From open source to everything as a source: How militaries can use and protect themselves from information everywhere

To better reorganize with today’s digital world in mind, modern militaries should consider several actions, including:

• Achieving better integration across services, with global allies, and in conjunction with commercial partners to leverage more sources of information without rendering duplicative information-gathering processes
• Developing requisite tools that servicemembers synchronize and that help make sense of more sources of information than ever before
• Adjusting cultural norms for servicemembers to appreciate the importance of everything as a source of information

To begin this journey toward transformation, modern militaries should first grasp the underlying trend drivers at play in an information environment fraught with increasing complexity and speed.

Factors driving change in military use of information include the following:

• The modern world is increasingly digital, creating more and more data.
• The demand within militaries to use more data is growing, which requires more digital tools.
• As militaries acquire more digital capabilities to leverage more data, they are subsequently producing more data, exposing new vulnerabilities.

A rapidly changing information landscape

Whether more data spurs decisive operational advantages or compounding problems depends on how a military organizes around the factors driving changes mentioned above. Core to this calculus is maximizing the use of available information while minimizing the potential for adversaries to exploit any information produced by the military.

With more data comes more responsibility

As established earlier, the quantity of data available to modern militaries is experiencing exponential growth. A single US Air Force unmanned aerial vehicle, for instance, is capable of generating 70 terabytes of data within a span of 14 hours.² This is approximately seven times larger than the data output of the Hubble Space Telescope over the course of a year.³ Looking ahead, the next generation of wide-area motion imagery sensors is projected to have the capability of collecting 2.2 petabytes of data each day,⁴ which is more data than if someone recorded high-resolution video 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for nearly seven years.⁵ Militaries recognize the value of leveraging an abundance of data, whether to help solve complex problems or to help enable more informed decision-making. Despite the abundance of such data, the ability to effectively and efficiently leverage it is a taxing matter for a large organization (such as a military).

As more data permeates throughout more nodes of modern militaries, it becomes increasingly important that each node can make sense of it at their discretion. As the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies observed in June 2022, “The increasing volume, velocity and variety of data flows is both a challenge and an opportunity depending on the supporting infrastructure available to filter the ‘signal from the noise’ – or equally, the information from the data.”⁶ From collection and gathering of raw information to the subsequent vetting and due diligence to weed out mis- and disinformation, and, finally, the dissemination of actionable insights and intelligence analysis, modern militaries must be equipped and organized to take advantage of a digital world offering more information than ever before. While such efforts are likely familiar to militaries, today’s digital world can prompt them to conduct these activities in new ways.

Being equipped and organized speaks to both the tools that allow the military to quickly analyze lots of data and the alignment of processes and organizational structures to ensure information can swiftly make its way to the people or groups that need to leverage it. New information sources, like those originating from new industry processes or commercial services, likely require new methods to collect, analyze, verify, and disseminate information compared to familiar sources, like those typically left to intelligence organizations. The tools and processes for managing new data, whether depot or maintenance data or publicly available information found online, will also likely vary. While new ways of leveraging more information are necessary, they shouldn’t be leveraged in isolation, where traditional intelligence and new sources of information are siloed by technology or process.

However, the proliferation of ubiquitous data, whereby everything is a source, can be a bit of a double-edged sword for modern militaries. When nearly everything can be a meaningful source of valuable information, it can complicate, or altogether bypass, a military’s familiar control processes and protocols for safeguarding and managing how information is shared or acted on within the military. Currently, militaries can be challenged to respond, let alone detect, how an individual (or individuals) might stitch together trends from disparate data sources to uncover plans and intentions that can ultimately jeopardize military operations.

As one national security periodical observed in October 2022, “The broad array of unclassified tools now allows anyone to pore over satellite imagery, monitor tank convoys, listen to troops chatting over unsecured communication devices, watch ship movements, and determine the location of Russian oligarch-owned superyachts.”⁷ Consider the following: There are free apps available to download that have pinpointed locations of military reconnaissance aircraft.⁸ Social media posts have exposed both troop location in combat zones and classified weapon systems.^9, Similarly, one fitness app worn by servicemembers accidentally exposed sensitive military sites.¹⁰ Today’s servicemembers (and equipment) are more connected than ever before, which can inadvertently create new military vulnerabilities.

