This week we start building. Over the coming issues we will show you how to run your own AI capability, fully open source, fully in-house, with no internet connection and no running costs.

As always, the latest news and and tradecraft tips from across the OSINT industry are also inside.

Missed last week?

New Vacancy: Associate Analyst, North Quay — London

We have launched the first CTF on our new assessment platform. The challenge is not fictional. It reflects the actual work of the role. Complete it, perform well, and you progress through the application. A CV remains a formality.

If you think you can do the work and have the right to work in the UK, go here.

PS: Hiring? Contact us for a free company account and run the same process.

How to Run a Private AI Assistant on Your Own Hardware

This week we show you how to run an AI assistant entirely on your own hardware. No API key. No cloud. No cost per query. The model runs locally, your data stays with you, and the setup takes around 10 minutes.

The full guide, including chat interface setup and model recommendations, is below.

This is the first instalment in a series on building a local AI capability specifically for OSINT work.

Read more

This week we tackle a topic that runs deeper than any tool list: what open source intelligence is, who practises it, and why the field consistently mistakes tool proficiency for analytical capability.

As always, the latest tradecraft tips and industry news. Nothing older than seven days. Practical and ready to use today.

Last Week And This Month's Free Roundup

Threat Intelligence Analyst, 6-Month FTC, Tech Against Terrorism

Tech Against Terrorism is hiring a Threat Intelligence Analyst on a 6-month fixed-term contract with potential to extend. Full details here.

The Tool List Problem

Why OSINT's obsession with software is holding the field back

Hiring managers and job applicants make the same mistake.

One writes tool requirements where skill requirements should be. The other lists platforms instead of problems solved. The field ends up measuring software proficiency rather than actual tradecraft.

This week we look at why the OSINT community over-indexes on tools, how the field has fractured into four distinct groups, and what a genuine OSINT role actually looks like when you build it from real job descriptions rather than convention.

Premium subscribers read the full post below.

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March kept the OSINT world moving. Here is what you missed and what it means for your work.

This edition is free for ALL subscribers. The analysis behind it is not.

Premium subscribers got access to four in-depth pieces this month:

Cut Hiring Time, Cut Costs, Hire Professionals Who Actually Have the Skills

Hiring for an OSINT role? We will list it and help you assess your candidates at no cost and faster using our brand new OSINT Assessment Platform. Reach out: contact@osint-jobs.com

Find Your Place In the OSINT Industry

Built on five years of in-house research and thousands of real job descriptions, our career taxonomy maps the industry and helps you find your path. Check it out: https://www.osint-jobs.com/osint-careers

A Small Selection of Tradecraft Tips & Industry News from March 2026

• released Dark Light Viewer, a browser-based tool that uses VIIRS night-time light data to track changes in night lights across the planet | try here

• Bellingcat released Turnstone, an open source tool that searches historical ADS-B flight data to explore patterns over time and in specific locations | view here

• The SIPRI Arms Transfers Database updated on 9 March 2026, replacing all previously published arms transfer data with new figures covering 1950 to 2025 | try here

• FlightGlobal reports that commercial satellite imagery from Chinese intelligence firm MizarVision tracks US forces operating against Iran | read here

• OSINT Field Notes - from Benjamin Strick geolocated Taliban special forces drills by matching sand dunes in desert terrain, confirming Kandahar Airfield as the departure point and pinpointing the exact soldier drop-off location and bombed dune south of the airfield | watch here

• Anna Schild and Jochen Spangenberg shared lessons and outcomes from the concluded VERA.AI project, discussing ongoing results and past and future efforts to counter disinformation | read here

• Cloudflare launched a web crawling API that lets free-account holders crawl up to 100,000 public web pages via a single API call | try here

• FIMI ISAC operates a central hub that shares in-depth reports on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, covering the latest TTPs, threat actors, and mitigation strategies for stakeholders, policymakers, and CSOs | read here

• Bellingcat’s Trevor Ball spoke with host Charlotte Maher about identifying weapons and munitions used in conflict, including those appearing in the Iran conflict | watch here

