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Spies, Medical Lies, and Algorithmic Highs

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Light at the end of the tunnel or living in the shadows? (user20119892, FreePik)

Best Thing I Read This Week:

In the latest edition of Eric O’Neill’s Spies, Lies & Cybercrime newsletter, he tells “A Tale of Two Spies,” a conversation he had with Robert Hanssen about Aldrich Ames.

Reflecting upon this conversation, following the death of Aldrich Ames earlier this month, O’Neill discusses how he asked Hanssen how he felt about Ames during an afternoon stroll outside the confines of FBIHQ. Given Hanssen’s own activities and expertise in Russian espionage, his answer is striking and exposes obvious vulnerabilities in himself. In the end, the damage done by both spies is still felt by the US intelligence community, and the lessons learned are still shared by instructors, ops officers, and insider threat experts.

So, while this isn’t fundamentally OSINT-related, it is a spy story worth reading for the insider threat angle. Insider threat isn’t limited to government or intelligence agencies; it can happen to any organization. If you’ve got something that an adversary finds valuable, they will try to exploit your weakest link to gain every advantage.

Recommended Reading:

• Indicator Media recently identified more than two dozen social media accounts featuring synthetic doctors and other medical professionals and published its findings. Of all the mis- and disinformation on social media, this could be the most dangerous when people follow the advice of fake accounts.

• While much focus has been on Iran cutting Internet access during their massive protests, a similar Internet outage occurred in Uganda during its elections earlier this month. Check out this story from Unwanted Witness about how this outage “weakened electoral credibility, constrained civic participation, and exposed activists, journalists, and voters to grave risks.”

• Military publication War on the Rocks takes a look at ‘algorithmic emotion’ and how social media like TikTok exploits teenagers and young adults not only to guide their searches and drive the news cycle but also to ratchet up their emotions for clicks, likes, and ultimately action. What does this mean for the proliferation of propaganda and mis- or disinformation?

• The Global Network on Extremism & Technology (GNET) recently published an article on the expansion of “Agentic Smurfing,” a sophisticated form of financial crime where autonomous AI agents are used to conduct micro-laundering at scale, bypassing traditional Anti-Money Laundering (AML) detection systems. It combines AI-driven automation with the classic money laundering technique of breaking down large, illegal sums into smaller, untraceable amounts, or smurfs, to evade detection. This article looks at the rise of Agentic Smurfing and how terrorists’ use of these methods is far outpacing traditional AML detection. (h/t Jessica Davis of Insight Threat Intelligence)

• If you’re a parent or if there is a child in your life whom you care about, I implore you to read this article by Secrets of Privacy on how scammers conned a young man into sextortion that ended in his suicide. Known as ‘pig butchering,’ this is a global scam targeting victims of all ages, genders, and ethnicities. But there are ways you can protect yourself and those you love.

• Use of AI in OSINT or other investigations can be fraught with peril if those who permit its use do not share a single point of leadership, source authority, or truth. Given the ambiguous nature of AI results, and its often people-pleasing nature, what happens when investigators receive conflicting answers to questions? How quickly one’s investigation can go awry due to conflicting information or differing interpretations of the data.

Selected Training, Guides, and Resources:

• OSINTifyCon is coming up next week, 5 Feb. This global virtual conference is a high-level gathering of global OSINT experts and professionals from government agencies, private enterprises, law enforcement, and academia. The main conference will take place on February 5, 2026, while a series of OSINT training courses will run from February 6 to 8. Both the conference and the training are fully virtual and global, with live access via Zoom and on-demand recordings available to all registered attendees. Check out the website for registration information and the schedule.

• From our friends at Eurovision News Spotlight comes another exciting guide, “Mastering automated fact-checking: APIs and ClaimReview for investigative journalists,” which details how to automate fact-checking using Google APIs, ClaimReview, and MediaReview schema to accelerate digital investigations and OSINT workflows.

• Eurovision News Spotlight also released their Spotlight Review #15, focused on “Deepfake Facebook ads and the industrialised scamming of Europe.” The review also includes how to monitor and verify events in Iran, with case studies and examples. Don’t miss their next Spotlight Review on 26 Feb.