WASHINGTON—A group of former U.S. national security officials has formed a professional association to promote the tradecraft of open-source intelligence, the analysis of publicly available data that has helped Western powers understand and track Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The creation of the Open Source Intelligence Foundation, which was done in consultation with the nation’s spy agencies but isn’t formally associated with them, seeks to raise the prominence of a field of intelligence-gathering long viewed as less vital to national security priorities than traditional forms of espionage.
