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Open Source Intelligence

Report
Ukrainian Civilians' Contributions to Resisting Russia
Civilian-based resistance in Ukraine began in the first hours of Russia's 2022 invasion. Civilians' actions have potential value in helping ensure victory by regaining territorial integrity and maintaining political sovereignty. And this war offers insight into what civilian contributions in future wars could look like.
Aug 15, 2023
Research Brief
Tibet's Prisons and Detention Centers: What Does Nighttime Lighting Reveal?
Researchers used nighttime lighting data to better understand prisons and detention facilities in Tibet. They found patterns of growth in lighting concentrated in higher-security facilities since 2019. This trend may suggest a shift toward longer detentions and imprisonments.
Jul 27, 2023
Report
A night-time lighting analysis of Tibet's prisons and detention centres
Using the innovative method of night-time lighting data, this study aims to shed light on the prisons and detention centres in Tibet.
Jul 27, 2023
Commentary
The Promise—and Pitfalls—of Researching Extremism Online
How big of a problem is extremism in the United States and around the world? Is it getting worse? Are social media platforms responsible, or did the internet simply reveal existing trends? We have few answers because this research is easy to do poorly and hard to do well.
Jul 17, 2023
Essay
How to Avoid Extremism on Social Media
Extremist groups have been trolling the internet for decades, and they have learned to temper their words and disguise their intentions. A new scorecard can help users—or parents, or advertisers, or the social media companies themselves—understand when they might be interacting with extremist content.
May 3, 2022
Commentary
How Extremism Operates Online
Extremist groups use internet-based tools for financing, networking and coordination, recruitment and radicalization, inter- and intra-group knowledge transfer, and mobilization to action. How do internet users engage with these efforts? And can the internet be leveraged to counter extremism?
Apr 12, 2022
Report
Options for Strengthening All-Source Intelligence: Substantive Change Is Within Reach
Foreign attacks against the United States occur frequently. The authors propose game-changing ideas to enable intelligence analysts to address long-standing challenges related to the use of open sources, analytic tradecraft, and politicization.
Feb 28, 2022
Research Brief
Assessing China's Defense Industrial Base
What are the systemic strengths and vulnerabilities of China's defense industrial base? A comparative systems analysis looks at six key categories: economics; governance and regulations; raw materials; manufacturing; workforce, labor, and skills; and research, development, and innovation.
Feb 11, 2022
Report
Assessing Systemic Strengths and Vulnerabilities of China's Defense Industrial Base: With a Repeatable Methodology for Other Countries
The authors assess the strengths and vulnerabilities of China's defense industrial base (DIB) by designing and applying a comparative analytic structure that could be used to assess any country's DIB.
Feb 11, 2022
Journal Article
Tracking the Relocation of Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh: A Nighttime Lighting Approach
This report uses nighttime lighting data to track the relocation of Rohingya refugees from the Cox's Bazaar region of Bangladesh to Bhasan Char, a 'floating island' in the Bay of Bengal built to house roughly 100,000 refugees.
Jan 14, 2022
Commentary
Understanding the Online Extremist Ecosystem
By the early 2010s, it was clear that the internet provided white supremacists and other extremists a tool to operationalize their hateful ideas and cause real-world harms. How can the average user understand their risk of exposure to extremist content and make informed decisions about the platforms they use?
Dec 2, 2021
Journal Article
Through the Looking Glass: Chinese Open Source Assessments of North Korea's Ballistic Missile Capabilities
This report examines Chinese assessments of North Korean ballistic missile capabilities between 1998 and 2017. Chinese analyses mirror Western conclusions that North Korea has a functional ICBM that can reach the U.S. with a nuclear weapon.
May 14, 2021
Blog
COVID-19 Demographic Trends, Vaccinating 'High-Contact' People, the Iran Threat Network: RAND Weekly Recap
This weekly recap focuses on how the pandemic is shaping demographic trends, targeting vaccines to
Apr 16, 2021
Commentary
The Intelligence Community's Deadly Bias Toward Classified Sources
Even when relevant data is publicly available, U.S. intelligence analysts are not including it in their analytic products during their routine course of business. This willful ignorance of publicly available information is hurting U.S. national security.
Apr 12, 2021
Commentary
An Early Policy Victory for DNI Haines: Boost the Priority of Open Sources Information
The quantity, quality, and accessibility of publicly available information has exploded over the past decades. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has an opportunity to advance intelligence community mission activities on several key issues shaped by the digital information age, including the role of publicly available information.
Mar 4, 2021
Journal Article
Explaining Variation in the Growth and Decline of Detention Facilities Across Xinjiang
This report, the final in our series, explores trends in the growth and decline of nighttime lighting over detention facilities across Xinjiang.
Feb 26, 2021
Journal Article
Have Any of Xinjiang's Detention Facilities Closed?
This report, the second in a three-part series, employs a novel empirical approach to systematically assess the current operating status of known detention facilities in Xinjiang using nighttime lighting.
Feb 26, 2021
Journal Article
Investigating the Growth of Detention Facilities in Xinjiang Using Nighttime Lighting
This first report introduces our methodological approach and uses nighttime lighting data to investigate the rapid, coordinated growth of detention facilities in Xinjiang over the last decade.
Feb 26, 2021
Report
Strategic Surveillance for Food Safety: Designing a surveillance approach and considerations for implementation
The Food Standards Agency engaged RAND Europe to design an approach to strategic surveillance for the UK food system. The study team produced an end-to-end approach, identified implementation steps and considered their impact and feasibility.
May 13, 2019
Journal Article
Adaptation by Intelligent Adversaries to Defensive Measures: Framing Adaptation Options and Demonstrating Assessment of Attacker Preferences Using Proxy Intelligence Data
Addressing adaptation by adversaries and its implications for security planning requires understanding the ways attackers can respond to new defensive measures. This paper demonstrates an analysis of such preferences using open source data.
Oct 2, 2018

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RAND Topic:
Open Source Intelligence

Topic Synonyms:
Open-Source Intelligence;
OSINT

Researcher Spotlight

Timothy R. Heath

Senior International/Defense Researcher

Timothy R. Heath is a senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corporation. Prior to joining RAND, Heath had over fifteen years of experience in the U.S. government researching and analyzing military and political topics related to China.
Bradley M. Knopp

Senior International / Defense Researcher

Bradley Knopp is a senior international and defense researcher at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Since joining RAND in 2013, he has worked across all four RAND federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs). He has worked on projects for…

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