#129 Eliot Jardines on Open Source Intelligence

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association.

During this episode, Eliot Jardines describes the world of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), publicly available information (PAI), and why it matters to national security.

Research Questions: Eliot suggests interested students and researchers take a look at the following questions:

1. The growing prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI) content on social media and other publicly available information (PAI) sources represents a challenge for open-source intelligence (OSINT) practitioners – what new tradecraft (or tactics, techniques, and procedures) is required?
2. Does the experiential nature of the virtual reality environment (such as Meta) differ sufficiently from traditional social media that different exploitation tradecraft (or tactics, techniques, and procedures) is needed?

Resources:

• OSINT Foundation
• WSJ Article: Rise of Open-Source Intelligence Tests U.S. Spies

Link to full show notes and resources

https://information-professionals.org/episode/cognitive-crucible-episode-129

Guest Bio: 

Eliot Jardines is the founder of the OSINT Foundation and serves as the Director of Operations and Treasurer. He is President of Gnosis Solutions, Incorporated, a veteran and minority owned small business focused on training and intelligence consultancy. Prior to Gnosis, he was a Senior Consulting Director at Oracle, and Chief Knowledge Officer of CENTRA Technology, Incorporated.

In late 2005, Dr. Jardines was appointed as the inaugural Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source. As the senior open-source intelligence official, he was responsible for developing a strategic direction, establishing policy, and oversight of fiscal 

resources for social media monitoring efforts across all 17 intelligence agencies. In addition, he served as the Intelligence Community’s senior document and media exploitation (DOMEX) officer, as well as provided oversight to the Open Source Center, the National Media Exploitation Center and the National Virtual Translation Center.

From 1996 to 2005, he was founder and President of Open Source Publishing, Incorporated. The firm provided open-source intelligence support to the military, law enforcement and intelligence communities. The company was the 2002 runner-up for the George C. Marshall Award, and subsequently acquired in 2005.

Dr. Jardines served eleven years in the US Army (Reserves and on active duty), including assignments at the US Army Intelligence Center and School, US Central Command, the National Ground Intelligence Center and the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was deployed to the 66th Military Intelligence Group in Augsburg, Germany in support of Operation Joint Guard during the late 1990s, where he served as the unit’s first OSINT coordinator.

He has testified before the US Congress on intelligence and homeland security issues. He has been published or featured in a number of professional journals, national newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and the Washington Post. He has done numerous media appearances to include C-SPAN and the CBS Evening News.

Dr. Jardines graduated from the University of New Mexico with a dual degree in political science and Latin American studies. He received a Master of Arts in international studies from the University of Connecticut and a Master of Science in strategic intelligence from the National Intelligence University, where he was recognized with the NCOA award for excellence in leadership and academics. He holds a doctorate in human and organizational learning from the George Washington University. Heavily involved in the community, Dr. Jardines is head coach of a USA Shooting club which trains athletes in the 25-meter air and sport pistol Olympic events, and coordinator of the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office reserve deputy program. He was recently appointed to the Scholastic Shooting Sports Foundation board of directors. He resides in Loudoun County, Virginia with his wife Teresa and their three sons.

About: The Information Professionals Association (IPA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the role of information activities, such as influence and cognitive security, within the national security sector and helping to bridge the divide between operations and research. Its goal is to increase interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars and practitioners and policymakers with an interest in this domain.

For more information, please contact us at communications@information-professionals.org.

Or, connect directly with The Cognitive Crucible podcast host, John Bicknell, on LinkedIn.

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, 1) IPA earns from qualifying purchases, 2) IPA gets commissions for purchases made through links in this post.