An OSINT Arabic instructor and geopolitical risk expert joins the show to discuss what can get lost in translation when performing OSINT investigations. Plus learn how cultural knowledge can unlock key insights.
Paolo Walcher is a leading OSINT trainer and security consultant, recognized for his expertise in Arabic-language investigations, geopolitical risk, and strategic intelligence. With a background in counterterrorism and crisis management, Paolo delivers advanced OSINT training to law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies on both national and international levels.
At i-intelligence GmbH, he equips private and governmental organizations with the tools to navigate complex security environments, specializing in Arabic OSINT and Middle East-focused research. Formerly a Security Business Intelligence Analyst at BMW Group, he provided strategic insights on global threats, including the war in Ukraine, supporting corporate decision-making and conflict monitoring.
Paolo holds a B.A. in Safety and Security Management and an M.Sc. in Crisis and Security Management from Leiden University, with a specialization in the Governance of Radicalism, Extremism, and Terrorism. His work spans illicit networks, military conflict analysis, and supply chain security. As a Bellingcat volunteer, he has contributed to civilian harm verification and human rights investigations—and continues to explore the full potential of OSINT as a force for accountability and justice in the human rights space.
Fluent in English, German, and Italian, Paolo brings a cultural lens to OSINT, advocating for the ethical use of AI in intelligence gathering while emphasizing the enduring value of human-led analysis. His passion for maritime OSINT, regional dynamics, and investigative training makes him a key voice in the future of open-source intelligence.
[00:00:00] Robert Vamosi: Hi, and welcome to another episode of NeedleStack. I'm Robert Vamosi. And I'm AJ Nash. In this episode, we have a world renowned OSINT expert. Paolo Walcher is a global expert in security intelligence and an OSINT trainer specializing in Arabic, OSINT and geopolitical risk analysis. Welcome to the show. Thank you guys.
[00:00:35] Robert Vamosi: Thanks for having me. Really glad. So, you mentioned to me that your interest in terrorism began as early as your first day of school, which for you was nine 11 2001. Can you walk us through how that moment shaped your path into OSINT and eventually led you to Arabic focused intelligence work?
[00:00:56] Paolo Walcher: So, long story short I also started my first day of school one day.
[00:01:00] Paolo Walcher: That was nine 11, that specific day. And I was, yeah, going to school like every, every young 6-year-old in Germany. And one when I came back. Then after my first day of school, I wanted to tell my parents how great my school day was, but they were just hanging on the screen. And looking at what was happening on the other side of the water.
[00:01:22] Paolo Walcher: So I think back then I was wondering, why are everyone not paying attention to me and why is the world so distracted on what is happening in New York City? So back then I saw the pictures of the. Of the, of the planes crashing in there and yeah, like it was yesterday and I was six years old, so it definitely shaped my, my school time, but also me as a person because I always wondered why is that happening there?
[00:01:52] Paolo Walcher: Then I grew up also, we didn't understand that the world was changing so rapidly and, basically with nine 11, I saw the beginning of OSINT in a way because intelligence back then, the old school intelligence of the Cold War didn't make sense anymore in this new digitalized world. So while I was going to school, I was always interested in politics in Iraq, in the Middle East, and then, and then I wanted to go deeper in there. What's understanding people, politics, security. So then I studied safety and security management in the Hague in the Netherlands, where then quickly I found OSINT through Vice that were doing reporting in, the Crimee situation in 2014, but also the rise of jihadi terrorism.
[00:02:38] Paolo Walcher: Definitely confirmed my initial thought of, yeah, let's learn something about terrorism and why people do such things. So, long story short. I really used OSINT already as a little child listening to radio shows. How about the Middle East? Googling whatever. I got into my hand asking questions, and then I made my hobby basically to my profession.
[00:03:02] Paolo Walcher: So then through my bachelor's in Safety and security management, where I applied already. Also techniques to real cases were, were happening in Europe 2015 with isis, but then also with the rise of more and more online content on YouTube, on Twitter. I got really deep into it and then I thought, well, now you're a safety and security manager.
