This paper examines the role of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) on Twitter regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war, distinguishing between genuine OSINT and deceptive misinformation efforts, termed "BULLSHINT." Utilizing a dataset spanning from January 2022 to July 2023, we analyze nearly 2 million tweets from approximately 1,040 users involved in discussing real-time military engagements, strategic analyses, and misinformation related to the conflict. Using sentiment analysis, partisanship detection, misinformation identification, and Named Entity Recognition (NER), we uncover communicative patterns and dissemination strategies within the OSINT community. Significant findings reveal a predominant negative sentiment influenced by war events, a nuanced distribution of pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian partisanship, and the potential strategic manipulation of information. Additionally, we apply community detection techniques, which are able to identify distinct clusters partisanship, topics, and misinformation, highlighting the complex dynamics of information spread on social media. This research contributes to the understanding of digital warfare and misinformation dynamics, offering insights into the operationalization of OSINT in geopolitical conflicts.

For a long time, open source intelligence (OSINT) was primarily composed of insights from foreign news sources. It was supplemental public information that analysts could layer on top of classified intelligence to gain a full operational picture. Many in the intelligence community viewed it as a "nice to have" rather than a mission-critical data source -- something to confirm rather than to foundationally inform. First, the types and scope of open source intelligence have exploded in the digital age. From public legal records to social media platforms to the dark web, OSINT now encompasses every online channel that bad actors are using to communicate and mobilize.

In this week's geeked-out edition of the Good News Roundup, Ukraine's jaw-dropping battlefield victories with HIMARS are documented using OSINT, South Africa implements AI technology to track dangerous locust swarms, biologists and naturalists overwhelmingly agree that gay sex is normal throughout the animal kingdom, and BirdNet proves reliable at crowdsourcing the task of identifying wild birds by their songs. In wholesome news for sci fi/space fantasy fans everywhere, Ukraine's president Zelensky continues attending technology trade shows through holograms in which he promises that Ukraine will defeat the Empire. Ukrainians are also using 3d imaging technology to preserve the cultural heritage of their country from looters and bombs, storing their data in a digital archive that will support restoration work when the invaders have been defeated. And in good news for new Ukrainian parents, the non-profit Embrace Global is making headlines for using innovative technology to provide incubators for babies in Ukraine at a tiny fraction of their usual cost. You can see their TED talk by entrepreneur Jane Chen here.

Speaking behind a podium bearing the Ukrainian state emblem, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his now signature green attire, calls on his soldiers to lay down their weapons and return to their families. The one-minute clip is a deepfake, the term for a sophisticated hoax that uses artificial intelligence to create a phoney image, most commonly fake videos of people. A deepfake of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling on his soldiers to lay down their weapons was reportedly uploaded to a hacked Ukrainian news website today, per @Shayan86 pic.twitter.com/tXLrYECGY4 What unfolded next was the latest episode in the infowar that has accompanied the Russia-Ukraine conflict, a war being waged across social media platforms, via satellite images of battlefields and on hackers' keyboards. Zelenskiy posted a bona fide response on his Instagram account on Wednesday dismissing the "childish provocation" and telling Russian troops to return home.

Unless the intelligence community changes the way it defines intelligence and adopts cloud computing, it will wind up behind adversaries, private interests, and even the public in knowing what might happen, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Intelligence collection to predict broad geopolitical and military events has historically been the job of well-funded and expertly staffed government agencies like the CIA or the NSA. But, the report argues, the same institutional elements that allowed the government to create those agencies are now slowing them down in a time of large publicly-available datasets and enterprise cloud capabilities. The report, scheduled to be released Wednesday, looks at a hypothetical "open-source, cloud-based, AI-enabled reporting," or OSCAR, tool for the intelligence community, a tool that could help the community much more rapidly detect and act on clues about major geopolitical or security events. The report lists the various procedural, bureaucratic, and cultural barriers within the intelligence community that block its development and use by U.S. spy agencies.

In developed nations, there is a rich trove of data that the intelligence community can and does mine. Valuable information can be pulled from media reports, public financial information and social media posts. Websites track user activity, and smartphones are constantly gobbling up information about their users, from geolocations to search histories and more. By using artificial intelligence tools, analysts are able to make sense of this torrent of publicly available data and turn it into usable open-source intelligence, known as OSINT. But not every part of the world produces that vast torrent of data.

At a conference on the future challenges of intelligence organizations held in 2018, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats argued that he transformation of the American intelligence community must be a revolution rather than an evolution. The community must be innovative and flexible, capable of rapidly adopting innovative technologies wherever they may arise. Intelligence communities across the Western world are now at a crossroads: The growing proliferation of technologies, including artificial intelligence, Big Data, robotics, the Internet of Things, and blockchain, changes the rules of the game. The proliferation of these technologies – most of which are civilian, could create data breaches and lead to backdoor threats for intelligence agencies. Furthermore, since they are affordable and ubiquitous, they could be used for malicious purposes.

As society has evolved, technology has as well, and there is a growing awareness that already-established police techniques -- if used exclusively -- are somewhat out-of-date and oftentimes quite expensive for what they offer. When departments sink valuable resources into maintaining old systems instead of investing into newer, more efficient, and cost-effective technologies -- especially in an era of budget cuts where law enforcement agencies are forced to make difficult decisions as to where to cut funding -- these agencies are missing out on a valuable source of information. One only needs to look at history to witness the evolution of criminal investigations. Fingerprinting, DNA analysis, and computer information systems such as CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) and NDIS (National DNA Index System) have improved investigatory efforts considerably; however, as technology continues to evolve -- and criminals are openly taking advantage of this new technology -- law enforcement agencies may be missing out on a valuable opportunity if they don't embrace more openly the tremendous benefits such new technology brings. The United States spends more than $100 billion annually on law enforcement and incarceration, and this figure does not even consider other economic impacts of crime in terms of victims' costs, property devaluation, and higher outlays for companies to ensure their security.

As we all know, artificial intelligence is changing all aspects of life in the 21st Century. Nowadays, most of your interactions are in some way impacted by artificial intelligence. For instance, when you first call your doctor, bank, and even your local supermarket, your first interaction is most likely through a Chat Bot. This form of intelligence has not only revolutionized the daily personal lives of the general public, but it has also greatly impacted how businesses operate, and this is just the beginning. New technologies are on the horizon, and we should expect artificial intelligence to increase and expand along the way.