• OSINT Combine published an in-depth guide to searching and monitoring Reddit | read here

• OSINTERSECT’s Joseph Jones released a free Chrome extension called ‘vkXtract’ that extracts and presents VK data in various formats | try here

• The Office of the Director of National Intelligence published the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) of the U.S. Intelligence Community | read here

• Cyabra begins trading on the Nasdaq | read here

• A CBC Front Burner episode examines how amateur “OSINT cowboys” use AI-powered dashboards to monitor the Iran conflict and questions what happens when war coverage becomes gamified on prediction markets | view here

• A GIJN webinar led by investigative trainer Henk van Ess covers the latest tools and techniques journalists can use to detect and verify AI-generated text and images | watch here

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This is the second in a series on GDELT.

Last issue we covered the API access. This issue we go into Google BigQuery. We’ll show you how to access GDELT’s full dataset for free, query it using SQL, and apply a structured analytical framework to a real-world case study.

As always, the latest tradecraft tips and industry news. Nothing older than seven days. Practical and ready to use today.

Missed last week’s newsletter?

From the OSINT Jobs Team

1. Our Assessment Platform

Hiring for OSINT roles? Reach out: contact@osint-jobs.com. We'll walk you through our assessment platform and advertise your role — all at no cost.

2. Our OSINT Careers Taxonomy is live

Built on five years of in-house research and thousands of real job descriptions, our career taxonomy maps the industry and helps you find your path. Check it out: https://www.osint-jobs.com/osint-careers

3. OSMOSISCon 2026

For those in the US, the OSMOSISCon Career Fair on 31 May 2026 in Bonita Springs, Florida connects sponsors and exhibitors directly with OSINT professionals across corporate, government, law enforcement, and military sectors.

Set Up BigQuery, Query GDELT, and Start Analysing Global Media Coverage in Minutes

This is the second in a series on The GDELT Project. Supported by Google Jigsaw, GDELT monitors broadcast, print, and web news in over 100 languages from nearly every country in the world.

This issue goes further. We set up Google BigQuery, explore GDELT's two core datasets, and run our first SQL query against real data. We use US-Iran media coverage as a live use case and build a visualisation from the results.

As our ongoing research into open source intelligence job descriptions confirms, data analysis is one of the most in-demand skills in the field. This issue shows you what that looks like in practice.

Read more

This is the first in a series on GDELT — a free, real-time global media dataset that most analysts have heard of but few use directly. No code. No account. No subscription. Just a browser, a prompt, and a dataset that most analysts pay someone else to process for them.

As always, this issue includes the latest tradecraft tips and industry news. Nothing older than seven days. Practical and ready to use today.

Missed last week’s newsletter?

Hiring for OSINT Roles? Become a Design Partner.

We built an Assessment Platform so companies find candidates with the right skills, and candidates show what they can do before writing a CV or cover letter.

We have a few spots left in our design partner group. If your team is hiring for OSINT or intelligence roles, reach out: contact[@]osint-jobs[.]com

How to Use GDELT: The Free Real-Time News Dataset Built for Analysts (Part I)

This is the first in a series on The GDELT Project. Supported by Google Jigsaw, GDELT monitors broadcast, print, and web news in over 100 languages from nearly every country in the world.

In this issue we cover what GDELT is and how to start pulling from it today using nothing but a browser. No code. No account. No subscription.

We focus on the war in Iran as a live use case. The examples are practical and ready to run. Advanced querying and Google BigQuery setup follow in a later issue.

One thing worth noting. Through our ongoing research into job descriptions across the global open source intelligence job market, data analysis and technical skills rank among the most in-demand capabilities. This series builds on both.

Read more

Every week we cover the latest tradecraft tips and industry news. For our main section this week, we drew inspiration from a newly published guide on detecting AI imagery.

With conflicts escalating around the world and AI-generated content surrounding these events at scale, we took it as an opportunity to go back to basics.

We walk you through a verification framework we use ourselves — built for anyone working with digital content in an environment where AI makes everything look real.

Missed last week’s newsletter?