[00:03:22] Paolo Walcher: I. Now become an OSIS analyst. So then I preceded my career in Latin University where we started also from my academic side to use osis techniques that I already know. I was like, guys, I know YouTube. I know how to find these influencers. There, there were posting videos in the raca. So long story short, after my academic education now in the Netherlands.
[00:03:46] Paolo Walcher: I went then fully into the Olson field. Corona gave me the space to learn. And yeah. Now here now an Olson analyst first worked for corporate using this technique for a corporate environment and BMWI. For global analysis as well. But then I was like, well, but I wanted always to understand what terrorists do these things.
[00:04:10] Paolo Walcher: So then I ended up in iron intelligence which is an but also any intelligence related, also strategic training consultancies from Switzerland. And there I took over the course searching the Arabic web. Not because I'm really good in Arabic, I speak only a little bit. But more to, yeah, to lose.
[00:04:33] Paolo Walcher: Use this mindset, the OSINT mindset and the technology at hand to crack any nut. So once you know, any other language with a little bit of technique and methodology you will crack it
[00:04:45] Robert Vamosi: because you were part of the generation that's always online. If that helped you, because you said you'd already knew how to look things up on YouTube, you already knew how to do the social media stuff.
[00:04:56] Paolo Walcher: Yeah, definitely. I think especially our older generation is used to satellite images and and really like the closed sources that we saw in the past in the Cold War. But no, definitely growing up with all these media, I always say I'm a good, good person. Understanding both sides, the analog and the digital, because I grew up without a computer.
[00:05:19] Paolo Walcher: First, second, third class, and then the computer came in, so I know, what the classical intelligence looked like. It was also OSINT, not digitally, but looking at at newspapers around the world. In the end, the CIA did OSINT all the time. Reading, reading, reading, trying to get out what is in there.
[00:05:37] Paolo Walcher: And I always wanna say, people say, oh, OSINT is something new, new, new. I always trace it back to. Attack on Pearl Harbor, where already the foreign broadcasting service already picked up on weak signals of the Japanese. And then yeah, the first or the biggest intel intelligence failure of of that time, but also maybe the first OSINT intelligence failure because people were not really sensitized to weak signals.
[00:06:05] Paolo Walcher: And the Japanese people will talk about this online not online, but on radio.
[00:06:10] AJ Nash: No, that's a good point. It's OSINT is not a new concept. We're just more aware of it right now and, and with the technologies, you know, it's more prevalent. Right. So, I, at first I wanna point out thank you for making me feel incredibly old for telling me how young we were on nine 11.
[00:06:24] AJ Nash: I really appreciate that as an opener, Paul. Hopefully we'll edit that stuff out. But no, it's, I think it's interesting because you're pointing out there's a whole generation, right? Nine 11 was a, a, a change. Globally in so many ways. But it's interesting to hear how it impacted you as such a young person, you know, at such a young age as six, you know, six years old to, to remember it and to have it, you know, really frame your life into how do we better understand the world.
[00:06:47] AJ Nash: As, you know, as Robert pointed out, a generation growing up a hundred percent really online all the time, a very technical generation. So, you know, now as you, as you pointed out your, your path to where you are today, you're teaching this new course on Arabic OSINT. You know, what makes the Arabic language investigations uniquely challenging compared to Western centric intelligence?
[00:07:05] AJ Nash: And what are some common mistakes analysts make when they're approaching these sources? I.
[00:07:10] Paolo Walcher: I think the first point is not only, not really specific to Arabic, but I think the moment we go out of our comfort zone of Oh, we use English or German in our investigation, it becomes complex. The moment I throw you a document and it's fully in Arabic, you're gonna be scared.
[00:07:29] Paolo Walcher: You don't understand anything. No, no numbers make sense. No structure makes sense. The script direction is different different and even hold this language. As Arabic is a, is a Semitic language, so it came from the Middle East historically. Also, Hebrew is a part of that, but, so the grammar, the word structure or vowels are totally different.
