By Jay Heisler and Jake Robinson
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) has been a critical source of information for decades. The US government’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service predates the CIA itself. Still, the practice of OSINT research and analysis has changed dramatically throughout the IT and AI explosions, and despite the IC’s recent focus on OSINT as a discipline, there is no discernible consensus on what kind of person makes the best OSINT analyst, or what they should have studied.
A Technical Foundation is Non-Negotiable
While the origins of OSINT were founded in radio broadcasts and newspapers, modern analysts have to know how to navigate the open, deep, and dark webs and need to understand the techniques for finding non-obvious data. Knowing how to Google isn’t enough.
“My personal favorite degree path to break into OSINT is library science. Librarians do not just understand how to collect information, they understand databases. Databases are the singular most important resource” in answering an information requirement, according to one popular OSINT podcaster and blogger.
Many of the most powerful OSINT tools can be found on Github, and knowing how to find and run those tools gives the investigator a massive head start. AI has also changed the OSINT game, making it possible for anyone who knows how to use it to create their own tools without writing a line of code.
In March 2024, ODNI and the CIA released the IC’s first-ever unified OSINT strategy, a signal that the discipline is being professionalized at the highest levels. The document stresses the importance of having a command of generative AI (GAI) tools: “The OSINT community should be at the forefront of the IC in testing the use of GAI and developing and evolving the tradecraft for use. This tradecraft will set the standards for the human-machine teaming that will be the foundation of OSINT in the future.”
OSINT Benefits from a Diverse Set of Skills
Beyond the technical baseline, the set of skills necessary for an effective OSINT practitioner are diverse. “I don’t like homogeneous teams. I’m looking to bring in data science majors, biology majors, journalism majors, and dig deep into the social science major pool for OSINTers. The reason for this is simple: I can teach any one person the tools and techniques” applicable to OSINT, “However, I can’t teach any one person how to think creatively and critically across the spectrum of new and existing information,” said one former US Air Force intelligence officer.
A former federal US law enforcement officer expressed the importance of knowing a foreign language and having a proficiency to learn new ones. Several OSINT experts cited journalism as a good major for getting started in OSINT, highlighting the importance of research and writing skills. Several also mentioned political science and international studies.
A look at OSINT practitioners across government, journalism, and corporate intelligence confirms this diversity. Most government analyst jobs require at least a bachelor’s degree, although the specific major can vary greatly and often isn’t specified at all. Bellingcat, one of the most proficient and successful private OSINT organizations, lists among the maintainers of its “Online Investigation Toolkit” an MA in investigative journalism, a Colombian anthropologist specializing in transnational organized crime, a linguist turned media and corporate intel analyst, and an interdisciplinary researcher with a social psychology and cognitive neuroscience background.
Regardless of major, most experts interviewed agreed that no college degree provides the full set of skills needed for OSINT. “I feel like to be competent at OSINT, it’s a lot of practice, a lot of different hands-on investigations. People that I talk to often reference a ‘feel’ for it when you’re doing an investigation,” said one OSINT community organizer. “Personally, I learned through a combination of self-teaching, work experience, and courses” from OSINT training providers. “OSINT is an acquired skill and discipline that takes years of practice.”
Is a Degree Even Necessary?
It’s tempting to look at the totality of information and conclude that a college degree doesn’t matter, and it is true that there are many paths to start a career in OSINT. There are certainly examples of successful OSINTers without college degrees. However, assuming that specialized certificates and hands-on experience are all that’s needed to become a skilled and proficient OSINT analyst ignores many fundamental experiences and skills that are obtained from almost any undergraduate degree program.
For example, learning how to evaluate information is one of the most critical aspects of the practice of OSINT, and is one of the foundational skills taught and practiced in any modern 4-year degree program. Increasing reliance on GAI – and the proliferation of information generated by it – makes this skill more critical than ever.
The ODNI strategy provides a useful lens to assess this claim. If, indeed, the future of OSINT is human-machine teaming, it means the human half of that equation needs to bring something a machine can’t. Source evaluation, structured skepticism, and the ability to argue against your own conclusions are exactly those things. A degree program won’t teach you Maltego or how to search for leaked breach data, but four years of writing papers that get torn apart in seminars will teach you how to pressure-test an argument.
What’s Next?
With the recent push to professionalize open source intelligence and make it a core “INT” in an increasingly information-soaked world, it’s critical to professionalize the training and experience pipeline, too. We’ve stumbled into a world where, by one estimate, 80-90% of law enforcement investigative work is OSINT, yet there are no well-defined training or education pipelines to fill the critical need for practitioners. It’s clear that diversity of background and thought are important, as are a grounded understanding of how to assess information and a defined set of specific intelligence-related and technical skills. As a community, we need to define the path.
That definition won’t come from universities alone. It requires the IC, the defense contracting community, and the growing ecosystem of private OSINT practitioners to agree on a set of competencies that transcend any single degree or certification. The next step is translating those aspirations into a talent pipeline that doesn’t rely on accident.
Bios:
Jake Robinson is a former CIA Targeting Officer, US Army Intelligence Analyst, and is currently the Principle Product Manager at Clearview AI.
Jay Heisler is a journalist who teaches part time at a university in Nova Scotia, in Canada. His journalism has been published in CNBC, Voice of America and Small Wars Journal, plus in daily Canadian newspapers.
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