OSINT Jobs at the OSMOSIS London Expo

The OSMOSIS London Expo brought together OSINT professionals for thoughtful discussion, practical insight, and real peer-to-peer collaboration. From evolving tradecraft to responsible AI integration, the conversations reinforced that the profession grows stronger when practitioners share experience openly and challenge each other constructively.

OSINT Jobs was proud to be part of it. A big thank you to the organisers for putting it together. If you joined the event in London, thank you for contributing. If not, the conversation continues at OSMOSISCon in Florida this May.

Learn more about OSMOSISCon 2026 and continue the conversation in person or virtually! Receive 20% off Virtual Registrations OSMOSISCON 2026 - OSMOSIS

Use Code: CON2620PR

One Framework, Any Content: How to Verify in the Age of AI

The line between real and fabricated content keeps shrinking. Generative AI tools now produce visual material so convincing that even trained eyes struggle to spot the difference.

In a past newsletter, we highlighted an experiment where a researcher used Gemini to generate location-specific imagery that matched real geolocations with striking accuracy, a reminder that even established verification methods face new pressure from GenAI.

This week, AI Forensics published an updated “Human Guide to Detecting AI Imagery,” giving researchers, journalists, fact-checkers, and social media users a practical resource to identify AI-generated content.

We take this as an opportunity to go back to basics. Analysts already navigate a sea of information, deciding what matters, filtering out the noise, and then dedicating time to verify material on top of that.

This framework has never been more critical. It holds everyone to a standard process, keeps verification consistent, and leaves no room for speculation or AI-generated fakes.

Read more

This week we go deep. Anthropic published a study on AI and the labor market, and we used it as a lens to look at our own industry.

We pulled in findings from our Community Survey, hundreds of analyzed job descriptions, and four years of watching this field evolve week by week. The result is our most research-driven edition yet.

If you’ve ever asked whether AI will replace your OSINT job, this one’s for you.

Plus, a summary of the latest tradecraft tips and industry news from last week. As usual, never older than a week.

Missed last week’s newsletter?

Job Opportunity

Product Manager - Threat Intelligence

Tech Against Terrorism is looking for a Product Manager | 🇬🇧 UK | Full-time | Apply here

Is AI Coming for Your OSINT Job? Anthropic Has Some Answers — So Do We

Anthropic published a paper this week — Labor Market Impacts of AI: A New Measure and Early Evidence — that adds something significant to the debate around AI replacing jobs, and it deserves attention.

At its core is a new metric called observed exposure, built to measure not just what AI can theoretically do, but what people actually use it for in professional settings. Tested against early data, it finds limited evidence that AI has affected employment to date.

To measure exposure, the team combined the O*NET database covering around 800 US occupations, Anthropic’s own Claude usage data, and third-party estimates of whether an LLM can theoretically make a task at least twice as fast.

Computer programmers top the list at 74.5%, followed by customer service representatives at 70.1% and data entry keyers at 67.1%. At the other end, 30% of workers sit at zero coverage: cooks, motorcycle mechanics, and bartenders.

The headline finding cuts both ways. AI is far from reaching its theoretical capability, and there’s no systematic rise in unemployment for highly exposed workers since late 2022. But hiring of younger workers into exposed roles has started to slow.

What does this mean for the OSINT industry? What we’re seeing through our community survey and four years of weekly newsletters points in a similar direction and when mapped against what Anthropic found, the picture for OSINT gets specific.

AI is embedding itself across the full workflow, from collection and analysis to processing and report writing, amplifying tradecraft rather than replacing it. But the skills needed to use it well are unevenly distributed, and the hiring landscape hasn’t caught up.

We've shared our community survey findings openly and if you haven't read them yet, they're free for everyone.

But in this edition, our premium members get more: a deeper look at actual hiring trends across the industry, based on an analysis of job descriptions from around the world. What skills matter, where AI replaces or augments, and how to catch up to grow your AI skills.

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February flew by and the OSINT world kept moving. But don't worry, we're here to keep you up to date.

This monthly edition is FREE for all our subscribers and based on our weekly premium content, which you can find below:

Thanks to all our premium subscribers for supporting our work!

