The OSINT training programme has an extensive lesson on requirement analysis and problem deconstruction. That lesson is very applicable to formulating prompts for AI search bots. Combine those techniques with a search strategy called Successive Fractions, and I think you are pretty good on your way. How to develop a prompt the OSINTians way Since […]
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Open Source Intelligence Overview
Blush. The video is a TEDx talk I did for TEDxTwenteU in 2025 about open source intelligence that designed and managed since 1990 for the Dutch Defence Intelligence Service for about 23 years. May be have a look? Let me know your thoughts or questions. More on OSINT training: https://www.opensourceintelligence.biz […]
CIA World Fact Book postponed
The World Factbook (WFB) was a popular reference tool for country studies. First launched in 1962 as a printed, classified reference manual, it described in numbers and short texts, the economies, military, geography, agriculture, industries, society, government, people, memberships, energy, health and much more of all the countries in the world, as well as areas […]
The 3rd prompt principle
In the meantime, AI agents behaviour is remarkbly similar. I use ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini hoping that the answers from one will augment the answers from the others. Unfortunately, in my personal experience, that is not the case. Not only the answers are often identical, even the syntax grammar and writing style are identical […]
The 2nd Prompt Principle
AI chatbots and LLM’s are an amazingly impressive development that will have a great impact on OSINT and intelligence analysis. Many of you use chatbots may be even on a daily basis for a variety of tasks and assignments, from simple ones to more complex things. And results can be surprising. That is, surprisingly good […]
Intelligence analysis training programme
Proud to announce our first OSINT Intelligence Analysis training programme! Four days of hard work, starting with the fundamentals of OSINT followed by two full days of the best intelligence analysis techniques to make sense of a complex and confusing world. Conducted by Arno Reuser for the OSINT part, and Marc van Oudheusden for the […]
On the difference between OSINT, OSINF, Information, Intelligence
…and how it all gets together Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is a collaborative, integrated research/production METHODOLOGY to CREATE an actionable intelligence product (called OSINT report) resulting from analysis of a representative selection of open source information (OSINF) in order to meet some intelligence requirement that is used to take decisions and start some change. Open […]
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Cyberspecialists are doing it wrong.
Many cyber security firms focus on just two main items. The first is tools, technical stuff and software solutions, the other is rigidly ticking off checklists based on international standards and norms of which there are so many. Pretty easy to do and it has led to many cyber companies who may be classified as […]
Vague questions in OSINT … and what to do
So I ask OSINT students to solve a modest research assignment any way they see fit. They all listen carefully to me, then turn around to the computer screens and frantically start typing. After a few minutes I call them back to the central table to ask them what exactly they are doing, what is […]
Google secret date search
Google has a few ways of limiting results by date. It used to be just using daterange: which required a Julian date. That has been replaced by before: and after: search operators. These can be used with a more readable data format such as: “border conflict” after:1995-05-02 before:1995-05-0 To limit results to just that time […]