Integrating Nonstate Intelligence:

Ukraine Shows How It Might Work

Thomas Ewing

The war in Ukraine has seen nonstate actors, including private 

corporations and NGOs, assume a prominent role collecting, 

producing, and distributing intelligence—directly impacting military 

operations. Although these “intelligence auxiliaries” have helped 

Ukraine defend itself, the absence of an overall coordinating 

mechanism for interoperability with state actors presents a risk that 

state and nonstate actors will find themselves at cross purposes on the 

battlefield. Today, the United States and its allies have an opportunity 

to structure interactions with intelligence auxiliaries under a durable, 

legal framework with a division of labor that can ensure nonstate 

intelligence actors contribute effectively to IC priorities in future fights.

RESEARCH SHORT

December 7, 2022

What this is:

This report is the product 

of academic research. As the 

IC’s university, NIU is uniquely 

positioned to use academic 

approaches to research—and 

report on—subjects of interest 

to the community.

What this is not:

This is not finished intelligence. 

The opinions expressed in this 

report are solely the author’s 

and not those of the National 

Intelligence University or 

any other U.S. Government 

agency.

CATALYST Designed to spark positive 

conversations on the future of the IC 

IMAGES FROM PLANETSCOPE,https://api.planet.com/gallery/v1/posts/forest-fires-near-rubizhne
2

The War in Ukraine Demonstrates the Power of Nonstate 

Intelligence Auxiliaries

The war in Ukraine is revealing what many have known for a long time: open-source intelligence 

(OSINT) tools and tradecraft have fundamentally changed how intelligence work is done—and 

by whom. Throughout the conflict, nonstate actors have engaged in classic intelligence 

operations, from data collection and analysis to influence operations and tactical battlefield

intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). Examples have littered the headlines since 

the war’s beginning: for instance, Starlink, a commercial satellite infrastructure, is supplying 

Ukraine with both strategic and tactical information, as well as reliable internet connection.

1, 2

Closer to the ground, the widespread use of consumer drones by non-governmental organization 

(NGO) volunteers has enabled the Ukrainian army to significantly boost its capability for tactical 

ISR, 3 while nonstate actors using open-source information are contributing intelligence to 

targeting decisions—on both sides of the conflict.

4, 5

Many advanced capabilities are being fielded in a conflict 

of this scale for the first time, often by nonstate actors.

6, 7

For instance, commercial artificial intelligence has been 

able to sift through immense volumes of intercepted 

Russian radio communications to create a database of

Russian commanders’ orders—and thus an archived and 

searchable record of their plans.

8 Corporations have been 

able to activate remote kill switches on stolen farm 

equipment—helping track the provenance of the Russian 

units that pillaged it.

9 Facial recognition software donated 

to Ukraine by foreign corporations is allowing individual 

Russian soldiers who are suspected of atrocities to be 

identified out of entire units—and potentially singled out 

for war crimes tribunals. Meanwhile, atrocity crime 

databases are also being curated by nonstate volunteers

from around the world asynchronously using modern 

communications software.

10

Off the battlefield, Ukraine has deliberately cultivated 

relationships with nonstate actors to enhance its 

intelligence and information operations efforts. The

Ukrainian state and other hacktivist actors have released 

troves of Russian data to the wider world, allowing

freelance actors globally to attack Russia in the cyber and 

information domains.11 This has at times taken creative 

forms—in one example from early in the conflict, 

enterprising programmers have designed tools to degrade 

Russia’s wartime capability and simply waste the 

Ministry of Defense’s time by saturating their phone 

KEY RESEARCH INSIGHTS

• Nonstate intelligence actors or “intelligence 

auxiliaries” are using OSINT tools and 

tradecraft to have an impact on the course 

of the conflict in Ukraine—across the entire 

spectrum of traditional intelligence gathering 

and analytical activities.

• Although Ukraine has effectively leveraged 

these emerging intelligence auxiliaries in its 

immediate fight against Russia, neither Ukraine 

nor the United States is working toward a longterm framework for state collaboration with 

nonstate intelligence actors.

• Without coordination, intelligence auxiliaries 

will continue to act on their own, creating a 

risk of harming friendly intelligence efforts, 

violating civil liberties, contributing to 

misinformation, duplicating work done by 

state actors, or increasing friendly 

counterintelligence risk.

