Shadows, metadata, satellite pictures and propaganda photos: the methods and tools, the cases they cracked, and a reminder of how it goes wrong.
If you are anything like me, you suffer a death of a thousand cuts when you see something on GoogleEarth and want to know how tall it is. For instance, you can measure the diameters of Iran’s heavy water exchange…
One of the easiest and most useful methods for an open source analyst is to extract metadata from imagery. Metadata is data that is often included with an image, such as the time it was taken, the type of camera…
A little how-to guide to measure the height of any most structures on Google Earth. As you click through the Twittersphere or even click through TV channels (remember those?), you may hear claims like “North Korea is building a scary…
CNS made some beautiful 3D models of Iran’s IR-1, IR-2M, and IR-4 centrifuges for the NTI website. These weren’t easy to make. Fortunately, we have some smart, innovative, hardworking students. Bo Kim’s just finished her first year as a Nonproliferation…
For a few years now, we here at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and our benevolent overlords at the Nuclear Threat Initiative have been using 3D modeling as a way to create flashy visuals to engage the public.…
How does Jeffrey find time to podcast? He has super talented staff to do the real work! Jeffrey talks with Melissa Hanham and Catherine Dill, research associates at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, about their latest work modeling North Korean…
Or, geolocating Kim Jong Un by his (somewhat questionable) fashion choices. A joint post with Dave Schmerler. Surely, you remember this image, notable because it shows a mock-up of a compact nuclear warhead and Kim Jong Un in a ridiculous…
Much to my dismay, I find that I’m still catching up on reading from the summer. In August, Hui Zhang published a new report on China’s uranium enrichment capacity, and he makes a wonderful identification of a new civilian centrifuge…
Dave Schmerler, Michael Duitsman, and I were gathered around my computer, admiring satellite images we found of an Indian missile on a launch pad from May 2017. I pointed to some cloudy streaks on the screen and joked, “I wonder…
What open source information is out there about the MH17 shootdown? Do the rebels have the Buk missile system that reportedly downed the aircraft? How has open source analysis helped analysts fact check the Kremlin’s claims about the shooting down…
A joint post by Catherine Dill, Jeffrey Lewis, Melissa Hanham and David Schmerler Two years ago, on 17 July 2014, someone shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight Number 17 (MH17) over an area of Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists, killing all…
After the Iranian ballistic missile raid on U.S. forces in Iraq, the IRGC appears to have accidentally shot down a Ukrianian airliner flying out of Tehran. The Iranian government took about 3 days to admit that it was shot down,…
We love open source. We talk about it all of the time. But it went wrong – like really wrong – in two different instances in recent weeks. Today, Aaron and Jeffrey talk about the dark side of open source…