Now let’s dive in!

Highlights from February 2026

OSINT Tradecraft Tips & Industry News

• A free GitHub tool claims to bypass Discord's age verification by manipulating a 3D model, 404 Media reports.

• Instagram adds an "IGSH" tracking parameter to shared post URLs, linking them to the sharer's account — removing it before sharing prevents this. (HT Epieos)

• Blackbird.AI and Brandwatch Selected to Provide Information Assessment for NATO (view here)

• ShadowDragon has launched Dork Assistant, a free tool that translates plain-language research queries into advanced Google "dorks."

• ACLED launched ACLED Trends, a tool that combines historical conflict data, real-time trends, and scenario analysis to help users anticipate conflict risk across countries and regions (view here).

• As the CIA shuts down The World Factbook, OpenSanctions is launching EveryPolitician.org.

• Mary D'Angelo argues in a Feedly blog post that effective dark web monitoring requires structured workflows for breach claims, clear governance policies, and actionable data integration into your TIP (view here).

• Cyabra unveiled its 2026 rebrand and new mission to restore trust and authenticity for global enterprises and governments (view here).

• Sarah Wormer wrote a LinkedIn article sharing a framework of vetting questions analysts can use to evaluate browser extensions (view here)

More insights?

Reach out at contact [at] osint-jobs [dot] com for deeper and tailored insights about OSINT tradecraft and the wider industry.

This week, we explore the growing world of situational awareness monitoring. New dashboards keep launching. Each is sleek, powerful, and free, pulling multiple sources into one place in a way that is hard not to find impressive. But looking impressive and delivering effective monitoring are two different things.

And that gap made us think. What actually sits behind effective monitoring? We put together a five-point framework built around the thinking that separates useful situational awareness from information overload. Human-centred. No tool lists. No platform reviews. Just what actually matters.

Missed last week’s newsletter?

Job Opportunity

Intelligence Consultant (OSINT)

IMSL is looking for an Intelligence Consultant | 🇬🇧 UK | Full-time | Apply here

Upcoming Event: OSMOSIS London Expo 2026

A quick reminder — this Wednesday, 4 March, we'll be at the OSMOSIS London Expo 2026. Come talk to us. Don't miss this one-day programme packed with expert presentations, hands-on tool demos, peer networking, and direct access to leading OSINT technology providers.

For more info and tickets, click here.

Situational Awareness Tools Are Evolving Fast. Here’s What Hasn’t Changed.

Situational awareness monitoring dashboards keep multiplying. Tools like WarTracker24, WorldMonitor, Signal Cockpit, Monitor the Situation, and similar ones offer analysts a single interface, combining multiple sources into one sleek interface.

This weekend’s events in the Middle East put many of these dashboards to the test. Users reached for them seeking real-time awareness as events unfolded. Clean design and source aggregation unite these tools but that combination alone does not make an analyst effective.

The information environment moves fast and the truth gets murkier even faster. Too much information hits at once. Spotting what is real versus what is misleading gets harder by the hour.

This week, we take a step back. We show you what situational awareness actually takes, which sources do the job, and why how you work matters more than what you use.

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An email address is often all you have. This week we show you how far you can take it.

Five fundamental techniques, zero tool lists, straight to the principle and the value behind each one. Plus last week's tradecraft tips and industry news, so you never miss anything in the OSINT industry.

Missed last week’s newsletter?

Upcoming Event: OSMOSIS London Expo 2026

A one-day program packed with expert presentations, hands-on tool demos, peer networking, and direct access to leading OSINT technology providers. We'll be there too — come say hello.

For more info and tickets, click here.

Investigating Email Addresses: Your How-To Guide for OSINT Investigations

In our newest deep-dive guide, we’re tackling one of the most common starting points in any investigation: the email address.

Whether you know who’s behind it or not, an email is often all you have and the question is how far you can take it.

We’ll be sharing the tips, tools, and techniques we’ve gathered over four years of running this newsletter, combined with the in-house expertise of public and private OSINT professionals.

