Language, cultural understanding and OSINT with Skip Schiphorst

Matthew Stibbe (00:01.41) Welcome to Blackdot's From The Source podcast. I'm Matthew Stibbe, your host, and today I'm talking to Skip Schiphorst from i-intelligence. Really great to have you on the show, Skip.

 

Skip (00:12.558) Thank you so much for the warm introduction. Appreciate it.

Matthew Stibbe (00:15.96) Well, I've been very impressed with looking at your CV and your career, and we're going to get into that a little bit. But let me start with a question I ask all my guests. What are you geeking out about at the moment? What's top of mind for you?

 

Skip (00:29.88) Two things, one I'm doing a good job at and one I'm doing other than a good job at. Should I start with the one I do a better job at? Good news first, I'm super keen about a project I started last summer about running free webinars of one hour and inviting some of my colleagues to speak about OSINT and techniques. Could be about Chinese OSINT, could be about...

 

Matthew Stibbe (00:38.308) Good news first.

 

Skip (00:56.788) strategic analysis, maritime OSINT. I've been running webinars since last summer and they're free and it's a great opportunity to give a bit back to folks who want to sink their teeth into OSINT and to learn a few tricks on the go. So that's what's been firing me up, keeps me busy and it's a good type of busy.

 

Matthew Stibbe (01:19.778) And we'll come back to that, I think, but what's not going quite so well?

 

Skip (01:25.646) Well, every year I give myself a news detox where sometimes it lasts for a few days and my record is about three months. What I mean with that is that I do not touch news, I don't look at news, I swipe away, I choose not to look away and it frees all this space in my mind to do things which, for me, I have a direct effect on. Learning a language, working out, spending time with people I value, etc.

I was planning to do one this year at the beginning of January for a few weeks.

 

Matthew Stibbe (01:56.388) January's been so quiet, Nothing has happened in the world, right? In the last month or so. It's no big... utterly boring.

 

Skip (02:02.911) It's Not working out, as many people, I'm not doing a good job at doing a news detox. It has, however, brought me back to the basics. All right, I'm hearing all this noise from all the different places. What do I usually tell my courses? What do I share when I'm asked for advice? And I really go back to the basics of just filtering through the noise, and it's just so difficult, right?

Being very careful what I read, also reading things from sources which I don't want to read, who I don't agree with per se, just to give you that different perspective, especially in terms of geopolitics, right? There's a couple of great websites out there which can help with that. For example, I've been looking recently again at groundnews.com, which really tells you if something is either very left or right or centre.

And then, yeah, just challenging all the information we get. There's no shortage of information. Having said that, I also know that I don't have so much influence on things that change that are happening in the world. Actually, no influence. So it's also very important just to just let it go and just do other things which have no relation to the news or computers, actually. Not a very OSINT-y thing to say, but there you go.

 

Matthew Stibbe (03:23.084) I'm finding myself drawn to that because there is so much news coming to us and it's kind of brain candy. And how do you manage to go on a news detox? I mean, just what's your secret, Skip? Because I want to know how to do it. I fail every time. Cold turkey.

 

Skip (03:36.438) It is.

 

Skip (03:42.807) Okay.

 

Skip (03:47.119) cold turkey. The first time I did it was a few years ago and I taught myself... I've been looking at the news ever since I was 15 or 16. You're glued to the news in general. It's taking, and it took so much real estate in my brain, so I thought, you know what, I can do a couple of days without. So I've taught myself, I'm just gonna give myself one week without news and then.

 

When that week passes, I'll give myself one hour just to read the headlines, just really zoom out and then educate myself what was happening in the world. And to be honest, the first few days felt like a heroin addict not getting his fix, right. But being disciplined, every time I would see news, just look away, not look for it. After a few days, it gets okay. That week passed, finally that Wednesday came, I got my cup of coffee and I told myself, hey, this is a moment where I can consume the news.

 

And then I thought, you know, let's do double or nothing. Let's do another week and another week. So at the end of the day, for a few months, I think my record was three months. Literally when people told me what's your opinion on this, I would say, I don't know.

