David Reese (left), chair of the OSINT Foundation Practitioner Committee; Shaio Zerba (second from left), director of the UM Center for Intelligence and Security Studies; and Chris Rasmussen (right), Tearline project manager for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, congratulate Ole Miss students Lee Holmes (second from left), Zachary Partin (fourth from left) and Landon Lunsford for produced the winning entry in this year’s NGA Tearline project. . The student team collected and analyzed data for a report titled “China’s Interests in Montenegro: Alternative Analysis Case Study – Debt Traps Revisited.” Photo submitted
OXFORD, Miss. – The OSINT Foundation awarded its first OSINT Product of the Year to a research project led by students at University of Mississippi Center for Intelligence and Security Studies.
The OSINT Foundation is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting open source intelligence and developing professionals in the intelligence community. The selected foundation UM students publish in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Tearline project“China’s Interests in Montenegro: Alternative Analysis Case Study – Debt Traps Revisited,” for an award that recognizes research that “has demonstrated exceptional value to the nation,” according to the award notification.
“It is an honor to be selected for the inaugural OSINT Product of the Year,” said Shaio Zerba, director of the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies. “I am very proud of the students and faculty who worked as a team to produce this exceptional open source intelligence article. »
For more than eight months, five Ole Miss students searched for publicly available information regarding the 2014 Montenegrin-Chinese Belt and Initiative Loan Agreement. The students found that while a default by Montenegro is unlikely, such a default could result in China gaining railways, ports and other infrastructure in the Balkan country.
“The Tearline project’s writing standards are exceptionally high,” said Chris Rasmussen, Tearline project manager for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. “This report on Montenegro was particularly difficult due to the fragmented nature of reporting on state-owned assets. It took incredible attention to detail to prove that these were government-backed assets.
THE NGA Tearline Project is an open source intelligence platform created to expand analytical reach with external groups and encourage in-depth understanding of diverse topics for the intelligence community. Researchers writing for the Tearline Project run the gamut, from undergraduates to postdoctoral researchers and think tank members, Rasmussen said.
The five students, all members of the Open Source Analytics Centera UM student-led analysis group that works to publish open source intelligence on national security issues, contacted the NGA in fall 2022 to contribute to the Tearline project.
“They wanted to be part of the project,” Rasmussen said. “The Montenegro case was an existing project…but it needed a group of qualified people to get it over the goal line. »
Sydney Lynch, an art history and classics scholar from Long Island, New York, led the Montenegro Belt Road project. She said the students never thought their efforts could win an award.
“When we worked on this project, we didn’t think our inaugural piece would be the product of the year,” Lynch said. “It wasn’t on our radar. We focused on creating this piece applicable to the intelligence world.
Students spent months identifying and analyzing open source information and commercial imagery in Montenegro to determine which state assets could be subject to seizure in the event of a breach of contract. Furthermore, the group examined the financial situation of Montenegro.
Senior accountant and China major Zach Partin, of Collierville, Tennessee, spent most of his time on the project examining financial entities in Montenegro and China.
“One of the main reasons I wanted to do it is I want to do intelligence work, and this is intelligence work,” Partin said. “It’s as close as you can get without going through an agency. That was a big attraction for me.
Lee Holmes, an international studies major and Arabic major from Tullahoma, Tennessee, joined the student research cohort last fall as an editor.
“It made me realize there was a lot more information available,” Holmes said. “Writing about Montenegro’s Belt Initiative, I realized how much we don’t know and how much we still have to learn.
“There are so many more things that affect everything that we don’t even realize – it’s like unfurling rose petals of knowledge. »
Now that Project Montenegro is complete, the university has partnered with Project Tearline again this fall to create a new intelligence report on climate change in Europe’s Benelux region, which includes Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Lynch is directing the new project.
“The team is really fantastic,” she said. “Everyone is new, but there are also a lot of underclassmen that we want to train so that when we graduate, we have someone to pass the torch to and Ole Miss is a ongoing Tearline project.”