Our focus stays on free tools throughout, but we’ll flag where paid platforms can give you a meaningful edge and explain why.

Before diving into techniques and tradecraft, it’s worth stepping back to look at the overall investigation workflow. For this, we highly recommend the workflow visual created by Michael Bazzell. To our knowledge, he was the first to visualize workflows, including email, domain, and people searches that many in the OSINT community have since adopted and built upon.

We won't repeat that or other workflows. Instead, we share a practical approach to investigating email addresses with little to no access to paid tools.

This is not a list of tools and resources. We walk you through the core principles and techniques built on over four years of covering weekly tradecraft tips and our team's daily hands-on investigation and intelligence expertise — building blocks you can reach for at any stage of an investigation.

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This week we're shifting gears. Instead of just highlighting tradecraft tips and news, we're breaking down specific skills and walk you through on how to do it.

First up: constructing advanced Google queries with a custom AI assistant. Before we dive in, a quick career opportunity for those in the United Kingdom.

IMSL is looking for:

Intelligence Trainer/Assessor (Assessment Lead)

United Kingdom | Apply here)

Need qualified OSINT professionals? Post your role on osint-jobs.com and get in front of thousands of vetted practitioners globally.

DIY OSINT: Building a Guided Search Assistant with ChatGPT

ShadowDragon's Dork Assistant Builds Advanced Google Searches

ShadowDragon has launched Dork Assistant, a free tool that translates plain-language research queries into advanced Google "dorks."

This is an interesting and useful application, particularly for OSINT training where search operators are taught through real-world exercises.

When we tested it, we wondered if we could build something similar without creating a web app or paying for premium AI access.

After experimenting with various prompt structures, we developed a solution that not only constructs advanced queries but also teaches the investigative thinking process, guiding users through targeted questions, explaining operator choices, and progressively building complexity.

Below, we'll show you how to build it yourself using any free LLM. We developed and tested it on OpenAI's free tier.

Read more

Another month has passed and a lot has been happening in the OSINT world. But don’t worry, we’re here to keep you up to date.

This monthly edition is FREE for all our subscribers and based on our weekly premium content, which you can find below.

Thanks to all our premium subscribers for supporting our work!

Now let’s dive in!

Highlights from January 2026

OSINT Tradecraft Tips & Industry News

Researchers from Anthropic, the AI Security Institute, and the Turing’s Defence and National Security team show that attackers can poison language models with as few as 250 malicious documents, enabling backdoors and data leaks and underscoring the need for stronger defences.

Originally published in 2022 but recently reshared by the author in light of current developments, this practical step-by-step guide explains how to use real-time social media monitoring to investigate human rights violations.

Here are 32 commands for making your ChatGPT prompts more precise. This tip was shared on LinkedIn. For the full breakdown, including the cheat sheet, see the original post.

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A useful tip by the GDELT Project Blog, showing how GenAI can turn a static infographic into an interactive, clickable HTML page using Gemini 3.

Neil Hoyne, Chief Strategist at Google, shared an insightful post on building strong data analysis skills. This aligns with our in-house research and with what managers report as missing in many OSINT teams. Data analysis remains an essential skill for OSINT.

On LinkedIn, Steven H. released URL Dater, a self-hosted web app that can be used in investigations for estimating a website’s age.

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Gartner names Blackbird[.]AI the leading disinformation narrative intelligence AI company.

While doing research, we came across Google Scholar Labs from Google. You can now ask a detailed research question and get relevant academic papers instantly, which helps speed up literature reviews.

OpenAI is working on ChatGPT Jobs, a career-focused AI agent that supports users with resume advice, job searches, and broader career guidance, TestingCatalog reports.

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X user @Harrris0n published an article explanaining that every Waze report shares a user’s exact location, timestamp, and username on Waze’s public web map.

On LinkedIn, Kevin B shared an interesting article from Windscribe about its VPN Relationship Map, which documents relationships between VPN services, their corporate owners, and paid affiliates.

Learn how to convert a list of sources and their targets into a network using the free, no-registration Nocodefunctions web app and visualise it in Gephi.

Subscribe now

More insights?