And then events happen and you slowly crawl back into it. That's a bit extreme, three months, but a couple of days or even just a weekend, putting the phone down, putting the news down, and then just enjoying what else we have control on is, I think, super healthy.

 

Matthew Stibbe (05:14.788) I'm going to give it another go. Thank you, you've inspired me already. You're running these webinars and...

doing these sort of things, partly because people are interested in learning about getting into OSINT as a career, I think. And how do people get started? When somebody says to you, I'm really interested in a career in OSINT, where do I go? How do I get started with that? What do you tell them?

 

Skip (05:45.231) Well, first and foremost, when you asked this question to the other guests you had on, by the way, what a group of guests you've assembled. You must be thinking, yet another OSINT guy in my podcast. But there really is only one Dutch OSINT guy and that's Nico.

 

Matthew Stibbe (06:03.716) I've spoken to... we might come on to why is it The the Dutch punch above their weight in OSINT. Because I keep talking to Dutch OSINT people, not just Dutch OSINT guy, but you know there's been a few... I'm half Dutch so I'm a bit of a partisan for that.

 

Skip (06:21.63) Windmills and OSINT apparently. But that's the section of the podcast where I really listen very carefully because how do other people go into there? And there's one thing I've listened to on the podcast and with all my interaction with other professionals is most don't have a really clear track into what this is, this thing called OSINT, how they do this OSINT thing. I know there are a few universities nowadays that are trying to really get a program out there, either bachelor or master, really

focused on this specialty, everybody gets into it a different way. And the way I got into it was pretty much by accident, I think. Yeah, pretty sure.

 

Matthew Stibbe (07:04.138) It's common isn't it? It's not a career that's sort of obvious when you're at school or university. It feels like it's quite a small community.

 

Skip (07:15.214) It is, but we all do it at some point, but we don't really know if we're OSINTing. Now, granted, there's a very big difference between Googling that girl that liked you on Facebook or doing some research for whatever you were writing, for what... kind of paper, but we all have been looking at information in order to make better decisions, solve a problem, et cetera. So it's only after I was researching online, in foreign languages online at university,

that I figured out that there's this thing called OSINT, which I always share, if I would have known that before going into an academic program, I would have saved so much time, written better things, and got better grades.

 

Matthew Stibbe (07:59.013) And you were at Leiden doing a Sinology study of China. How did you get from there to where you are now? Tell me a little bit about your career.

 

Skip (08:11.822) Sure, so my my background is not a technical or OSINT career. I spent 17 years in the Marines doing stuff outside in the bush, which I can kind of a bit compare to what I do now because you're in the bush with four guys, six guys and you're looking for things.

You have to be aware of what's around you. You have to work alone. You have to be sure of what you're doing, how to get in, how to get out, what do you do with that information, which you found physically outside.

Compare it a bit to what we do, what I do now a bit in OSINT. So I would have continued that but yeah, bit of bad luck, got injured and then was given a medical discharge, was given a chance to go to university, which was very interesting for me. I'm very glad I did. Most people do first an academic track and then they work. I do things a bit differently. I first did a...

what I wanted to do as a young man and an old man because I started university at 34 and I chose Sinology, which is another word for China studies because I had a keen interest in that language and the country for quite some time as I've been...

I was in hospital fixing myself for my injuries from the military, just keeping myself mentally busy with learning a new language, which was Chinese. And then this was dropped on my lap. Sinology, or I chose Sinology to do that. I did that for four years. Could have done it in three, but it was really, really hard for me because my...

 

Matthew Stibbe (09:45.348) Even four years is really hard for Mandarin, right? I mean, that's a...

 

Skip (09:49.921) It was, No, it was. It's not only Mandarin, it's also the politics, economics, and I was surrounded by, by...

by boys and girls who just came off of school, super spongy brains, they've been in that track of sponging stuff up. I had to learn everything from scratch, right? How do I write an essay? How do I learn? How do I remember things? But managed to wing it, spent some time as part of a study in China as well as in Taiwan, very grateful for that. It's during the studies that I had to start writing things in different languages, especially Chinese, where I had to search on

online and then by accident actually got into this thing called OSINT. Weaseled my way or not weaseled, he's listening to this, but social engineered my way into the company I work at now. It's actually quite fun story.

