😌😙🥸😍 Private Eyes: China’s Embrace of Open-Source Military Intelligence

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is using new collection, processing, and analysis technologies to exploit the massive amount of open-source information available from the internet and other sources for military intelligence purposes. A growing ecosystem of private companies, state-owned enterprises, state-run research organizations, and universities is supporting the PLA’s push to leverage open-source intelligence (OSINT) by providing research services, platforms, and data. China’s military and defense industries are using automated web crawlers, algorithms, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other tools to extract intelligence from foreign governments, militaries, social media platforms, news media organizations, companies, research organizations, and individuals. The PLA very likely employs OSINT alongside other, more sensitive forms of intelligence to support decision-making at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. The PLA’s use of OSINT very likely provides it an intelligence advantage, as the West’s open information environment allows the PLA to easily harvest large quantities of open-source data, whereas Western militaries must contend with China’s closed
information environment. This report offers an overview of Chinese views on military OSINT, details how the PLA applies and collects OSINT, and profiles several private companies that provide OSINT to the PLA.

Источник: @freedomf0x