OSINT Assessment Report

This project involves your research and analysis regarding one (1) of three international events of significant notoriety where there are disagreements, or seemingly so, between the POTUS and the U.S. Intelligence Community. You are to produce an OSINT assessment report.

For this project/report you are a senior OSINT analyst in a foreign Open Source Enterprise. You’ve been ordered to produce an OSINT report and to provide a formal assessment on one of the topics above. Carefully follow the format below.

Please review the attached information literacy tools to help with researching and writing this project.

Select ONE (1) that you would like to explore in more detail.

• You are the Director of OSINT for country X–congratulations. The General Secretary has asked for a thorough analysis of the Senate Report #5: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf  Before he determines the resources necessary to influence the next American election, he wants to understand the key findings and vulnerabilities exhibited during the 2016 election. Compare and contrast that with election interference in the 2020 election: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ICA-declass-16MAR21.pdf.  What were the vulnerabilities of the American campaigns then and what actions has America taken to mitigate those vulnerabilities since? After providing the key findings, describe, explain, and analyze changes to social media manipulation, network hacking, and campaign interactions with adversarial foreign entities/countries. You may focus on one of these three categories (social media, hacking, or interactions) in order to provide deeper analysis if you prefer.

• COVID-19 Pandemic. What are the origins of the pandemic? Is there evidence that it was deliberately produced and sent by China? How well did the Trump Administration respond to it? Compare and contrast the situation in America with a country that did extremely well in its response. Why did it do so much better than the United States? How are the two countries doing now?

• Voting. What is all the talk about voting issues in America? Can elections be “rigged”. Is there evidence of wide spread voter fraud? Do mail in ballots provide a more secure or less secure manner to vote? Does one way of voting provide an advantage to a particular party and why?

For question 1, organize the project as you see fit. This is the format for questions 2 and 3. For your paper please use Centered, Boldface, Headline-style Capitalization for each of the 5 sections.

• Introduction with explicit thesis statement.
• Background on issue with short summary.
• IC viewpoint.
• Facts and evidence available in the OSINT realm. Go beyond government reports.
• Conclusion. Summarize. Restate thesis.

Citation and Reference Style

Students will follow the Chicago Style as the sole citation and reference style used in written work submitted as part of coursework to the course. The Author-Date method is recommended. A quick guide may be found at: The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017 available online at: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html The Author-Date system is recommended. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/10/

All written submissions should be submitted in Times New Roman 12pt font with 1″ margins, typewritten in double-spaced format. College-level work is expected to be free of grammar, usage, and style errors.