• The United States has an opportunity to learn 

from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and 

develop its own framework for successful 

collaboration with intelligence auxiliaries. 

A conceptual framework could aid in 

maximizing the benefits and minimizing 

the costs of ongoing nonstate intelligence 

activity into the future.
3

lines.

12 Nonstate actors are also contributing to strategic-level targeting decisions off the 

battlefield: although NGO actors have long been consulted in the nomination of individuals or 

companies for state sanctions enforcement,

13 this engagement is stepping up under Ukraine 

sanctions programs, giving nonstate actors a prominent role in important sanctions designation 

processes. Hordes of volunteers from around the world are scouring social media and the wider 

internet for information to tally Russia’s losses, outline its shortfalls, combat its disinformation, 

and collate conflict news into easy-to-follow updates on the military situation.

14

These contributions have boosted Ukraine’s capability not only to fight in real time, but also 

to broadcast its messages and rally the world to support its aims. The ubiquity of sensors and 

recording devices has turned every individual into a potential source of information,

15 making 

some Russian propaganda that is reliant on fabrication difficult to sustain.16 Finally, public 

relations services donated by Western firms have served as a way for Ukraine to influence the 

perceptions of enemy, allied, and neutral actors 17—all without needing to expend scarce 

resources on expensive foreign consultants.

Ukraine’s War Effort Reflects the Democratization of Intelligence

These new combat dynamics in Ukraine reflect the democratization of intelligence—a 

phenomenon whereby the increased availability of data and technology is enabling nonstate 

actors to participate in the production and dissemination of intelligence.18 For most of the Cold 

War, sophisticated intelligence technology and tradecraft were the exclusive preserve of the 

world’s top-tier intelligence agencies. But during the course of the past few decades, the 

proliferation of sensor technology, open data, and powerful algorithms has given nonstate

organizations a unique ability to contribute across the continuum of intelligence operations. 

These “intelligence auxiliaries” are changing the intelligence landscape across a wide variety 

of mission sets. Ukraine is only one example: before that conflict, intelligence auxiliaries were

monitoring Chinese missile proliferation,19 tracking down the perpetrators of atrocity crimes

in Cameroon,

20 tracing the assets of malign oligarchs worldwide,21 and detecting GPS spoofing 

in Russia.22 Famously, the investigative journalism group Bellingcat has unmasked Russian 

spies with regularity through the effective use of open-source and leaked data.

23

Intelligence auxiliaries are changing the game. States and their agents are no longer the only 

actors in the production, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence. Nor are policymakers the 

only individuals toward whom intelligence production is directed. Instead, collection, 

production, and dissemination are becoming more matrixed, with the intelligence trade plied 

by individuals, nonprofits, and private corporations alongside traditional state actors. Rather 

than a set of staid bureaucracies driven by repeatable, well-known processes, the future of 

intelligence is that of a boisterous and unruly bazaar of data, tradecraft, capability, and insight. 

Navigating this emerging marketplace of new capabilities and players will require engagement 

from states that are used to controlling the intelligence production process end to end. 

Ukraine’s government deserves credit for skillfully integrating nonstate intelligence work and 
4

volunteer energy into its overall war effort, but the course of the war has revealed several 

important questions about the future of intelligence in conflict environments, and about how 

states can effectively cooperate with nonstate actors. This Research Short does not seek to 

answer these questions—just to pose some of them.

The democratization of intelligence has empowered all, but it has empowered some more 

than others. The explosion of open-source information has empowered individuals and small 

organizations in ways that are rightly celebrated. Among nonstate intelligence actors, however, 

large private sector organizations endowed with significant financial and analytical resources

have largely emerged as the main outside contributors to Ukraine’s defense. The satellites that 

tracked the Russian buildup and have provided persistent targeting and data link,

24 as well as 

the AI technology deployed to track Russian communications,25 are the products of wellfunded, large organizations—not plucky individuals. Prominent data and analytical tool 

providers, such as private satellite companies,

26 are at the frontlines, traveling to Ukraine to 

engage its leaders.27 The democratization of intelligence may mean that collection power could

be more evenly distributed than it was during the era of state exclusivity, but it is still 

disproportionately concentrated in the hands of larger firms that have invested significant 

resources in the production of data and analytical tooling.