Reach out at contact [at] osint-jobs [dot] com for deeper and tailored insights about OSINT tradecraft and the wider industry.

This week, we highlight new tools, research, and commentary that show both the opportunities and the tensions shaping OSINT today.

We look at emerging capabilities that lower the barrier to large-scale searching and aggregation, alongside research that shows how investigators and journalists work with archived and open data in practice.

We also feature several reflections on the state of the profession itself - why judgment, structure, and analytical design matter as much as tooling, how organisations risk confusing output with insight, and where dependence on platforms and automation may introduce new blind spots.

As always, we close with key industry updates that point to broader shifts in technology, infrastructure, and intelligence practice.

Job Opportunity

Tech Against Terrorism

(Threat Intelligence Analyst, Australia (Remote) | Apply here)

Need qualified OSINT professionals? Post your role on osint-jobs.com and get in front of thousands of vetted practitioners globally.

OSINT Tradecraft Tips

A short roundup of tradecraft tips to help you stay ahead in the field.

Read more

This week, we cover free satellite imagery sources, hands-on data extraction techniques, and new tools that streamline analysis and note-taking.

Plus, we look at why language skills, evidence standards, and clear peer review still matter as automation becomes more popular.

We also track key developments shaping the OSINT environment, from new forms of online manipulation to debates around AI in investigative work and the unintended consequences of synthetic media.

As always, the aim is to help you stay sharp, grounded, and up to date.

Before we dive in, we’d like to highlight an upcoming event from our friends at OSMOSIS Association. This will be of particular interest to our UK-based community, but is of course open to everyone!

Elevate Your Career — with a Special OSINT Jobs Registration + OSC Certification Offer

OSMOSIS London Expo | 4 March 2026 | London, UK

The OSMOSIS Association is coming to London! You’re invited to the OSMOSIS London Expo, a one-day experience created to help OSINT professionals grow, connect, and advance.

What You’ll Gain:
• Practical OSINT skills you can take back to work immediately
• Insight from experienced practitioners and industry leaders
• Meaningful connections with employers, platforms, and peers
• A clearer path to your next career move

Exclusive OSC Certification Discount!
Register for the Expo and receive a special discount on the Osmosis Association OSC Certification—a respected credential that validates real-world OSINT expertise.

Register today and receive a 10% discount. Use Code: OJ10

https://osmosisassociation.org/home/osmosis-london-expo/

OSINT Tradecraft Tips

A short roundup of tradecraft tips to help you stay ahead in the field.

Read more

This issue brings together a broad mix of practical OSINT tools, hands-on methods, and investigative techniques. We highlight a free tool to monitor global events in near real time, a technique to extract insights from satellite imagery, and a method to build network visualisations from simple datasets.

We also cover industry news on how data, platforms, and technology intersect with power, privacy, and accountability, and share resources to help practitioners stay up to date in OSINT.

OSINT Tradecraft Tips

A short roundup of tradecraft tips to help you stay ahead in the field.

Read more

This week’s edition is packed with updates that matter for day-to-day OSINT work. We cover practical tools, platform risks, and broader shifts in the field, including new ways to analyse websites, warnings about link-based exposure, faster access to academic research, and clear explanations of core intelligence concepts.

You’ll also find items on critical internet infrastructure, growing AI capabilities in cyber operations, ongoing standards debates in the OSINT community, counter-disinformation efforts, emerging risks to KYC, changes in secure messaging ownership, and continued funding in the narrative intelligence space.

OSINT Tradecraft Tips

A short roundup of tradecraft tips to help you stay ahead in the field.

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This week we focus on practical tradecraft, emerging workflows, and shifts shaping the OSINT field. We cover how to strengthen attribution by combining open sources with breach data, how to filter and analyse Telegram data for military tracking, and how GenAI can turn static material into interactive outputs.

We also look at core skills analysts will need in the coming years, changing models for corporate intelligence teams, and current pressure on counter-disinformation researchers.

In addition, we share key industry updates, signals from the AI and intelligence market, cultural analysis through unconventional indicators, and recent developments affecting platform security and data exposure.

