Open source intelligence is essential for countries to counter threats

The open sources of intelligence are endless

WASHINGTON - Most people associate the word intelligence with secret sources, meetings, and spies, but they don't realize that in reality, the intelligence community still relies on information from human sources and intercepted communications.

In the twenty-first century, open or public source intelligence has become indispensable for understanding enemies and is often the primary and most important source of solid information. According to a detailed article on the power of open source intelligence published by the Wall Street Journal, 80 percent of what any US president or military commander needs comes from open source intelligence.

So what is open source intelligence? And why is it so important in 2023?

In closed societies, social media has allowed the opposition to share information with the outside world

Dr. Eric Mandel, director of the Information and Political Network for the Middle East, and Sarit Zahavi, CEO of the Alma Center for Israeli Research and Education, who worked for 15 years as an officer in Israeli military intelligence, said in a report published by the American National Interest magazine, “Open source intelligence, in short, is the process of diligent collection and analysis of information From a wide range of military, intelligence, police and business communities.

The explosive evolution of social media — from instant videos to blogs and chat rooms to Twitter and Facebook — has created unprecedented opportunities to meet people and areas where human intelligence and intercepted intelligence are not as effective, or are too expensive. While limiting the exposure of human intelligence sources to risk.

Moreover, open source intelligence is greatly changing the analysis of covert intelligence.

On this basis, open hardware intelligence, human intelligence, visual intelligence, and intercept intelligence combined allow the country's national security and diplomatic agencies to take proactive action to thwart threats, inform allies, negotiate from a position of strength, and confront accurate information with international organizations and NGOs, especially those with hostile intent.

China has about 100,000 analysts who follow scientific and technical development globally through open sources

Mandel and Zahavi make it clear that the importance of open intelligence is not lost on the enemies of the United States either. With regard to China, for example, William Hanas, a professor at Georgetown University, said that Beijing has “about 100,000 analysts who follow scientific and technical development globally” through open sources. Even in closed societies, the explosive growth of social media has given opposition forces the tools to share information with the outside world. In general, the Iranian opposition was the first to reveal the advanced Iranian nuclear program.

But perhaps the private sphere is feeling the effects of open source intelligence the most. Private intelligence firms may outpace government intelligence services in gathering hard information; An intelligence unit of the US Dow Chemical Company, which uses only open sources, predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 23 last year.

According to former senior officials who spent decades working within the agencies' classified domains, the rise in open-source intelligence, which includes everything from commercial satellite imagery to social media and purchasable databases, presents significant challenges for the CIA and the CIA. other spyware.

However, open source intelligence is not without drawbacks, which must be taken into account.

Today it is becoming increasingly clear that creative professional open source intelligence analysts can paint an excellent picture of reality

One of the drawbacks is that given the vast amount of open source intelligence, specialized analysts have to somehow separate the wheat from the wheat.

The open sources of intelligence are endless and include analysis of press releases, websites, government newspapers, private commercial satellite imagery, technical reports, corporate and government databases, direct observations, and more.

Mandell and Zahavi add that information overload is a potential problem to be addressed. In the past, people tended to believe that secret sources provided the most important information. Today it is becoming increasingly clear that creative professional open source intelligence analysts can paint an excellent picture of reality, but this is conditional on the ability of analysts to condense an enormous amount of information into a tangible and accessible intelligence product.

Then there is the problem of misinformation. For many years the intelligence community, which relies on a whole range of intelligence sources, has had to warn about this. There is a belief that open source intelligence can be more challenging for intelligence analysts, as there may be a greater risk of such disinformation.

At the same time it is clear today that every form of intelligence, be it open source or classified, has become infected with disinformation. Adequate judgment and accurate assessment are becoming more important.

The classified information that is leaked to open sources also represents a double-edged sword: while the information can be helpful to policymakers whose security services did not provide them with this leaked information, the problem is that the enemy knows this, too.

