Open Source Intelligence collective ‘bellingcat’ is an excellent source of news.
“Stealth is not about hiding, it’s about inundating.”
We live in a world dominated by information. We have the knowledge of our species available at our fingertips, and yet this vast trove of knowledge has been polluted by half-truths or lies, or what Kellyanne Conway called “Alternative facts”.
In such a blizzard of good information mixed in with bad information it can be incredibly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. It’s hard work to stay on top of current events, and arming oneself with relevant information of good quality. I certainly don’t know many news outlets I think I can trust.
About a year ago, when listening to Behind the Bastards, Robert Evans mentioned writing for Bellingcat, and my interest was piqued. I decided to look it up and find out what this was all about. In short, Bellingcat is a news blog powered by open source intelligence, and I for one think it’s of unusually good integrity. Of course, everyone has biases, and you shouldn’t blindly trust any source, but the interesting thing about Bellingcat is how diligently they source their material, and document the evidence from which they draw their conclusions. After all, bias does not necessarily equal inaccuracy. I’ve been particularly impressed with their work on the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
“Knowledge is power.”
The year 1947, mankind entered what we now call the information age – but Francis Bacon famously wrote ‘Scientia potentia est’ in 1597. We know it better today as ‘knowledge is power’.
What Bacon knew is what people must have known for as long as there have been people, is that information is crucial to making the right decisions. If the potential for better decisions increases with the vastness and accuracy of relevant information, then it follows that the opposite must also be true. This fact is so intuitive to us all that we even see a variety of animals engage in wilful deception to increase their odds of survival – or decrease the odds of their competition.
The information age followed on the heels of the second world war, wherein the victory of the allied forces was greatly helped by cracking the encrypted communications of the axis to learn their secrets in time to act on them, and to leak misleading information back to them in order to trick them into making poor decisions.
“Manufacturing of consent.”
It’s no surprise then that the cold war focused so heavily on the spy game. This game was played not just between the competing superpowers of the US and the Soviet Union, but also against their own people in an attempt to manipulate public opinion. This is something I for one was taught those authoritarian states did, but as an adult I think it’s even more important to secure grassroots support in democracies.
It’s not as if this kind of practice ever stopped, and they’ve only gotten better at it – and it’s not just nation-states that get up to this. For no reason at all, I will now refer to a picture of companies ownership.
