Responding to OSINT: U.S. Strategy and the Democratization of Intelligence

One week into the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran, satellite imagery of Iran’s coastline dropped from public access. Planet Labs—operator of the world’s largest Earth-imaging satellite fleet—imposed a four-day delay on releasing high-resolution images of the region. Within days, the company extended the delay to two weeks and expanded the restricted area to cover U.S. and allied bases and all of Iran. Planet Labs stated the move sought to prevent adversaries from using openly available imagery to attack U.S. and allied forces or civilians. Later, the U.S. government requested the company withhold images of designated areas. Planet Labs adopted a “managed access” model, limiting releases to case-by-case approval. This model will remain in place until the end of the conflict.  

These restrictions reflect a response to a deeper transformation of intelligence. Commercial platforms and publicly available data now provide information once exclusive to advanced state intelligence services. As open-source intelligence (OSINT) expands in capability and reach, it narrows the gap between well-resourced actors and their less-resourced counterparts. This shift complicates U.S. intelligence advantages, introducing new risks and requiring measured strategic responses.  

Historical Intelligence Advantages 

Scholars generally describe intelligence as information that helps actors make decisions to outperform competitors. History demonstrates that modern geopolitical actors benefit from constructing sophisticated intelligence ecosystems.  

The United States has invested heavily in this effort and developed several of the world’s preeminent intelligence institutions. The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) comprises 18 organizations, forming a whole-of-government ecosystem spanning all sources and disciplines that routinely receive substantial government funding. In the 2025 fiscal year, the U.S. intelligence enterprise held an appropriated budget of $101.1 billion. This total exceeded the combined budgets of the State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  

This investment in elite intelligence capabilities produces successes against peer competitors. For instance, from 1959 to 1972, the United States launched 145 satellite reconnaissance missions under the CORONA project. The first successful CORONA mission produced images of 1.65 million square miles of Soviet territory—exceeding the U-2 program’s output to that point. Subsequent missions expanded coverage and delivered higher-resolution imagery. The project showed the Soviets possessed far fewer missiles than previously assessed, ultimately shifting the course of the Cold War.  

Then, no smaller adversary or non-state actor could hope to equal or imitate IC capabilities.  

Information Abundance and the Emergence of OSINT as a Strategic Capability 

Changes in the information landscape narrow the gap between U.S. and non-peer nations’ and non-state actors’ intelligence capabilities.  

Widespread communications infrastructure, digital technology proliferation, and internet expansion have driven an explosion of accessible information, changing how people interact with economies, governments, and each other. Today, 3G or higher networks cover at least 96 percent of the global population. From 2005 to 2025, internet usage increased from 1 billion to 6 billion people.  

OSINT increasingly operates as a key analytical discipline. The IC defines OSINT as “intelligence derived exclusively from publicly or commercially available information” and characterizes it as “the INT of first resort.”  

Traditional mass media, including television, radio, and print media, deliver structured reporting, expert analysis, and official narratives. Internet sources, such as forums, blogs, and social media platforms, provide real-time information, grassroots perspectives, and user-generated content. These sources often include independently valuable metadata, such as timestamps, geolocation data, and device identifiers. Commercial satellite imagery offers geospatial insight, while maritime and aircraft tracking data enable analysts to monitor shipments, diplomatic travel, and military mobility. Corporate and trade information, including filings, reports, and bill-of-lading data, reveals supplier networks, subsidiaries, and ownership structures.  

State and non-state actors can collect data and generate intelligence from these sources without cultivating costly clandestine access. Open sources often surpass classified information in speed, scale, clarity, usability, and cost, resulting in a modern information environment that partially democratizes intelligence. While the United States maintains advantages through clandestine collection, OSINT enables less-resourced states and non-state actors to build increasingly sophisticated intelligence capabilities.  

OSINT and Democratized Intelligence: Case Studies 

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates how OSINT narrows the gap between less-resourced states and major powers.  

Commercial imagery offered timely warning of Russia’s initial attack and improved battlefield transparency, enhancing situational awareness. U.S.-based remote sensing companies like Maxar, Planet Labs, Capella, and BlackSky provided critical imagery, helping compensate for Ukraine’s limited intelligence system. Maxar (now split into two distinct business units) and Planet Labs captured images of Russian troop buildups along the Ukrainian border, prompting Ukraine to prepare. Days before the full-scale invasion, BlackSky altered the planned orbit of two satellites to supply Ukraine with additional imagery. Later, Ukraine leveraged state funds to purchase continuous access to satellite imagery from ICEYE, a Finnish remote sensing company, which gave Ukraine constant high-quality imagery in any weather. Within months, ICEYE’s data allowed Ukraine to locate over 7,000 Russian military sites and troop positions and subsequently destroy hundreds of Russian assets. As the conflict evolves, satellite imagery from these companies continues enabling Ukraine to monitor Russian mobilization and increasingly supports Ukrainian targeting, campaign assessment, and information operations.  