 

Matthew Stibbe (10:46.2) And tell me what is i-intelligence and what's your role there?

Skip (10:51.85) i-intelligence is a consultancy firm. We do two main things. We're based in Switzerland. We do two main things. We, simply put, solve other people's problems where we research for them.

Our consultancy department. But we're more known for the courses, which we give, which range from... there's quite a few. Range from strategic analysis, a couple of HUMINT courses as well, dark web, social media intelligence and as of 2020 when I joined we started making courses on how to research in foreign languages, started with one Chinese course, now we have two Chinese courses on open source intelligence, very proud of that, foundations and advanced.

advanced. We have an Arabic OSINT course, which I started and now is given by my colleague, Paolo. We have a Russian OSINT course developed by my colleague who actually got me into i-intelligence, actually, the gentleman and good friend I social engineered to get in. He's now also giving the Russian course. I'm very proud of my team and as I said we just have a new course out there, an advanced Chinese OSINT course given by my colleague Eve. So yeah, very glad to be working with professionals who really set the bar high and in terms of what the role I have, I teach Chinese OSINT and I also coordinate courses, which are for the company.

 

Matthew Stibbe (12:18.09) So I am brought up in England, although I have... My father was Dutch. And therefore I have the English disease, which is being completely rubbish at languages, right? Lazy, everyone speaks English. I spent the last 10 years trying to learn Dutch and every time I rock up and try and talk Dutch to a Dutch person, they detect my accent, they detect my terrible Dutch and they speak English fluently at me. And so it's very hard. So I am genuinely in awe, and everyone needs to know this about anyone who can speak another language to any degree of competence, especially complicated and difficult languages.

 

Skip (12:33.413) huh.

 

Matthew Stibbe (12:56.132) So, let's talk about language in OSINT, recognising that you are an expert and I am a duffer. What language skills do you need to be able to do OSINT in another language? And I'm interested in... do you need to be super fluent with 20 years' immersion? Or are there degrees of competence that you can achieve with less?

 

Skip (13:24.494) I covered this actually a few months ago at an event. I think there's two tracks. Deciding to learn a language is not something as in deciding in January, I'm gonna do pushups until I get, or situps until I get six pack and that's it. It's really a relation, it's a commitment you do. To answer your question, I think there's two tracks.

If you want to be able to do really good OSINT and it depends on what you do if you have to do really deep research about the language, about political reports that have been put out there,

that's where having studied the language for several years or spent some time there is going to give you an edge. Do you need to be fluent in a language to find information about somebody? Absolutely not. About finding a document, finding a location? No, you don't. There are certain principles which you can stick to, which we cover in our Arabic, Chinese and Russian courses, which if you stick to those basic principles, you will be able to type actually search in a foreign language without having to speak that language. Of course it does help if you speak that foreign language, it does give you an edge, but it's not necessary. Case in point being, when we teach our courses we're blessed with having sometimes near native speakers or native speakers of Chinese, Russian or Arabic in our courses and in many cases it's not those who don't speak those languages and rely on AI that get to the information faster because every time we teach a new skill we do want to an exercise just to give people a chance to really try try their new skills out. It's many cases... it's just folks that go into our courses and just soak up our methodology and just stick to that and they find information faster than those who just rely completely on AI and faster than those who actually grew up with an extra language or having actually studied it. It's very cool to see.

 

Matthew Stibbe (15:27.566) So methodology plus language rather than language with a little bit of methodology. There needs to be both of those things in play.

 

Skip (15:38.563) There needs to be however, we get also quite a few people from think tanks who join our courses. Now if your area of interest is going to be North Africa for the next five, six or seven years, please go and learn one of the languages spoken there. I mean that's an investment in time. It's also your expertise to look at that area. But if your job is to look at all over the place, how many languages are you going to start learning? Also I would caution people not to learn a language for a job. Just learn a language

if you have a click with it. I've started learning some languages and just didn't have a click with those languages and just dropped them. It has to be just like a relationship, it needs to have a click.