Ukraine has brought together significant capability through intelligence auxiliaries, but 

it has not created a unified command authority. Ukraine’s government has been able to 

leverage non-Ukrainian groups independently seeking to contribute to Kiev’s defense. 28

Whether through launching international volunteer battalions,29 formal contracting,30 soliciting 

grassroots donations,31 combating cyberattacks,

32 or hacking and leaking information on the 

adversary for all and sundry to use,33 the Ukrainian state has been able to draw on a wide range 

of capabilities, and ways of working, to accomplish its mission.34

But relying on outside groups comes with drawbacks. Without coordination, the international 

and patchwork nature of Ukraine’s nonstate intelligence effort can complicate the conflict. For 

instance, commentators have noted how the performance of intelligence missions by nonuniformed, noncitizen personnel uncoordinated with the government in Ukraine complicates 

the application of the international laws of war.35 Concerns about adversarial targeting of 

nonstate auxiliary capabilities are no longer hypothetical. Already, Russia has suggested that

SpaceX’s Starlink satellites might become “legitimate targets” because of their aid to the 

Ukrainian state;

36 might other nonstate actors conducting information gathering become 

seemingly valid targets? What about nonstate individuals navigating or repairing key military 

equipment in third countries? Or individuals based abroad using only publicly available 

information and their own data science skills to contribute to Ukraine’s defense? If such actors 

are voluntarily participating in the conflict, are there any grounds for such actors to be 

legitimately targeted by lethal or nonlethal capabilities?

Variances in organizational form, capability, and activity among intelligence auxiliaries 

suggest the value of a flexible, adaptable command structure to coordinate activity.

Although some intelligence auxiliaries interface closely with the formal structures of the 
5

Ukrainian state (and its Western allies),37 many simply take their own initiative and the tools 

at their disposal to support the overall mission as they perceive it. Some groups are clearly 

intertwined with Ukrainian military commanders,

38 while others, including many hacktivists, 

are managed through unofficial social media channels.

39 No central coordinating authority 

oversees it all; instead, command and control is replaced in many cases by loose affiliation or 

opportunistic enlistment by entrepreneurial policymakers on the scene.40

Without a unifying structure or doctrine, nonstate intelligence actors can operate much more 

nimbly, but they also risk polluting the information pool with unreliable information. The very 

techniques used by OSINT researchers have been mimicked by Russia to confuse facts on the 

ground,

41 and there is a real risk that, without coordination, nonstate intelligence actors may 

inadvertently spread disinformation, rather than debunking it. This can have deadly 

consequences on the battlefield, especially in situations where there is not enough time to 

carefully weigh and assess incoming information. 

An Intelligence Partnership Holds Opportunities and Challenges

The war in Ukraine shows how an innovative strategy can bring together intelligence 

auxiliaries into an organization that is more than the sum of its parts. Such an “intelligence 

militia”—akin to the colonial militias that supported the Continental Army in our 

Revolutionary War—has become a material factor in Kiev’s fight against the Russian invasion; 

however, it has emerged ad hoc, without conscious attention to maximizing the benefits and 

attenuating some of the risks outlined above.

Today, the United States and its allies have an opportunity to develop a structured and strategic 

framework—a policy roadmap—for working effectively with nonstate intelligence auxiliaries

and preparing for the challenges that such collaboration could pose. This opportunity is closely 

tied to the longer running need to better integrate open-source data into the intelligence 

enterprise—but it goes a step further. Although some members of the U.S. Intelligence 

Community (IC) recognize the importance of acquiring and leveraging both open-source and 

commercial information,42, 43 such data are typically viewed as additional fodder for the IC’s

own analysts, not as part of a framework to align nonstate actors to U.S. policy goals. Nonstate 

actors, although important to conflict dynamics around the world, are typically left out of the 

planning picture. This leaves significant capability unaccounted for in policymakers’ planning. 