Ukraine has also benefitted from commercial data sources beyond satellite imagery. HawkEye 360, a U.S. geospatial analytics company, uses satellite sensors to detect radio frequency signals, which can identify and geolocate GPS interference. Ukraine has employed this data to target Russian forces by tracking their associated jamming signals. Molfar, a Ukrainian military investigations company, scours social media for Russian soldiers’ posts that reveal their locations. The company assesses this information to follow the movements of Russian military units and provides the Ukrainian government with actionable analysis.  

Collectively, open sources offered Ukraine key warning, mapping, and monitoring capabilities once concentrated among major powers.  

The Houthi Campaign Against Commercial Shipping  

The Houthi campaign against commercial shipping in the Red Sea illustrates how this democratizing effect extends to non-state actors.  

Shipping vessels from around the world use the Automatic Identification System (AIS) to track and broadcast their position. This allows companies to follow vessels’ routes and ports to prepare for incoming shipments. However, adversarial actors can also access publicly available AIS data with a purchased subscription.  

Iran-backed Houthi groups employ this data to target commercial shipping in the Red Sea. From November 2023 to June 2024, these groups attacked roughly 50 vessels, seizing one, sinking two, and killing three people.  

States cannot unilaterally disable AIS to protect ships, though some companies have advised their vessels to turn off the systems. However, ship captains lack clarity regarding where to flip the switch to obscure their location from Houthi trackers without excessively undermining AIS’s inherent benefits. Moreover, shipping vessels prioritize efficiency, meaning they often follow predictable paths. Resultingly, adversaries can accurately predict ships’ locations from previous tracking data, even after captains disable AIS.  

Openly available maritime data enables Houthi groups to perform effective, difficult-to-oppose targeting support without building an expensive ISR architecture. In this way, OSINT gives a non-state actor access to capabilities that previously depended on state intelligence resources. 

Implications and Policy Options for the United States 

OSINT’s rise as a strategic capability requires a shift in U.S. policy and investment priorities. The United States should continue institutionalizing OSINT as a core intelligence discipline, amplifying analytic capacity, refining tradecraft, and integrating open-source collection into all-source intelligence processes. The United States should deepen its engagement with commercial OSINT providers, expanding public-private partnerships and establishing clear frameworks for crisis coordination. Simultaneously, the United States must adapt defensively as adversaries exploit openly available information. This requires systematically assessing OSINT visibility of U.S. activities and incorporating open-source exposure into planning and risk assessment.  

The United States holds a distinct advantage in this intelligence landscape given its proximity to and influence over the world’s most advanced commercial information networks. Many of the platforms, firms, and data infrastructures that enable OSINT operate in or align closely with the United States and its allies. This affords Washington meaningful leverage over the availability and dissemination of sensitive information. Planet Labs’ efforts to restrict satellite imagery of Iran and surrounding areas demonstrate how the United States can exercise this influence to mitigate immediate perceived risks. Such measures limit adversaries’ access to intelligence without requiring direct action.  

Yet this advantage proves neither absolute nor cost-free. Open-source information’s global, decentralized nature limits any actor’s control over its flow. Imposing broad or sustained restrictions could drive users toward alternative providers and erode U.S. influence over time. Excessive intervention also undermines the openness that sustains democratic credibility. The United States therefore confronts a strategic tradeoff: it may reduce adversaries’ access to certain forms of information, but frequently doing so threatens long-term influence and imperils the core values of the country and its society. Accordingly, U.S. policy should prioritize targeted, temporary, and proportionate measures applied in narrowly defined high-risk scenarios while preserving broad accessibility of open-source information. 

Sophisticated national intelligence ecosystems retain advantages, but OSINT fundamentally reshapes their distribution. By lowering collection and analysis barriers, OSINT enables weaker states and non-state actors to perform functions once tightly concentrated in the hands of major powers. This shift narrows the intelligence gap. The United States must adapt to these conditions. Yet because the United States possesses overwhelming strengths in clandestine collection, technical capabilities, and analytic integration, it can pursue a measured response. Washington should emphasize effective competition in a democratized intelligence environment, constraining risks where necessary and preserving openness where possible.