Beyond exposing what may be sensitive military information, the manipulation of publicly available data to create both misinformation and disinformation intended to confuse or disrupt military operations has become commonplace. While more servicemembers can access more publicly available information than was possible just a decade ago, a lot of it is unverified and potentially from nefarious sources. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia manipulated a media broadcast, supposedly from the Ukrainian President urging Ukrainian citizens to stop fighting.¹¹ While this message was quickly proven false and subsequently removed from media channels, it demonstrated the speed (and impact) that publicly available data could have on military operations in the digital battlespace.

Though the importance of ubiquitous publicly available data is not lost on modern militaries, existing doctrine and policies offer few guidelines or clear measures of effectiveness. Part of this gap is due to the very nature of the information environment, where change is a constant. Consequently, large institutions such as modern militaries can struggle to adequately change at the same pace.

Meeting growing demand for information

As militaries address the need to leverage more information while limiting the consequences of the information it produces, technology and partnerships have played an important role in affecting how information is collected, analyzed, and disseminated.

Often it is partners, whether from an industry or other government organizations, who own new sources of valuable information or the tools to use information better. Commercial remote sensing is one common example. Ukraine has used commercial satellite imagery to inform tactical and operational plans as it defends its country from Russia’s invasion.¹² Much larger militaries are also leveraging commercial partners for more Earth imagery. In 2022, the US National Reconnaissance Office, which often supplies the US military with Earth imagery, announced its largest-ever commercial imagery contract award to three commercial providers.¹³ Of course, commercial Earth imagery won’t make military remote-sensing satellites obsolete. Both sources of Earth imagery could play equally important roles.

Partnerships can also be used to help make sense of information. In 2022, the US military’s Defense Innovation Unit partnered with a New York City–based enterprise AI software provider to create an AI-driven solution that collects and processes bulk data to enable the US military to “detect, track, map, and visualize adversarial actions in technology procurement and foreign investment at scale and in real-time.”¹⁴ This, among many private-public partnerships, has encouraged modern militaries to exploit more available information. More than a nice to have, autonomous systems are a requirement for making sense of increasingly large and diverse volumes of information. The importance of automation and AI has made it a key focus for militaries around the world.¹⁵ Partnership can be essential for military adoption of AI because much of the innovation driving AI development is occurring in the private sector.¹⁶ The same is true for other technologies, like quantum computing, that will be as or more disruptive to the information landscape.

Militaries around the world have efforts underway to adopt new tools. For example, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has invested in efforts to allow the British military to better treat data as a strategic asset.¹⁷ But not all tools that militaries are developing to leverage information better require large or elaborate efforts. The Ukrainian government added a chatbot to an existing app initially designed to help Ukrainians connect to public services to allow citizens to use the app to report on Russian troop movements.¹⁸

Beyond specific tools, military policies related to better use of information tend to focus on the technical side. For instance, the US Army’s Data Plan emphasizes technology needs and the way the organization will need to adjust to accommodate shared technology required to make it a “data-centric organization.”¹⁹ The Australian Department of Defence’s (DOD’s) Defence Data Strategy 2021–2023 is similar to the US Army’s, in that much of the changes called for in the strategy have technology at their foundation, whether it’s rating the quality of data, visualization of information, or automating relevant workflows.²⁰ Both strategies acknowledge the importance of partnerships.

Although tools and partnerships are important for bringing about necessary change, they alone cannot fully harness the potential benefits of the information-rich landscape of today. Military organizations should consider implementing additional organizational changes that go beyond simply overlaying modern technology solutions onto existing organizational designs.

Militaries should have more than tools and partnerships

While technology is important, it’s only one part of the solution. Equally important is how the military structures itself to incorporate information usage. This can sometimes be more significant than any individual piece of technology or partner. For example, despite research showing the UK MoD has strong open-source capabilities, many of the capabilities tend to be siloed within the defense and intelligence organizations, limiting their impact.²¹ This is, in part, because it tends to be easier for groups within a military to adopt the technology tools or external partnership they find useful, but much harder to change broader organizational processes that would allow these tools or partnerships to fit into a shared architecture. Ultimately, when solutions are adopted in a siloed system, their value also tends to be siloed.

Additionally, accessing new sources of information can conflict with old ways of operating. For instance, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when US Army soldiers were tasked with collecting online content to combat Russian disinformation and help inform on Russian activities, old processes required them to use traditional intelligence channels for information that was freely available online.²² However, these old processes, which required separating classified and unclassified information on different systems, meant the team couldn’t access publicly available information—that they could easily access on their personal cellphones—on their army computers. Similar problems hindered their efforts with vetting and sharing information too.