But intelligence auxiliaries are not going away, and in future conflicts, nonstate actors will 

continue to collect, analyze, and disseminate information in ways that affect operations at the 

tactical and strategic levels—and not always to the benefit of the United States. Misguided, 

enthusiastic amateurs can cause as much harm as enemy actors when they are not integrated 

into ongoing operations. Rather than ignore these groups, the United States has an opportunity 

to create structures to bring them effectively into the fight, maximizing the benefits of their

activity while minimizing the costs. (Please see the Appendix for discussion of specific 

opportunities and challenges to be considered in integrating an intelligence militia.)
6

Looking Ahead: Implications for the IC

Nonstate intelligence is here to stay. But the rise of intelligence auxiliaries does not presage 

the end of state capability, the demise of secrets, or the transformation of all intelligence into 

OSINT. Instead, it points to a future where a more effective form of public-private partnership 

between state and nonstate intelligence actors is possible. 

For the Intelligence Community, the time is now to craft a long-term strategy for what these 

public-private intelligence partnerships should look like. As a first step, the IC should map the 

nonstate analytical ecosystem—identifying the actors, data sources, funding streams, and 

incentives behind the production of intelligence outside of state frameworks. As part of this 

effort, the IC should consider foundational questions for the design of this ecosystem, including 

but not limited to the following:

• Analytical standards underlying collaboration with friendly intelligence

auxiliaries. These standards would include not only how state actors can properly

assess the credibility of information derived from nonstate sources, but also how the

IC can encourage interoperability between separate nonstate actors when doing so is in

the interest of the state (as it is, for instance, with NGO reporting on suspicious

activities to financial institutions). Analytical standard development should take

advantage of burgeoning efforts within both the U.S. and foreign nonstate analytical

communities to develop standards for OSINT collection and analysis.

• Securing the U.S. and allied ICs from the activities of adversary intelligence

auxiliaries, especially when doing so may run counter to traditional stances

around civil liberties. An increased level of collaboration with nonstate intelligence

auxiliaries is likely to increase the attack surface available to foreign adversary

organizations. Before engaging headlong with a wide variety of often inexperienced

organizations, the IC should develop simple, external-facing, and secure means of

collaboration to ensure any risk is effectively limited.

• Ensuring a robust funding ecosystem for the technologies and actors that 

empower nonstate intelligence. Intelligence auxiliaries may not use classified 

information, but this does not mean they do not need to purchase exquisite capabilities 

of their own—including satellite imaging or data analysis capabilities. A review of the 

funding ecosystem would include examining not only the role of government support 

through grants and contracts, but also the degree to which private and venture funding 

is promoting the development of the tooling and analytical capabilities needed for a 

robust nonstate analytical ecosystem.

• Curating the information environment to maximize the available pool of accurate, 

relevant, and reliable publicly available information (PAI). Nonstate intelligence 

relies on sifting through vast pools of PAI for signal; the United States and its allies 

can help create more signal by encouraging foreign jurisdictions to increase the 

availability of data sources, such as open corporate registries or trade data streams, that 
7

are core to the work of intelligence auxiliaries. At the same time, the United States 

should examine how a lack of regulation around data brokers may be unhelpfully 

contributing to the activities of adversary state and nonstate intelligence actors.

• Finally, addressing a range of legal questions surrounding the activity of 

intelligence auxiliaries. These questions would include addressing the permissibility 

of directly tasking nonstate actors and the degree to which nonstate intelligence actors 

must comply with laws restricting the IC’s activity, as well as questions surrounding 

the applicability of the law of armed conflict to intelligence auxiliaries engaged in 

battlefield support tasks. Leaving these questions open to case-by-case interpretation—

especially in armed conflict—increases the risk that intelligence auxiliaries may act 

in a way that violates important legal norms and standards to which the professional 

IC adheres.

The United States can go in many directions in its future interactions with nonstate intelligence 

auxiliaries, but it does not have the option to simply ignore them. For future conflicts where 

state and nonstate actors can both bring capability to the table, any strategy is better than 

no strategy. The U.S. IC has a unique opportunity to work on that strategy now, ahead of the 

next conflict.

Thomas Ewing has led teams using open-source information to support tactical and operational 

decisionmaking in U.S. and allied governments. He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and an 

officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve. This paper reflects his personal views and not those of any institution 

with which he is affiliated.