 

Matthew Stibbe (16:21.312) Like a relationship and as an amateur, learning a language can be incredibly enriching and put you in touch with a culture and put you in touch with, in my case, with my heritage. And sometimes it can be quite hard and not unrewarding. They're both the same thing. So I mean, I tried to learn some other languages over the years and just didn't engage with it. So it has to be both. But when you're looking at OSINT, we talked a bit about methodology, which is non-language

 

Skip (16:27.619) Yeah.

 

Matthew Stibbe (16:51.07) specific and then language comprehension. But is there a need also for some sort cultural understanding that's sort of related to separate from language?

 

Skip (16:58.638) Absolutely. There is. There is very much so. So we have a basic methodology, which we can apply to the languages I state, but also to other languages out there. And then every language is going to have to have their small, little, gritty details. For Arabic, it's going to be everything from right to left, the naming conventions in

North Africa to the least are very different than other places. In the UK, it's gonna be pretty cut and dry first name, last name, maybe a middle name. It's way easier to search for someone from the Netherlands or the UK for example than someone from North Africa who might have a clan name. Father's name in there and then nicknames and then there's different spelling methods which if you're not aware about the culture, which is so important, you might miss out on. I think that's when many people just throw in the towel because they think I just can't find this document, this person this thing. It's not there because I typed and I couldn't find it. I do think that culture is very important when you do your OSINT research. If your job is going to be to look at a certain country, dig deeper into the culture as well. Now, there's only so much we can teach, of course, within a week of teaching for our courses. We can't teach everything about a region or the language, but we do touch on that. I do think it's very important when you do online research.

 

Matthew Stibbe (18:34.552) I've observed in my career that among many other things that the Netherlands, the Dutch do brilliantly, aviation is an area where the Netherlands performs bigger than the population would lead you to expect. I think there are some others, but OSINT seems to be like, you know,

 

Skip (18:53.379) Yeah.

 

Skip (18:57.469) Hahaha

 

Matthew Stibbe (19:00.652) The Netherlands are like world capital of OSINT. I keep talking to Dutch people who are just, you know, like yourself, geniuses at OSINT. Is there something about the Dutch? I mean, this is generalising, but Dutch people do really well with languages, right? Is there something about that plasticity of language that helps?

 

Skip (19:13.478) You

 

Skip (19:19.31) No, I don't think so. We're windmills, ecstasy pills, OSINT and English. I guess I think we're just lucky because we just grew up with the even pre-internet TVs where everything is just in the original language. Everything is in English when you watch TV, whether it's at four o'clock after school watching the A-Team. It's going to be in English when you watch... I grew up in the west of Switzerland where they speak French. When I would look at, of course, the A-Team and MacGyver. It would be it would be dubbed in French, which that's there was no option to click on my TV saying hey give me this in in the original language, no, what you see is what you get. It's the same for Germany, it's the same for Spain, for France, which means that yeah, and you're going to be stuck in your track in that one language. I think there's several countries in Europe which do pretty well with foreign with languages with English that would be the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands as well, but I don't think it really ties into neuroplasticity I think it has more to do with if you're immersed in it passively just by listening to the A Team program you just soak in that language without even having to learn it. It's the reason why also babies when they learn when they learn to speak they're not taught grammar. They're they're listening to their parents and everything. They're just soaked into that language, which they learn naturally. So I'm a big fan of telling people if you if you have a multicultural family please mix your languages at home because that's only going to expose your kids to different constructions of grammar, which is only going to make it easier

later to learn a language whereas some countries where they really stick to, you to, you know, you should... kids should only learn one language until they're... they're they're teenagers. I don't think that's the right method.

 

Matthew Stibbe (21:16.836) Learning languages if your brain isn't wired for it as an adult, very hard, at least for me, if you're English perhaps.

 

Skip (21:24.026) It's true. Well, you mentioned you're learning Dutch. It's a tricky one, Dutch, because how, I mean, as a Dutchman, I've often received the question, I'm sure that my other colleagues say the same thing, when foreigners ask you, well, why is it this way in grammar? And the usual response is just because it is, there's no reason. There's these little things, which are difficult. It's, I would...I'll say it. I think that for an Englishman, it will be easier to learn Chinese than Dutch. Hands down. If, if, if you don't have to use a pen to write stuff in Chinese. Chinese is going to be way easier than Dutch.