[00:07:50] Paolo Walcher: So for someone like us that vowels are really important for our, our names, for our daily life, and we write them. For example, in Arabic we don't see any vowels, so you need to know them. But imagine having a word where you don't have any vowels. It's really difficult to pronounce, to even think about it.
[00:08:08] Paolo Walcher: So take the, take the vows of any word and then try to pronounce it or to read it. It's like, how should you know that this should mean a specific word? So I think generally when working in OSINT yeah, theology and the techniques should be there. The biggest challenge then is yeah, just different sign, different input language different culture, different norms, different place in the world, different people, and I think that's the, the biggest mistake that a lot of oath centers do, or in, in general in intelligence.
[00:08:39] Paolo Walcher: They forget that. What we see is just an output of humans. Language is only an output. So if I wanna find these humans, I need to reverse engineer basically, and try to think, try to speak and use the right word that they use in the specific region. So I think also generally it's a biggest the biggest bias to put the Arabic world or Arabic into one pot.
[00:09:04] Paolo Walcher: A Moroccan person doesn't understand the Lebanese and for an American. That might be, yeah. They all speak Arabic. Yeah, but there might be more to it. So the detail lies in in, in a foreign language. I am a hundred percent sure everyone can use Google Translate and throw in some words, and then use them in the, in the inquiries, for example.
[00:09:25] Paolo Walcher: But. They're the nuances matter. Which word do they use in specific countries? What people are them? Am I looking for a person who's Christian, maybe in Lebanon or a Coptic Christ, a Christ in Egypt. So all these cultural nuances matter in language because language is just a part defining human interaction.
[00:09:46] AJ Nash: That's a very good point. And when you talk about the nuance in language, right? So I think people are quick to just suggest, hey, if you know a language, you can translate all those things and you'll understand everything about it as if, as if it's all the same. Listen English the Queen's English is not the same as standard American English, which is not the same as.
[00:10:01] AJ Nash: Dialects within the us If you're in the south, for instance versus the Northeast you know, slang gets very different, right? So there's very different versions of that. I know German, you know, has similar things that, that happen, right? All these languages, there's a lot of subtleties. So I think you make a good point if you're gonna go down the, the track of doing OSINT research and you get a video, even if you're able to translate the video, you know, if, if they're talking about, you know, this is, somebody's telling you this video is this horrible thing that's happening in.
[00:10:24] AJ Nash: Syria, let's say but you're able to translate the video and go, well, hold on a second now. No, it's not this slang and this, this dialect and this, this change in inflection. That's not how they speak Arabic in Syria. That would be how they speak Arabic in, you know, Saudi Arabia, for instance, or, or maybe another country for that matter.
[00:10:39] AJ Nash: So I, I think there's a a lot to be said for that in the importance of understanding the nuance. It isn't just knowing the language, it isn't just what Google Translate can give you, which is. Helpful. It helps us understand what the words are and what the meaning is. And you know, I can understand a paragraph, for instance, but that doesn't tell you the whole story, right?
[00:10:54] AJ Nash: Language is a lot deeper than just the surface of being able to turn an alphabet into, you know, words that are understandable, right? There's a lot more depth to the languages.
[00:11:04] Paolo Walcher: And that's how I started as well. So my course is structured in five different session, and in the first session we do what I did on my first day of school.
[00:11:12] Paolo Walcher: We go back to school and we learn the letters and then we learn how to write them. And that's the moment where a lot of these people that I trained look at me like, why are you doing this with us? Because I think we need to start really in the basic and then build up from there. So then, I show them what technical technical help or tools they can use to translate and do better.
[00:11:34] Paolo Walcher: So everyone knows good translate, but for example, deeper traverse. So there's so many others. Also chat GBT directly, but I think I stay, usually I stay really build it up. So a foundation, foundation of Arabic historically, and where does the language come from. But then I go into. Okay, now we know good keywords.
[00:11:54] Paolo Walcher: How are we gonna use them in OSINT investigations? So how can we extract from topics that we have the right keywords to find the information that we need? So I'm basically mix the Arabic specific content, the nuances and into OSINT, and then form something new. And then I go also into more, into people understanding social media.