If you have comments, questions, or a suggestion for a Research Short topic or article, please contact 

the NIU Office of Research at Research@niu.odni.gov.
8

Appendix: The Opportunities and Challenges 

of an Intelligence Militia

Opportunities

A long-term strategy for leveraging nonstate analytical expertise ideally could introduce 

enough structure to guide and incentivize intelligence auxiliaries, while maintaining enough 

flexibility to adapt to future technological advances in open-source intelligence. Because 

intelligence auxiliaries have few clear points of contact with the government, establishing a 

network of dedicated offices responsible for outside liaison within appropriate elements of the 

IC—at the ODNI, agency, or COCOM level—could facilitate information exchange and loose 

coordination between state and nonstate actors: 

• Liaising with the nonstate analytical community. Liaison offices could serve as the 

main point of contact between the IC and intelligence auxiliaries, fielding inquiries, 

communicating national goals, understanding the needs of the analytical community, 

combating misinformation, and working to coordinate the actions of intelligence 

auxiliaries with state aims. This office’s remit would be not only national, but also 

international, reflecting the international nature of the intelligence militia. Templates 

for this type of organization already exist: the stakeholder engagement office of 

Canada’s intelligence services44 and the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act’s 

proposed Social Media Data and Threat Analysis Center45 are two prominent examples 

of government seeking to bring nonstate actors into important national security arenas.

• Orchestrating the diverse capabilities of intelligence auxiliaries. Such a liaison 

office could target specific intelligence auxiliaries who bring complementary and nonduplicative capabilities to the effort and ensure that auxiliaries and IC are working as 

a team and not at cross purposes. The office could also serve as a market maker, 

introducing intelligence auxiliaries with valuable software, data, or consulting services 

to appropriate customers in the U.S. Government and coordinating a healthy long-term 

market for intelligence services.

• Devising agile, mission-centered contractual frameworks that provide a quick “on 

ramp” for intelligence auxiliaries. The war in Ukraine has allowed corporate 

intelligence auxiliaries to demonstrate their technology in a mission-oriented 

environment, but this has happened largely spontaneously and through individual 

corporate initiative. Although the outpouring of support for Ukraine has been 

significant, a future conflict may not see as many corporate intelligence auxiliaries 

rallying to the flag—meaning that the United States and its allies would need to deploy 

other incentives, including financial, to attract participants. By providing agile 

contracting solutions, a liaison office could connect commercial analytical capabilities 

with mission requirements, helping intelligence auxiliaries field capabilities faster.

• Curating the information environment to give intelligence auxiliaries access to 

high-quality data and analytical tools. Intelligence auxiliaries make excellent use of 
9

public data and technology, but the information environment is constantly under threat 

from state restriction and misinformation. The IC has a vested interest in making sure 

that nonstate OSINT actors have access to reliable, quality information from multiple 

sources and from around the world; the United States and its allies could define an open 

data architecture that is transparent and designed to make data maximally accessible to 

intelligence auxiliaries. The United States could also lead the way in evaluating its own 

holdings for increased transparency,46 while encouraging others to adhere to worldclass standards for open data.

Challenges

Creating a long-term structure for public-private intelligence partnerships (i.e., integrating an 

intelligence militia) would certainly have its challenges—indeed, the conflict in Ukraine has 

revealed several problems that come from greater nonstate intelligence activity. But the United 

States and its allies have a window to think through challenges ahead of time and to ensure

that, the next time nonstate actors involve themselves in conflict, there is a more rigorous 

framework for assessing tradeoffs:

• Using an intelligence militia will challenge U.S. domestic intelligence law. U.S. 

domestic intelligence law was shaped, following painful experiences with spying on 

Americans and bulk collection, to include a core distinction between collecting on U.S. 

citizens and noncitizens. More generally, intelligence as practiced in democratic 

societies has evolved to include restrictions on what intelligence agencies can and 

cannot collect. The framework of an intelligence militia—if not formally bound by 

contract with the U.S. Government that includes accountability to U.S. law—risks 

creating a situation where intelligence agencies can simply get around democratic 

norms and laws by encouraging private actors to engage in collection on their behalf. 

Ensuring that intelligence auxiliaries are not used to sidestep valuable privacy and civil 

liberties protections would require a carefully balanced framework for collaboration.

• An intelligence militia poses a challenge to the international laws of war—and the 

laws of espionage. International Humanitarian Law depends on distinguishing 

between combatants and noncombatants, affording the latter protection from targeting. 