OSINT Tradecraft Tips

A short roundup of tips and tools to help you stay ahead in the field.

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In this edition we focus on practical OSINT tradecraft and current shifts in the information environment.

We look at how to track state-backed narratives across platforms, how to monitor and investigate human rights violations in near real time, and share practical tips on making LLM prompts more precise.

We also highlight crowdsourced mapping efforts from Venezuela, including geolocated footage and open-source maps of military units.

Finally, we cover recent developments shaping the field, including cognitive warfare and emerging risks to language models, and ongoing discussions about how OSINT continues to evolve.

OSINT Tradecraft Tips

A short roundup of tips and tools to help you stay ahead in the field.

Read more

This Year in Review is based on 51 editions published over the past year. It brings together what we observed across the global OSINT ecosystem and how we see the field evolving.

This year, we want to highlight five areas:

• OSINT Developments in the United States

• Impact of Generative AI on OSINT

• Mis- and Disinformation in the Age of Generative AI

• What Skills Really Matter in OSINT

• OSINT professionals face growing constraints

If you’re new here, the OSINT Newsletter is a weekly publication where we share practical OSINT tradecraft tips and relevant industry news for professionals who depend on timely and reliable information.

If you’d like to join our community, you can subscribe for free and receive a free, monthly roundup.

Subscribe now

PS: You can upgrade later for weekly access to more timely insights. We’re proud to have served the OSINT community for over four years, publishing every week without interruption.

Now let’s get started!

1. OSINT Developments in the United States

We looked closely at the United States this year, which has led efforts to treat OSINT as a first resource, most clearly through the DNI’s 2024–2026 strategy that named OSINT “The INT of First Resort” and aimed to unlock its value, making U.S. actions this year a useful signal for what others may do in the future.

In February, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) created a dedicated OSINT subcommittee. It was designed to strengthen oversight and give OSINT clearer direction across the intelligence community.

In September, the Federal News Network reported that the House advanced an intelligence bill, which elevates OSINT by centralising oversight of open source and commercial data, setting clear definitions, and tasking the DNI with coordinating standards, budgets, and acquisitions across the intelligence community.

By the end of the year, opposition from multiple intelligence agencies slowed reforms tied to commercial data access. The plan stalled, though it may return for debate next year, Intelligence Online reported.

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2. Impact of Generative AI on OSINT

Unsurprisingly, Generative AI has significantly affected the OSINT industry.

Early in the year, Indagotech argued that OSINT practitioners must adapt or fall behind. According to them, generative AI is the biggest shift in OSINT in almost twenty years and is therefore described as the Start of OSINT 3.0.

Interestingly, the United States military experimented with generative AI for intelligence interpretation, as MIT Technology Review reported.

It’s no surprise that this technology is used by both good and bad actors. Google reported that threat actors mainly used their GenAI technology for routine tasks like research, troubleshooting, and content generation rather than developing new capabilities. Similarly, OpenAI reported it disrupted more than 40 malicious networks since early 2024 and found that threat actors mostly used AI to speed up old tactics rather than create new ones.

The debate also widened beyond tools. Commentators argued that the future of intelligence is open and that the United States must rely on AI and open sources to keep its strategic edge. At the same time, others warned of the transparency trap. More open data does not automatically lead to better insight and can increase the risk of deception, bias, and false confidence.

Additionally, concerns were raised about analysis quality, as experts warned that heavy reliance on AI tools can weaken human judgment and core OSINT methods, making interpretation the central challenge, as one author put it.

Taken together, we can see that Generative AI now shapes OSINT training, tools, and services, but it does not replace critical analysis - essential skills which we will discuss again later.

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3. Mis- and Disinformation in the Age of Generative AI

Generative AI also significantly affected mis- and disinformation.

The EU’s External Action Service introduced the FIMI Exposure Matrix to map how state backed actors run influence campaigns across platforms. The report reviewed 505 incidents from 2024, and showed heavy use of bots, fake news sites, and AI generated content.

Practitioners also focused on awareness and response. A new NATO StratCom podcast episode explored how hostile actors use AI to polarise societies and what risks policymakers must prepare for next.