[00:12:16] Paolo Walcher: How does social media work? How what social media platform are they using? How is media distributed? So it's not about language. Language is just like the, the carrier of all this information. And lastly what you mentioned also. Yeah, of course. The culture. We have so many biases around the Arabic world, and then I show them yeah, about normal life.
[00:12:39] Paolo Walcher: How does the Middle East look like? Do they have mountains? Where are the Christians living? Where are the Sunni? Where are the Shia? But just to showing also how diverse. This entire region is from Northern Africa, from Morocco. Tell Iraq that's huge space. And what you mentioned before, I think it's really important to really grasp nuances because, for example, mis disinformation campaigns or deep fakes are really, really bad in this.
[00:13:07] Paolo Walcher: So by just picking out, picking out that this is just a normal hijab. And but the person or the video is played in Afghanistan, it might, doesn't make sense. So by even you know, looking at other things, the language, how are people dressed how a man dressed. So for example, based on the headscarf on the color and how a headscarf is worn, so what type, you can put it into specific regions.
[00:13:34] Paolo Walcher: And the same with. Is, for example, with the GCC countries? Yes. When you think about Qatar, you think about someone with a white or a red headscarf. And they all look the same people say, but if you look at the nuances, someone from Oman looks totally different from Qatar. They have still the same scarf but different technique of wrapping it.
[00:13:56] Paolo Walcher: And this is just an example. Others are. Maybe easier for geolocation. Look at what signs are people what street sites are in Dubai in comparison to Lebanon. If you know what infrastructure looks like in specific countries, in which countries are strong in infrastructure and others are weak, you can even identify based on the pavement.
[00:14:20] Paolo Walcher: You can rule out some countries, and that's just like giving you some examples to really deep. Dig deeper into the pictures that you see and ask yourself, what am I seeing? Does it make sense? And then simple Google searches can help you verify and even crack the hardest osi.
[00:14:42] Robert Vamosi: You. You may have touched upon it there at the end, but I was gonna ask if somebody doesn't have the cultural experience of being in Qatar or Dubai or any of those countries in person, how would you know to pick up on the fact that this Minette has four towers as opposed to three towers, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:15:00] Robert Vamosi: How would you gain that cultural knowledge?
[00:15:04] Paolo Walcher: So for me, I, I, I visit the Middle East to really learn and see for myself because it helps me so much to, to understand really the dynamic in our country. And this Minera example, for example, was part of an investigation I did in Syria where you have some Sunni and some Shia.
[00:15:23] Paolo Walcher: I just wanted to know what type of mosque could it be and what time? I wanted to know when it was built and try to get closer. If it's a new or old mosque. But if you think about, for example, about a mosque, what comes in my mind often is hi of fear. A UNESCO World Heritage in Istanbul, right?
[00:15:43] Paolo Walcher: It's a huge mosque. And for everyone who doesn't know the building, think about this building in Star Wars. It's also in there. It's a, it's a huge building and it has like, like pens. Four of them. So, and when, you know, the Turkey is a Sunni country and I as AFI is a Sunni mosque, you kind of remember the architecture, it's pretty plain outside blue or green roof.
[00:16:08] Paolo Walcher: So I remember three identifier I. Like pen shaped minerals, four of them, and usually one colored roof. And really no, no gold, no in cravings on the outside. It's just plain. And in comparison to Shia mosques we know them mostly in Iran, but also in Iraq. They look like Barak, you know, like Baran church in Europe, they're full of gold, full of side side tombs and usually just two mine rats.
[00:16:37] Paolo Walcher: And they are onion shaped. So they have like a little top onion sitting on the minera, and that's how you can identify it really quickly. To give you an example, in Lebanon for example, Sunni and Shia are really segregated. So, in one region you will only find Sunni and any other Shia. And depending on what mine you see in the architecture, you can quickly identify it.
[00:17:02] Paolo Walcher: You can then look at a, religious map of Lebanon and then pinpoint, okay, it must be this, this mosque must be in this area. And then that way you can always rule out. It doesn't lead you directly to the point, but I'm just saying be beyond the classical OSINT. Think about what you see and how you can connect to cultural competency in cent.