Spies, though less protected than armed combatants, are still given some protections 

by international law.47 But in a world where technology enables civilians in any part of 

the world to participate in intelligence operations on a voluntary, part-time basis, these 

distinctions can become difficult to observe.48 The United States and its allies cannot 

necessarily control how intelligence auxiliaries are treated by adversaries, but they can 

help establish explicit norms and ways of working that will at least provide guidance 

to individuals and organizations whose employees may find themselves accused of 

espionage by unfriendly regimes.

• Intelligence auxiliaries can radically change the escalation dynamics of a conflict.

Intelligence auxiliaries can cause a conflict to escalate in intensity—sometimes 
10

intentionally against the design of state actors engaged in the conflict. Intelligence 

auxiliaries may seek to shape the conflict according to their own aims, whether through 

independent targeting and strikes, information operations, or some other activity that 

affects events on the ground in ways unintended by state actors. Such efforts may cause 

the other coalition to respond in kind, prolonging the conflict and making de-escalation 

difficult, even if de-escalation is in the interests of both combating coalitions. Avoiding 

harmful escalation spirals—possibly through clear “rules of the road” with 

accountability, or even a central command authority—should be a priority of any 

framework for relations between state actors and intelligence auxiliaries.

• Relying on intelligence auxiliaries may increase the attack surface of our own 

intelligence efforts. An intelligence militia might provide more areas for adversaries 

to deploy human, cyber, or other intelligence tools to discover plans and sow discord. 

Ensuring that trusted intelligence auxiliaries have been taught—and adhere to—high 

standards of cyber and personnel hygiene could lower the risk of espionage by 

unfriendly powers.
11

Endnotes

1 Sandra Erwin, “As Russia Prepared To Invade, U.S. Opened Commercial Imagery Pipeline to Ukraine,” 

SpaceNews, April 6, 2022, https://spacenews.com/as-russia-prepared-to-invade-u-s-government-and-satelliteimagery-suppliers-teamed-up-to-help-ukraine/. 

2 Christopher Miller, Mark Scott, and Bryan Bender, “UkraineX: How Elon Musk’s Space Satellites Changed the 

War on the Ground,” Politico, June 8, 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-ukraine-starlink/.

3 Alia Shoaib, “Inside the Elite Ukrainian Drone Unit Founded by Volunteer IT Experts: 'We Are all Soldiers Now.'” 

Business Insider, April 9, 2022, https://www-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.businessinsider

.com/inside-the-elite-ukrainian-drone-unit-volunteer-it-experts-2022-4?amp.

4 Matt Burgess, “Their Photos Were Posted Online. Then They Were Bombed,” Wired, August 26, 2022, 

https://www.wired.com/story/wagner-group-osint-russia-ukraine/.

5 Amra Dorjbayar et al., “Killer Coordinates: How a Russian Missile Hit Kyiv With the Help of Online Sleuths,” 

Centre for Information Resilience, June 15, 2022, https://www.info-res.org/post/killer-coordinates-how-a-russianmissile-hit-kyiv-with-the-help-of-online-sleuths.

6 “CRDF Global Becomes Platform for Cyber Defense Assistance Collaborative (CDAC) for Ukraine, Receives 

Grant from Craig Newmark Philanthropies,” CRDF Global (press announcement), November 14, 2022,

https://www.crdfglobal.org/news/crdf-global-becomes-platform-for-cyber-defense-assistance-collaborative-cdacfor-ukraine-receives-grant-from-craig-newmark-philanthropies/;.

7 Dina Temple-Raston, “41. Rounding Up a Cyber Posse for Ukraine,” Click Here (podcast), November 15, 2022, 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/58ARqJc1kLP7PyvVyiaLn5?si=i5PmsocbQamY5kKYomNyOQ&nd=1.

8 Will Knight, “As Russia Plots Its Next Move, an AI Listens to the Chatter,” Wired, April 4, 2022, https://wwwwired-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.wired.com/story/russia-ukraine-war-ai-surveillance/amp.

9 Cory Doctorow, “About Those Kill-switched Ukrainian Tractors,” Medium, May 8, 2022, https://doctorow.medium

.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8.

10 Laura Italiano, “Ukraine is Using Facial Recognition To ID Dead Russian Soldiers and send Photos of Corpses 

Home to Their Moms: report,” Business Insider, April 15, 2022, https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-sendingphotos-of-dead-russian-soldiers-home-moms-2022-4?r=US&IR=T.