One very important resource we want to highlight in the context of countering mis- and disinformation is the work of DW Innovation, who closed its five year KID project and released a full verification toolkit, including training tools, a fact checking game, and an AI powered geolocation system. AFP also launched a free course to help journalists master the InVid verification plugin.

Mis- and Disinformation will remain central in the coming years, as Generative AI produces text and media at incredible speed. Using the four V framework of big data, we see more volume, velocity, and variety than ever before, but veracity remains a key challenge and a core issue for OSINT, especially when it comes to distilling signal from noise.

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4. What Skills Really Matter

Coming back to skills, this is an area we observe as still under-acknowledged and rarely studied with rigour. OSINT work changes fast, but we still lack clarity on which skills truly matter. Much of the debate relies on isolated insights from practitioners. What’s missing is an evidence base, and this is exactly the gap we are now working to fill at osint-jobs.com

We ran a structured survey to understand how OSINT practitioners use AI across the ‘intelligence cycle’, from collection to reporting. The first responses came mainly from experienced analysts working in investigations, due diligence, geopolitics, mis- and disinformation, and anti-fraud.

Most already use AI daily, mainly for collection, analysis, and writing. They see clear productivity gains but also flagged limits around cost, access to data, information overload, fast changing tools, and growing legal and ethical pressure.

The results point to a clear gap between speed and skill. Teams lack technical abilities, shared methods, language skills, and standardised practices. AI now supports most OSINT workflows, but practitioners stress the need for human judgment and solid tradecraft.

This is an early snapshot only. You can dive into the results here (open access):

We keep the survey open and will rerun the analysis to strengthen our insights.

We encourage all OSINT professionals to take part:

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5. OSINT professionals face growing constraints

Something interesting we noticed in the past couple of months were reports related to activities affecting OSINT professionals.

Researchers uncovered a malware campaign on GitHub to infect IT and OSINT professionals with a stealthy remote access trojan, as Hackread reported.

Separately, a developer of a well known OSINT tool warned on LinkedIn about suspicious abuse, where anonymous actors typosquatted domains, violated the usage license, and released uncredited copycat search tools.

At the platform level, GitHub also restricted accounts hosting OSINT and dark web resources, Indicator Media reported in September.

Together, these events highlight the ongoing need for stronger security awareness and careful tool vetting. Even if one argues that these events stand alone, they still serve as a clear example of why we should not blindly rely on free tools or services. As we have said many times, we must not depend on tools alone, and checking and vetting them is essential for OPSEC.

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That’s it. Thanks for reading our Year in Review. We hope you found the insights useful. Once again, the entire OSINT Jobs team thanks our paid subscribers and wishes everyone a happy, healthy, and successful 2026!

See you next year :)

More insights?

Reach out at contact [at] osint-jobs [dot] com for more and tailored insights.

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This week’s edition covers tradecraft updates on building knowledge graphs, a plain-language guide to military terms, weak document redactions, investigative pivoting techniques, and running LLMs locally.

We also cover industry updates on stalled OSINT reform, attacks targeting OSINT tools and practitioners, and the continued use of the Internet Archive in investigations.

A few words from the team

In this last weekly edition, we want to thank all our subscribers, especially our paid readers who keep this newsletter running. Without you, there would be no weekly edition.

We are extremely proud to have published continuously for more than four years without a single break. This newsletter is run by active professionals for professionals who rely on timely, practical OSINT tips and industry news.

We also want to thank everyone who has taken part in our ongoing community survey. We continue to receive new responses, and we truly appreciate the time and trust this represents.

We will keep collecting input before moving into a second round of analysis. As with our previous special edition, all results will remain freely accessible to everyone.

Looking ahead to 2026, our mission is clear. We want to strengthen and push the OSINT profession through evidence-based research, driven by the community and grounded in real practitioner needs.

With that said, we wish everyone a successful, healthy, and prosperous 2026. Now, let’s get started.

OSINT Tradecraft Tips

A short roundup of tips and tools to help you stay ahead in the field.

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