 

Matthew Stibbe (22:02.233) Yes.

 

Matthew Stibbe (22:05.782) Maybe. So the English language roots are in Anglo-Saxon, which has a lot more in common with Dutch and German, old Dutch and old German. So I think if the way I try and approach it is I switch off the...Norman invasion, right? All the French bits of English, let's take them out and then let's strip out all the modern stuff and actually underneath all of that English is quite a lot like Dutch. And this is, sorry, listen as a slight detail but Scottish people find it much easier I think to speak and learn Dutch because a lot of the like a Scottish person will say do you ken Matthew, do you know Matthew and it's the same word. Yeah and they have the similar sort of they have some vowel sounds and they have that sort of glottal

 

Skip (22:25.774) Yes.

 

Skip (22:47.426) really?

 

Matthew Stibbe (22:52.934) G sound and things. Very... so there is elements of this country underneath linguistically. Anyway, I've enjoyed every minute of it. It is, but it has been hard, but that's because I'm stupid. Let's move on, let's move on. It's an interesting topic, but we were talking a little bit earlier about people coming into and choosing a career in OSINT. You touched on something that I thought was interesting

 

Skip (22:55.006) Interesting. Yeah.

 

Skip (23:00.43) I love it.

 

Matthew Stibbe (23:22.53) which was, there are some dark areas in OSINT and there are some things that you might not know. I'm certainly thinking, what a wonderful career and how interesting it is. What would somebody coming into the profession need to be aware of? What do they have to just be thinking about now that might not be obvious for a few years?

 

Skip (23:43.235) There's a few out there and I'm actually thinking about posting about this before somebody else does. First, when I... and my colleagues and I get approached and others too, people usually think that, this OSINT thing is the best there is because they think about finding the missing dog, handing in a report and getting a pat on the back, being happy, linking things, finding the smoking gun, et cetera. That's great.

It gives you a good feeling. mean, dopamine is a thing when people tell you, hey, you did a good job, you were able to solve something... You were able to solve... you have found a missing person or a child. I couldn't think of anything more rewarding than that, right? But it's also there's also some things which not all the people are aware about and if you're really going to be a professional in OSINT, especially depending on what you do in OSINT, there's some things that can have a negative influence not only on your brain but physics. Think about OSINTers tend to be hobbyists. They tend to make their work into their hobby. So it's not nine to five. It's often after five, I'll just go online again.

 

Matthew Stibbe (24:28.664) Yes.

 

Skip (25:20.462) not enough sunlight and looking like they could use bit more movement. Well, isn't it for well, like, you know, but I mean, how many people are coached when they are going to be working into an office or at home with a computer?

 

Matthew Stibbe (25:29.252) Also true of marketing people, by the way.

 

Skip (25:41.507) How many people are coached actually in thinking about, do you hydrate enough or do you do five gallons of coffee just to stay awake and Red Bull? Do you hydrate enough? Do you get enough ventilation? Do you think about how you sit at your chair? Do you think about letting go of your investigation, getting some sunlight, walking outside, getting fresh air and talking about things that don't have to do with OSINT?

So those are some of the physical things I I think can get a bit more attention to. I made the same mistake because when I'm switched on to something I tend to really want to sink my teeth in it and find the answers of spending a bit more time than you want. Something which helps me actually is having a kitchen timer, it's really silly, or an app on your computer telling you, hey your 90 minutes is up, you need to go outside and stretch, move, do something,

thing, whatever. So those are the physical things and mental things and I don't think it's only for osenters. Back in you and our time, do you remember this time when people would talk at the schoolyard talking about, a snuff movie? Remember that?

Or the anarchist cookbook? These were these things that people, that some of cool kids or the kids who would know stuff would speak about. It was these things that you would know would be there somewhere, but nobody had those. Very different from now. You would really have to find that, to actually find that.