11 Mehul Srivastava, “Ukraine’s Hackers: an Ex-spook, a Starlink and ‘Owning’ Russia,” Financial Times, September 

4, 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/f4d25ba0-545f-4fad-9d91-5564b4a31d77.

12 “New Site Allows Users To Crank Call Russian Bureaucrats To Protest War in Ukraine,” Gizmodo, May 18, 2022,

https://gizmodo.com/waste-russian-time-prank-call-ukraine-war-protest-putin-1848942119.

13 Human Rights First, “NGOs Identify Human Rights Abusers, Corrupt Actors for Sanctions Under U.S. Bill,” Press 

Release, September 13, 2017, https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/press-release/ngos-identify-human-rights-abuserscorrupt-actors-sanctions-under-us-bill.

14 Ross Burley, “Disinformation & Denial: Russia’s Attempts To Discredit Open Source Evidence of Bucha,” Centre 

for Information Resilience, April 13, 2022, https://www.info-res.org/post/disinformation-denial-russia-s-attemptsto-discredit-open-source-evidence-of-bucha.

15 Billy Perrigo, “How Open Source Intelligence Became the World's Window Into the Ukraine Invasion,” Time, 

February 24, 2022, https://time.com/6150884/ukraine-russia-attack-open-source-intelligence/.

16 Amanda Seitz and Arijeta Lajka, “Amid Horror in Bucha, Russia Relies on Propaganda and Disinformation,” 

PBS News Hour, April 6, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/amid-horror-in-bucha-russia-relies-onpropaganda-and-disinformation.

17 “Ukraine’s Information War Is Winning Hearts and Minds in the West,” The Conversation, May 12, 2022, 

https://theconversation.com/ukraines-information-war-is-winning-hearts-and-minds-in-the-west-181892.

18 Thomas Ewing, “The Real Power of Intelligence ‘Auxiliaries,’” The Cipher Brief, February 21, 2022, 

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/the-real-power-of-intelligence-auxiliaries.

19 Matt Korda and Hans Kristensen, “China Is Building a Second Nuclear Missile Silo Field,” Federation of American 

Scientists, July 26, 2021, https://fas.org/blogs/security/2021/07/china-is-building-a-second-nuclear-missile-silofield/.

20 “Cameroon: Anatomy of a Killing - BBC Africa Eye documentary,” BBC News, September 23, 2018, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbnLkc6r3yc.
12

21 Tom Stocks, “10 Tips for Tracking Russian-Owned Assets,” Global Investigative Journalism Network, March 17, 

2022, https://gijn.org/2022/03/17/10-tips-for-tracking-russian-owned-assets/.

22 “Above Us Only Stars: Exposing GPS Spoofing in Russia and Syria,” Center for Advanced Defense Studies, 2019, 

https://www.c4reports.org/aboveusonlystars.

23 Shaun Walker, “Socialite Who Charmed NATO Staff in Naples Was Russian Spy, Say Investigators,” The 

Guardian, August 26, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/26/socialite-who-charmed-nato-staff-innaples-was-russian-spy-say-investigators.

24 Mariel Borowitz, “War in Ukraine Highlights Importance of Private Satellite Companies,” Astronomy, August 16, 

2022, https://astronomy.com/news/2022/08/war-in-ukraine-highlights-importance-of-private-satellite-companies.

25 Will Knight, “As Russia Plots Its Next Move, an AI Listens to the Chatter.

26 Sandra Erwin, “Maxar Eager To Launch New Satellites Amid Soaring Demand for Imagery Over Ukraine,” 

SpaceNews, April 11, 2022, https://spacenews.com/maxar-eager-to-launch-new-satellites-amid-soaring-demandfor-imagery-over-ukraine/#:~:text=3D%20mapping%20of%20Ukraine,after%20representations%20of%20the

%20damage.

27 Olafimihin Oshin, “Palantir CEO Travels to Ukraine for Zelensky Meeting,” The Hill, June 6, 2022, 

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3513256-palantir-ceo-travels-to-ukraine-for-zelensky-meeting/.

28 “Star Maker: Ukraine's Use of Private Sector Satellite Services,” Key.Aero, June 13, 2022, 

https://www.key.aero/article/star-maker-ukraines-use-private-sector-satellite-services.

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