Private Eyes: China’s Embrace of Open-Source Military Intelligence

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is using new collection, processing, and analysis technologies to exploit the massive amount of open-source information available from the internet and other sources for military intelligence purposes. A growing ecosystem of private companies, state-owned enterprises, state-run research organizations, and universities is supporting the PLA’s push to leverage open-source intelligence (OSINT) by providing research services, platforms, and data. The PLA almost certainly views OSINT as an increasingly valuable source of military intelligence that can support decision-making and necessitates the use of new collection, processing, and analysis technologies, which the PLA and China’s defense industry are actively developing.

The PLA’s use of OSINT very likely provides it an intelligence advantage, as the West’s open information environment allows the PLA to easily harvest large quantities of open-source data, whereas Western militaries must contend with China’s closed information environment. Given that China is very unlikely to open up its information environment, and that Western countries are very unlikely to close off their information environments, the PLA will very likely maintain its advantage over Western militaries in OSINT.

Chinese Views on OSINT

PLA personnel and other observers in China almost certainly consider OSINT to be an increasingly valuable form of military intelligence that requires harnessing new technologies, and acknowledge that China can draw lessons from the development of OSINT in the United States (US). Some observers believe that China should mobilize civilian organizations to support OSINT efforts, while others have highlighted the need for China to guard against foreign countries’ OSINT collection.

Targets and Applications

The PLA and China’s defense industry almost certainly take advantage of other countries’ open information environments to extract OSINT from foreign governments, militaries, universities, defense industry companies, scientific research organizations, think tanks, news media outlets, social media platforms, forums, individuals, commercial data providers, print media, radio broadcasts, satellites, and other sources. This OSINT almost certainly provides the PLA insight into foreign military capabilities, facilities, doctrine, decision-making, weapons, equipment, science and technology, exercises, training, intelligence, and deployments.

PLA entities have demonstrated interest in acquiring OSINT related to specific targets, subjects, and issues in countries like the US, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, India, and Russia. For example, specific subjects of PLA interest include the US military’s distributed ground intelligence equipment; US and German main battle tanks; armored equipment used by the US, India, and Taiwan; the operational concepts and equipment of the US Marine Corps and Taiwan Marine Corps.

The PLA very likely uses OSINT to support decision-making and better understand potential foreign adversaries in preparation for future conflicts. In addition to supporting decision-making, Chinese observers have suggested more specific uses for military OSINT as well, such as carrying out long-range maritime target tracking, enabling early warning of crises, supporting precision strikes, countering enemy propaganda, facilitating domestic science and technology innovation, and supporting training and talent development.

Private OSINT Providers

Over the past decade, private companies have almost certainly become increasingly important participants in China’s military OSINT ecosystem. This report profiles 5 private Chinese OSINT providers that serve the PLA, including providers that mainly sell platform and database products (DataExa and Knowfar), providers that primarily offer research and analysis services (Lanhai Changqing and Techxcope), and providers that specialize in remote sensing data (Kantian).

These 5 companies and their respective corporate networks do not constitute the entirety of China’s military OSINT ecosystem (which also includes state-owned enterprises, state-run research institutes, and universities) but they do offer examples of the growing role of private companies in this space.

Mitigations

The PLA and Chinese defense contractors will almost certainly continue developing and applying collection, processing, and analysis technologies to facilitate effective OSINT.

Governments, militaries, research organizations, companies, news media organizations, social media platforms, and individuals should be aware that China’s military and defense industry are using new technologies to collect, process, and analyze massive amounts of their publicly-available data for intelligence purposes, and should consider taking steps to mitigate these intelligence collection efforts. Commercial data providers should also be aware that China’s military and defense industry could be purchasing their data for intelligence purposes, and should consider carrying out due diligence when selling their data to entities in China.

To read the entire analysis with endnotes, as well as receive more information about the author, Zoe Haver, click here to download the report as a PDF.

To read the entire analysis with endnotes, as well as receive more information about the author, Zoe Haver, click here to download the report as a PDF.

Note: This report summary was first published on June 1, 2023 and has been updated on October 30, 2024. The original analysis and findings remain unchanged.