[00:17:27] Robert Vamosi: So if I hear correctly, what you're recommending is that if you're interested in becoming an Arabic OSINT investigator, that you really should put boots on the ground yourself, as well as do the OSINT research.
[00:17:40] Paolo Walcher: Of course. Often I ask my clients, have you been in the Middle East? And most of them haven't.
[00:17:45] Paolo Walcher: And some of them have worked 20, 25 years in law enforcement and intelligence, where I'm like. I think you're missing a point there because it would help them solve massively. I can't expect from anyone to go to the Middle East and see for themselves also the current situation. That makes it a little bit difficult.
[00:18:03] Paolo Walcher: But then just watch documentaries watch about Jerusalem, even historic ones, you know, learn more about the countries investigating so. Not everyone is using Olson for security, but even if you are working in a corporate organization and you have assets or something that ries the business in the country, learn about the country, learn a little bit about the language, read a news article in another foreign language, and in that way you come closer to the reality that is really unfolding.
[00:18:34] AJ Nash: That's an interesting point. So, I mean, it sounds to me like you're talking about intellectual curiosity, right? Which seems to be a, a lost form among a lot of people, right. To take the time to understand, you know, to me it, it's shocking if somebody says they've been, you know, doing business in a country for decades, but they really don't know much about the language or the culture of, of the region or the country itself.
[00:18:52] AJ Nash: That's. I don't mean to, to indict anybody on this business is business and things move quickly and I understand that. But if you're gonna be someplace for that long, you'd think at least you'd learn some of the basics, right? That that's what seems like a lack of intellectual curiosity, which is really challenging, especially when you get into, you know, intelligence and research where we look for that.
[00:19:08] AJ Nash: So, you know, it makes me think you've trained everyone from European law enforcement to corporate security teams. What are some of the key skills or mindsets that you think analysts need today to make sense of a world where realtime intelligence is? Really fragmented more than ever, probably and incredibly misleading, you know, with all the, the rise of Misti and malformation, for instance.
[00:19:27] AJ Nash: So what do you see as those key skills and mindsets that analysts should have when they're, when they're getting this training and they're getting better at this job? I.
[00:19:35] Paolo Walcher: I think curiosity and critical thinking in a, in a way. So really question everything. If you don't have never heard about something, then first I always say, go to Wikipedia, go to perplexity ai asked the AI or any information to summarize it in a way so you have an idea what you're talking about.
[00:19:54] Paolo Walcher: And then dig deeper, go to YouTube, go to other pages and even Twitter. What I often say to my attendees in law enforcement, they usually have operational way more skills than I am, but I give them another perspective that is new for them. And what you said before, often these people are older. So since, since Corona, they realized, oh my, oh my God, the world is changing so rapidly we don't understand anything.
[00:20:22] Paolo Walcher: And of a sudden since since Corona not only the interest in OSINT of senior people increased massively, but also I think the respect of younger people who know how to deal with TikTok and Snapchat and so on. But I want to come back to your question. Yeah. I always ask him, what are your skills?
[00:20:41] Paolo Walcher: What are your hobbies? So another example is I'm, I'm a ocean center. Yeah. Arabic Middle East always interests me historically, but I'm also a sailor man and I've sailed twice the Atlantic Ocean. That's why my skill and understanding of maritime OSINT. It's there, you know, I understand ships, I understand how, what the difficulties are and so on.
[00:21:04] Paolo Walcher: So don't become a subject matter expert in anything. Look first what skills you have, what interests you, and then combine it and become subject matter expert. So if you would ask me about economics in the Middle East, I would not. I, I don't know much about it, but yeah, maybe I would specialize then in something that I know something about it.
[00:21:25] Paolo Walcher: I don't know. Agriculture specifically. But that's what I mean train your skills. And I see OSINT more as a mindset of critical thinking and then acquiring tools in your tool set. And for me, it doesn't matter if law enforcement comes to me, intelligence or a big corporation, ask me, Hey. We have a problem and I come with my tool set, I'm like, yeah, maybe I can fix it.
