What OSINT struggles with
- Indoor events. Most decisions happen in rooms; rooms are invisible to satellite imagery.
- Casualty counts. OSINT can establish that a strike happened, sometimes; it cannot count the dead.
- Intent. A strike on a hospital and a strike on a target near a hospital look the same from orbit.
- Real-time analysis. Strong OSINT takes hours to days. Headlines are written in minutes.
- Source bias. OSINT relies on what is uploaded. What is uploaded is biased toward the parties best at uploading.
Common misuses
- Treating "OSINT-verified" as "OSINT-said-so". The label is not magic.
- Reading anonymous OSINT accounts the same as named investigators with track records.
- Mistaking technical confidence (we know where this video was filmed) for political confidence (we know who is responsible for what was filmed).
- Treating the absence of OSINT confirmation as proof of absence.