Matthew Stibbe (26:55.84) Yeah, evil cat and all that.

 

Skip (27:15.662) indulge in that literature or thing. Horrible stuff. But nowadays, with everything which is being shared on the internet, not only for, like I said, not only for professional researchers, but anyone, anywhere with an internet connection can go on Twitter and look in detail how people are being drone-striked to oblivion in extremely graphical ways and

whatever side they're battling on. It's still a person losing a limb or dying or bleeding out. People, you can say this, you can say people who are not trained in this have no business looking at that or should not rather, right? Because what does it do to you when you look at all that graphic content in the evening and you haven't had the training before, the proper training, which I know is being given, especially to law enforcement people, people have to look at really grotesque and horrible things like

crimes, pedophilia, right? They're trained into how to deal with that. What's that gonna do with you? How can you manage yourself once you've seen something disturbing online? What do you do? How does it affect your family, et cetera? What can you do once it gets too much? Well, nobody gets that training in real life. That's really a choice. And I think it's not because the information is there that you need to go there and engage with it. It's a...

 

Matthew Stibbe (28:37.902) And it's all just a click away now. Yeah. Well, gosh, that's a rather grim thought, but it's one that people need to be mindful of. I think we've got time for one last little topic and perhaps something a little bit more positive. We've we've talked about people coming into...

 

Skip (28:40.534) Isn't it?

 

Skip (28:50.798) Thanks, everyone.

 

Matthew Stibbe (29:02.724) the OSINT career and getting training. But for people who are seasoned professionals and experienced, how can they keep the spark alive? How can they find new things, develop their skills, professional development? What should they be doing in 2026, do you think?

 

Skip (29:19.948) I think doing the same as people who want to go into OSINT, reaching out to colleagues, reaching out to people who've been in the industry for a long time. I've done the same thing. When I got into OSINT, I was very lucky.

I developed a course which was unique with languages and right off the bat I was plunged into a group of people that have been doing it for way longer than I was so for quite some time I had an imposter syndrome even you'll find this funny one of the persons one of my very good friends now who joined one of my courses is an OSINT celebrity.

I always ask people in my courses to present themselves. He presents himself. I have no idea who it was, which he found cool because he was treated like just, you know, just a regular person in the group. Coming back to what you asked, asking colleagues, hey, what are the things you're looking at? I know the buzzword this year is AI, but also if you're looking into...

going into a track in an OSINT career, just reaching out. We can do that with LinkedIn. You can reach out to me. You can reach out to other specialists about any things in OSINT and just asking them, hey, what do you do to keep on track? And there's so much to keep on track with. I also tell people around the bat,

It's okay to be a generalist, but you can't be a totalist. I don't think you can know everything that there is to find. There so many apps that are popping up.

 

Skip (30:54.894) Tools which are popping up, etc. So be a generalist and then find your niche. What are you passionate about? Are you passionate about solving crimes of missing persons? Then just focus on naming conventions, social media, how to export phone numbers, location and usernames. If you're more interested in geopolitics then go that track. People have been very generous with their time with me as well when I reached out to them saying, hey, how do you decide? I think most people in the OSINT realm are very, very generous with their time and very cool. So, go out there.

 

Matthew Stibbe (31:31.492) It's a It's a very nice community as far as I've seen in my work for Blackdot. You've made me think of something, and I think this, which might be helpful. A Zen master called Shinrio Suzuki said that...

 

Skip (31:34.711) is.

 

Matthew Stibbe (31:50.166) in the expert's mind there are very few possibilities but in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities and he was saying this about Buddhism but this idea that actually you should approach things with a beginner's mindset that anything is possible and everything's interesting and being open to it. I quite like that thought it suits me because I'm an amateur at everything. Anyway, on that bombshell Skip it's been an absolute delight talking to you. Thank you so much for your time and thank you for joining me today.

 

Skip (32:21.08) Thank you.

 

Matthew Stibbe (32:22.284) And that brings this episode to a close. If you'd like to learn more about OSINT or Videris or Blackdot, please visit blackdotsolutions.com. Thank you very much for listening. Goodbye.