[00:21:50] Paolo Walcher: So yeah, continue working on your, your skills and that is another language. But yeah, also Duolingo. I used to do a lingo for Arabic just to practice reading. Three minutes a day. Done.
[00:22:06] AJ Nash: So it sounds like if, if I'm hearing it all correctly, obviously, you know, that curiosity we talked about, right? And that, that need to keep learning and questioning things, which I think is great, and I think there's, there's a lot of that.
[00:22:15] AJ Nash: I think the, the lack of of critical thinking, you know, is, is a challenge, right? Our education systems in a lot of cases aren't designed for critical thinking. In fact, in some cases they're designed for the opposite because it's challenging to teachers if you have too many students that are critically thinking.
[00:22:28] AJ Nash: So I think it's interesting that you, you point out the importance of these things, but I. If I heard you correctly, the piece that might've, might've been missed by some, 'cause I, I don't catch it. The first go round, is to not try to be an expert on everything. I mean, it does feel like that's what's going on in the internet, right.
[00:22:41] AJ Nash: I, I've seen a lot of people that were experts on COVID and then they were experts on, now they're experts on tariffs and they've been expert on ai and it's amazing how much people seem to know about everything on the internet. So, you know, just one topic after the next is these people have PhDs in several topics it seems like.
[00:22:56] AJ Nash: So are you saying that maybe it's better to not try to be an expert on everything and. And try to focus in a, in a more specific area and then share, you know, with others your expertise and let others piece it together as opposed to trying to be the expert on all topics.
[00:23:09] Paolo Walcher: Yeah, I think so too. I think that's it's a fair point because yeah, they're popping up like mushrooms these days.
[00:23:16] Paolo Walcher: But just knowing something doesn't make you an expert and Googling something doesn't make you an expert neither. You really need to work and do the tedious work that takes hundreds of hours. But that's what I mean. I think we, we, I, we make a joke in our company, there is something called Ask in.
[00:23:35] Paolo Walcher: So ask someone because they will be an expert on anything. Like even just typing, just typing any name ship name, even a, a plane code into Twitter. Someone wrote about it. Someone had a tracked and someone. So then ta talk with him, get your human skills going extract the information from the expert, and then you can put your OSINT investigation part that you added to it, and then it's actually new intel.
[00:24:06] Paolo Walcher: But just like repeating and repeating and repeating without adding any extra information or knowledge is not intelligence.
[00:24:15] AJ Nash: I would say that for those who are on social media, if you're following somebody and they were an expert on a topic and then another topic and another topic and another, and, and those topics have nothing in common.
[00:24:25] AJ Nash: The same person who understands deep economic structures like tar probably isn't an expert on nuclear science and almost certainly is not an expert on medical science. Before that. It's probably something to consider when you talked about, you know, that critical thinking and that that need to question, right.
[00:24:39] AJ Nash: I think too many people in the space are pouring too much information out there, and if it's the same voice with all these topics, there's a good chance they're not an expert on all of those things. How
[00:24:47] Robert Vamosi: do you vet the information that you're looking at when you're inundated with so many sources? I a.
[00:24:54] Paolo Walcher: Of course you can. Like depends how much time you have. Yeah. But what I really quickly do is what I mentioned before, I check these cultural clues. These are so hidden and so like basic secret watermarks on original content because or. Yeah, the scream of a MUI team call if it does make sense. You know, like the times you can verify so many things.
[00:25:17] Paolo Walcher: And what I love to do is go away from the people that I see a picture or in the information, but if I have a video or a picture, I look at weather. Like I do a quick check if the weather yesterday, so I had an example of a Taliban military parade and it was unclear if it was from yesterday or the year before, or military equipment.
[00:25:40] Paolo Walcher: Is this actual or, so what I did is just check quickly where was it located? And usually they say military parade, Kabul, whatever to a specific day. And then I check the weather and the picture. And there there was blue sky, for example. But then I check quickly. There's a app that is free, can can use it on the phone even.
