Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is central to how the UK understands threats to its information environment. Yet nobody in government owns it.
That’s the argument our Head of Intelligence, Chris P, makes in a new article published by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the world’s oldest defence and security think tank. Writing after the Prime Minister announced a new National Centre for Information Defence (NCID), Chris makes the case for a partner body: a National Open Source Intelligence Centre.
To understand why, read the full article here. Chris explores the recent events that have brought the issue to a head, where the UK’s open source capability sits today, and what a dedicated centre could deliver.
Chris’s article comes at a pivotal moment. On 22 September, Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the UN General Assembly that work would begin on the National Centre for Information Defence (NCID). This new centre’s aim would be to detect, attribute and disrupt hostile state information attacks. For the intelligence community, it was a welcome and long overdue step. But it also raised a question Chris had been considering for some time: what about the threats that don’t come from hostile states?
Within days, that question became even more relevant. Following arrests near RAF Fairford on 27 September, competing narratives about the case spread online in around 48 hours, driven by very different actors. Untangling narratives like these quickly is precisely the sort of work OSINT exists to do.
The spread of these narratives, paired with the recent announcement of the NCID, make now an opportune moment to discuss forming a National OSINT Centre. The Fairford case brought into focus a gap Chris believes the UK can no longer afford to leave open. Closing this gap is easier while the NCID is still being shaped, as there’s capacity for greater change before structures and departments become set in stone.
The UK has mature, well-resourced structures for signals intelligence (SIGINT) and imagery intelligence (IMINT). OSINT has no equivalent, which means capability is inconsistent.
Experts exist within agencies, policing, government departments, academia and commercial providers. However, there’s no joint approach or official, coherent framework. What that means in practice is that the UK is not harnessing the full potential of OSINT.
This inconsistency is the key impetus for Chris’s article. He argues that, without something to hold the pieces together, the dispersal risks widening the UK’s vulnerability, even where every department does its own job well.
In his previous roles in public sector, Chris has seen where operational OSINT is already embedded. Defence and Policing, for example, have demonstrated successful efforts in this space.
This experience makes him well-positioned to write on the subject. In the full article, he calls for support of what’s already working, as well as calling out what’s missing. Namely, he sets out what common standards and cross-government coordination could look like in practice. He also explores the value of each - including how a National OSINT Centre could share tradecraft to empower the efforts of the newly formed NCID.
For Chris’s full argument, including the gaps in current guidance, the lessons from the US and what a NOSIC would need to succeed, read Why the UK Needs a National Open Source Intelligence Centre on the RUSI website.