional association to promote the tradecraft of open-source intelligence, the analysis of publicly available data that has helped Western powers understand and track Russia's war on Ukraine. https://www.wsj.com/... Eliot Higgins / @eliothiggins : It'll be interesting to see what this groups actual activities are - New Group to Promote Open-Source Intelligence, Seen as Vital in Ukraine War https://www.wsj.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The quiet partnership between US tech companies, NATO intel agencies, and Ukrainian hackers that blunted Russia's offensive cyber capabilities showed how much intelligence value now sits in public data — and how improvised the people analyzing it were. The Open Source Intelligence Foundation is the institutional answer: ex-officials trying to turn wartime ad-hocery into a recognized tradecraft with standards.
The timing tracks a broader arc. OSINT researchers have since proven their value on marquee cases like the Nord Stream sabotage investigation, while the government has started building its own scaffolding — the ODNI hired cyber expert Jason Barrett specifically to fix agencies' open-source struggles. A professional association gives both sides something to hire from and certify against.
First-order effects
- Practitioners gain a credentialing and standards body, which directly addresses the hiring gap the ODNI's Barrett appointment was created to solve — agencies can now recruit against a defined skill set instead of poaching ad hoc.
- Platforms like Twitter become de facto intelligence infrastructure whether they like it or not; the mistaken suspension of accounts tracking Russian military movements showed that one moderation decision can blind Western analysts mid-crisis.
Second-order effects
- Commercial OSINT tooling vendors and data brokers gain a legitimizing trade association that can lobby on their behalf and set procurement norms, shifting pricing power toward whoever controls verified access to public data streams.
- Adversary states double down on the counter-problem: Russia's FSB already fields an oligarch-linked contractor ecosystem building surveillance tools, so professionalized Western OSINT raises demand for counter-OSINT and disinformation-toxification services.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, intelligence community structure bifurcates between classified collection and a formally credentialed open-source corps — with the boundary between 'public data' and 'intelligence asset' becoming a standing regulatory question rather than an improvisation.
- The foundation model itself spreads: just as the Linux Foundation consolidated open-source security under one umbrella, expect other informal national-security skill communities to institutionalize around shared standards and government liaisons.
The trend: Intelligence work is formalizing around publicly available data, with professional associations and dedicated government hires converting wartime improvisation into permanent institutional capability.