[00:26:01] Paolo Walcher: It's called Zoom Earth. So you can go seven days reverse with actual satellite pictures and you can do a quick review. Was the rain or was the cloud coverage? Of course you can then go deeper, go look for proper satellite pictures in the details. But it's kind of a like dirty tool that quickly shows you it's used for weather.
[00:26:22] Paolo Walcher: Analysis, but you can quickly show, does it make sense? The weather with what I'm seeing there and to fake these is so difficult And, so, so yeah, like look at these little things and then yeah, the classical osis techniques reverse reverse image search with the picture or who posted what to see who did it first.
[00:26:44] Paolo Walcher: Really try to find the primary source and then analyze it and not what an hour later a small news channel from, I don't know, Africa said about this. So really try primary sources and then look for the hidden watermarks of like, critical things that are not human related or not manipulative.
[00:27:04] Paolo Walcher: Yeah. So AJ and I have asked a lot of questions here. Is there anything that you'd like to share from your years of experience on OSINT investigations?
[00:27:14] Paolo Walcher: No, I think everyone should participate in OSINT. I think. And that's maybe something to find a up why I actually came into and why I'm such a, yeah, why I'm doing this hundreds of hours for a case that is not really.
[00:27:29] Paolo Walcher: Interest anyone out there is, I think also is the biggest tool to bring truth to people because we can verify what they're doing, what's happening in the world. So in a way, in the end, see how much information you have. I. In front of your desk. You can, you can rule the world from here basically in information.
[00:27:49] Paolo Walcher: And it's not anymore the CIA or law enforcement doing. Everyone can do it and also cannot be. Yes, I use for security and I think it's a valuable tool to protect justice when we are looking what Bellingcat is doing to allow accountability and looking at what Bellingcat is doing. These are humans like you and me.
[00:28:11] Paolo Walcher: From other backgrounds. The boss of Lingard Higgins, he was a public administrator playing video games from his laptop. 2015, he started verifying human rights violation, and that's possible. And we are 10 years in, so let's use AI and go full in and OSINT. I, I don't really understand why we're spending so much money on, on all these fancy technologies when we have.
[00:28:37] Paolo Walcher: Something already attempt.
[00:28:39] AJ Nash: That's a great point. You know, anybody can do this, right? We most anybody, at least in, in the western world with technologies, right? We all have computers and, and, and a lot of technology available to us. The access is there. For those who want to go out and, and take the time, you know, to learn this, whether it's on their own or whether it's taking training from somebody like you, Paolo.
[00:28:55] AJ Nash: So, you know, with that, I mean, this has been a really a fascinating discussion. I'm sure we could go on for hours about it, of course. But there's a lot more to be learned. So I wanna thank you for taking the time to come on NeedleStack today, Paolo, really appreciate you sharing your experience and your insights, your background and, and you know, just a fascinating pattern or a path I should say, from a 6-year-old on nine 11 to the work you do now, you know, in OSINT specifically, you know, focused in in the Middle East and, and the Arabic speaking world.
[00:29:20] AJ Nash: If, if. If anybody listening or watching, if you're really interested in the OSI model, especially that human layer that we're talking about, you can find out more about Paolo and what he's working on in our show notes. I also want to thank you all for listening and watching really appreciate you.
[00:29:33] AJ Nash: The audience is what makes this show what it is. We do this for all of you, not for ourselves. So appreciate you taking the time. If you like the show, please make sure to, you know, like us and follow us and subscribe and give us all that feedback. If you don't like the show or you think there's ways to improve it, please pass that along as well.
[00:29:47] AJ Nash: We actually do pay attention to those things. We wanna make the show better every day. If you wanna find transcripts and other episode info, you
[00:29:53] can visit authentic8.com/needlestack. That's
[00:29:54] AJ Nash: authentic and the number eight .com/needlestack . You can also check us out on Blue Sky. We're at needlestackpod there, and if you wanna subscribe, like I said, please feel free to do so.
[00:30:04] AJ Nash: So with that, until next time, I'm AJ Nash, joined by Paolo Walcher, which, whose name I've completely butchered and Robert Vamosi. And I just wanna say thank you all I. This has been another episode of
[00:30:17] NeedleStack.