Similar issues exist between services, too. Often, different military branches within the same military can have different data languages, formats, and interpretations, among other service-specific data practices. This can make sharing data between services difficult. Sharing information more effectively between services or organizations within the same military often not only requires technology solutions but also improving trust—trust to use what may be less familiar.

Undoubtedly, there are good reasons why the militaries leverage older processes for even new information. Publicly available information accessed via social media or other websites can come with cyber security risks, making it important to verify publicly available information before placing it on military servers or devices. Verification is also necessary to ensure the information is accurate. Herein lies the problem: Militaries need to be able to quickly leverage information of various kinds while mitigating the risks of doing so, and old processes make that difficult, if not impossible, even with new technologies.

Instead of trying to fit new sources of information into existing processes, processes should change to capture the value of the additional information. According to a North Atlantic Treaty Organization study, when new technologies meet older, inflexible processes, their value is degraded.²³ Conversely, when military processes are more flexible, it becomes easier to take advantage of new sources and higher volumes of information because tools and partnerships are more easily integrated across the organizations.

Culture is crucial when it comes to making process changes. In military circles, one might hear the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” which highlights the fact that a weak culture can undermine even strong strategies. Culture has the same power over process change as well. If a military culture struggles to appreciate the nuances of today’s digital world, there will likely be a reluctance to change the processes it uses to leverage information. When that happens, the tendency is often to layer new technology over old ways of doing things.

One of the biggest challenges in changing military culture is the rapid pace at which new sources of information, tools, and partners are changing. The speed at which today’s information environment evolves can be challenging for militaries to take stock of.²⁴ This can make it difficult to trust new sources of information or new tools. When trust is weak, it can be easier for leaders to revert to their experience or what is familiar, and yet, those things alone may not allow for the best decision-making. Indeed, good decisions come when both analytics and personal experience or judgment are integrated.

Changing culture can be difficult, but by setting clear roles and responsibilities, performance goals, and metrics for measuring, militaries can change their culture. Conversely, without incentives to change and metrics to understand performance, culture is less likely to change. If culture fails to change, it’s often more difficult to change processes.

Short of process and culture change, technology and partnerships can only add so much value. To navigate today’s digital world, militaries should ensure technology and partnerships are matched with suitable organizational processes and culture.

Moving forward

Militaries are developing data strategies, partnerships, and technologies to use more information better and protect themselves from the data they produce. While these are helpful steps, more can be done to provide greater cohesive organizational change.

Drawing clearer connections and dependencies between technology, partners, process, and culture is at the heart of necessary organizational change. Each is important because they are complementary. New technology layered over old processes can negate the value of the technology, while old culture can stymie attempts to change processes or develop new partnerships. While militaries have made some of these connections, the dependencies between each aren’t always as clear or concrete.

To effectively utilize data, policies should consider several steps, including:

Clearly outlining dependencies and incentivizing efforts to better leverage technology, partners, processes, and culture equally

This can ensure that data is utilized to its fullest potential. Formalizing the connections and dependencies of each through procurement or funding requirements can ensure each area of organizational change is advanced in tandem. For instance, for a service to request funding for a new data management system, the funding authority could ask for information detailing related organizational and culture change efforts and how the technology might impact partners.

Developing trust both within and between militaries and nongovernmental partners

Information has always been a sensitive commodity for militaries, and the fact that there is more of it and more of it is publicly available doesn’t change that. What has changed is the number of relationships necessary to use information effectively. This can create the need to develop trust among the ecosystem of partners that together create a more effective way of leveraging information while also reducing the risk. Creating trust takes practice. Through wargames, joint technology development programs, and shared servicemember education, militaries can improve trust between partners and new sources of information.

Ensuring a military can adjust its plans at a pace commensurate with the information landscape

Setting goals, establishing metrics to measure progress, and making adjustments to better use information should not be a fixed process or occur infrequently. Regularly altering course can be tricky when militaries operate on multiyear planning cycles, but at the rate software and digital technologies change, failing to make adjustments and keep pace can render even costly efforts out of date quickly. Developing acquisition approaches that reflect a digital age (see the companion piece on military procurement in a digital age) can help militaries keep pace. And so can routine assessments of culture and organizational change to help provide a fresh perspective and offer new insights into the latest practices or any shortcomings or risks from current efforts.

The increase in both the availability and use of data and the need to gather more information is expected to continue in the coming years. This could significantly impact the world, including how militaries prepare for evolving defense challenges. To be better equipped to face these challenges, militaries need to adapt and evolve.