“No one knows the future of intelligence,” Mandel and Zahavi conclude, “but appreciating the importance of open source intelligence, along with human intelligence and intercepted intelligence, will provide us with an opportunity to share with our leaders the best information to protect our interests and our communities from those who would harm us.” -

The robot is creative in drawing Japanese manga comics , It took Rotburt just six weeks to finish his 100-page book.

Painters are about to retire

After composing music tracks and imitating drawing boards, artificial intelligence enters the world of comics after being able to create all the images of manga stories and famous Japanese comic book books and their characters.

TOKYO - A book by a Japanese manga writer whose entire images were created by an artificial intelligence program is due to be released Thursday, raising concerns about the future of work and copyright in this lucrative field.

And “Medjourney”, an artificial intelligence program that appeared last year that amazed humanity, along with other programs including “DAL-A2”, created all the images and characters of the Japanese comic book that belongs to the science fiction genre and is titled “Cyberpunk: Peach Gun”. .

It took Rotburt, the writer's pseudonym, just six weeks to finish his 100-page book, while a well-known writer usually needs one year to finish a job.

"The adventure was fun, and it's like a lottery," says Rotburt, 37, who admitted he was unable to create images for his book.

After entering keywords such as “pink hair,” “asian boy” and “jacket,” Rotburt created, within a minute, pictures of the story's protagonist, with an altered face in each.

Some fear that this technology will harm the work of up-and-coming Japanese comic writers

Then the writer collected the best results within a sample of the comic strips to complete the book, which includes colors that are not usually used in Japanese manga stories. And social media started addressing the work even before it was published.

The writer considers that the tools that create images based on artificial intelligence technology “paved the way for those without artistic talent,” but on the condition that the book’s story is interesting.

Rotburt notes a sense of satisfaction when the program carried out its "magic" instructions and began creating images.

"However, this feeling is not the same as what we feel when we create the drawings ourselves," he says.

The “Midjourney” program, which was developed in the United States, achieved global success quickly with its innovations, some of which were vulgar, while others were amazing in terms of their details, which prompted many artists to ask questions about the fate of their profession.

Artificial intelligence tools have sometimes caused legal controversy, while the startup that created the “Stable Defusion” program has been prosecuted because it entered its own copyrighted data.

And in Japan, lawmakers are expressing their concerns about the issue, although experts stress that copyright infringement is unlikely if what AI tools create results from requests received in writing.

Others fear that this technology will harm the work of emerging Japanese comic strip writers, and Satoshi Kurihara, a professor at Keio University in Tokyo, who published comic strips made with the help of artificial intelligence technology in 2020, believes that “the possibility of replacing Japanese comic writers’ assistants” with a machine Someday "is not excluded."

Almost all the illustrations for these strips, written in the style of Osamu Tezuka, were made by people. But since then, artificial intelligence has been generating "high-quality" images, and it is certainly expected to make an impact in the field of Japanese comic strips, Kurihara says.

“I don't see artificial intelligence as a real threat, but I think it could be an amazing assistant,” says Madoka Kobayashi, a Japanese comic writer who has been working in the field for more than 30 years.

She adds that AI tools “help me implement the ideas that I have in mind, in addition to suggesting ideas that I can improve later on.”

And she continues, “I am convinced that humans are always the best” in devising scenarios, which are a very important aspect of Japanese comic strips.

At the Tokyo Design Academy, where she teaches, Kobayashi uses models to help her students improve their performance in drawing characters' details, such as their muscles and clothing.

"The pictures created by artificial intelligence tools are amazing, but I prefer the ones drawn by humans because they are spontaneous," says Genjiro Uchida, an 18-year-old student.

According to student Uchida, it is difficult for computer programs to draw hands or faces with intentionally exaggerated sizes, similar to the authors of Japanese comic strips, in addition to that humans “have a greater sense of humor” than artificial intelligence tools.

And the writer Rotburt expresses doubts that the Japanese comic strips produced from an artificial intelligence tool will fully impose themselves, and he says, "But at the same time, I do not consider that the tapes produced without the use of artificial intelligence will remain permanently dominant in the field."