135. ANALYSIS: James Acuna on intelligence drones, open source intelligence, the information domain and the war in Ukraine
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Welcome to the War in Ukraine update from Kyiv podcast. I'm Jessica Gnauer, a senior lecturer in international relations at Flinders University in Australia. And I'm talking today with James Akuna. James is founder of Frontier Vectors Security and Business Consultancy based in Tallinn, Estonia.

which operates across the entire Eastern European region, including in Ukraine. And I'll link to Frontier Vectors in the show notes. Prior to this, James worked for over 27 years in both defence and security in the United States, including 20 years with the Directorate of Operations at the CIA and eight years supporting the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. So thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today, James.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. So I know that you've been working in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion, advising regarding use of drones and complex unmanned aerial systems. Now, I know there might be aspects of that work that you can't talk about because it involves sensitive intelligence information, but to the extent that you can talk about it, what work have you been involved in in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion? Well,

Well, a slight correction, because I worked for the government until the summer of last year, I did not begin my private ventures into Ukraine until August of 2022. But based on my experience within the, we'll just call it the former Soviet space, Eurasia area of the world, that I had a proclivity to wanting to support Ukraine.

And when people ask me this question, I always like to answer it this way, too. You're never really sure when you get out of an intelligence service in the roles that I participated in, what exactly your attributable skill set will be on the outside. And it became very obvious very quickly that sometimes

Ukraine in general could use my support. And so when I started this venture, it was more to provide factual information about the real events that were going on in Ukraine and using my sort of perspective on that area to assist, whether it's people that want to invest, people that want to donate for volunteer activities.

and just sort of be this bridge builder, matchmaker, I guess you want to call it, between Western Europe, United States, and Ukraine. And it became this thing that you were sort of referring to about UAS or drones and things like that, because that's one of the most visible things. But since August of last year, I think I've talked to companies, angel investors, private equity, everything from building a milk factory to

to reopening the ports, to doing a Formula One race in Ukraine. And so the things that are sticking right now, the things that are most important have to do with the ongoing military operation, right? And so one of the most visible aspects of that is what you see every day on Telegram or Twitter or YouTube, which is the drone warfare. And so a majority of the things that I do are geared towards

you know understanding it what's ground truth what's really going on in that sector and so you're finding that there are a large number of private investors who want to invest into ukraine at this time honestly no what what i do see is i see people that say they want to invest but

If you look at a private equity or you look at a family office or venture capital, these are money managers that have limited partners.

when they do their risk calculus, it just seems like at the end of the day, they choose not to. I guess when there's a conclusion to this sort of hot phase of the military conflict, then we might see that change. Right. And, you know, there's this old adage when I used to work for the military many years ago, and they always said, come see me before you need me, you know, which means make relationships.

go out there. And so the first time I'm seeing you is not some sort of crisis that you need solved, you know, this day. And I would say the same thing about Ukraine. Ukrainian people, the government, what they are doing with this existential threat to their own existence is something that you need to visit these people. You need to see them to go understand what the situation on the ground is before

before the conclusion of this hot war because what's going to happen is you're going to show up and expect that you're going to conduct business in Ukraine. They don't know who you are. And so I would highly encourage people to get to Ukraine or at least establish dialogue before the conclusion of this hot war. Yeah.

So, I mean, I'm curious, you mentioned, you know, that when you were working for the CIA, you were working in this kind of former Soviet space. How has that shaped how you've observed the

What's happening right now? You know, Russia's full scale invasion of a former Soviet state in 2022 and 2023. So many years ago, I learned Russian language and I looked at learning the Russian language like math.

There's equations and you put it together and then you can form sentences. One of my Russian teachers many years ago said, you'll never really be able to speak the Russian language unless you understand the culture of the Russian people.

She was right in the end. And it is that understanding and it's that opportunity that was afforded to me by working for the government that I got this chance to fully immerse myself in various former Soviet state cultures. And so not all the optics matter.

are the same. Many, many people consider the collapse of the Soviet Union, as Putin likes to say, is a travesty, right? For other countries, maybe Central Asian countries, it's a travesty because there

During Soviet times, they were working as a pediatrician or doctor or an engineer. And post-Soviet times, they were working as a taxi driver or a dishwasher. And so their perspective is completely different than, say, Eastern European countries. And so it is that closeness.

and being able to look at it from different facets that helps you kind of understand what are the challenges, what is the objective that Russia is sort of going for in Ukraine. And I would say to anybody listening, just look at the history books and then you'll completely understand what Russia is trying to do in Ukraine because they've not been silent about it for 20 plus years. You can read what Putin said in the book

1999 and 2000, in terms of his intentions, what he felt about NATO expansion, whether that was in 97 or in 04, and then sort of the tea leaves were there. Now, what's open for debate is this massive military scale versus what you've historically seen Russia do, these regional conflicts, the Transnistries of the world or South Ossetia or Khazia.

Or Chechnya. So could you talk a bit to how the use of intelligence drones, you know, there's been a lot of focus on that as we're kind of watching this full-scale invasion and how both sides have been operating within that context. So can you talk a bit to how the use of intelligence drones has played a part in

in this war since Russia's full-scale invasion? If you're fighting a war, you need tactical intelligence, right? You need to understand what's going on on the battlefield. And if you look historically at what systems were available for you to derive or collect this intelligence, sometimes you relied on national assets, things that country owned, let's say satellites, fixed-wing aircrafts,

and other technologies that allowed you to get your C4ISR, right? Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, your ability to see what's happening on the battlefield.

what drones has allowed both sides to do is make that intelligence collection rather ubiquitous. So if I'm a platoon leader, let's just say on the Ukrainian side, I can derive my own intelligence if I own a DJI Mavic 3, a small Chinese-made drone that I can launch it and I can get real-time intelligence

that is geared towards me and my men and my women versus relying on national assets that may or may not collect on things that I'm interested in, right? And so because these systems only cost a few thousand dollars that you're able to get real-time intelligence

of a tactical nature that really helps you in your position. And secondly, the drones also provide more of a strategic long range intelligence

Because now what you're seeing are these larger drone systems that can fly for 40 plus hours, 800 kilometers. And they're able to provide sort of more of a theater level or a regional level intelligence that can be used to make tactical decisions on the battlefield, right? And so these systems, the answer to your question is they're ubiquitous. In other words, they're everywhere. And so the people that use

utilize them the best, really get an advantage on the battlefield in terms of what their ability to collect is. Really like the democratization of intelligence gathering, which is really must change the way that things function in that military space. I mean, if you look at small unit tactics, right? So I'm more of an intelligence officer than a military person.

But, you know, if I'm a recon platoon, well, my function is written in my name. I'm reconnaissance, right? And so what do I do is I have points go out, I have snipers go out, and they look at where the enemy troops are. They come back to me and they tell me, hey,

Chief, you have people over here, you have people over here. What you're doing when you introduce these UAS, these drones into the system is look at the range you can cover. Look at the, you can get video. You're just not taking the word now of the reconnaissance guy. You're seeing it for yourself. So you can make quicker tactical decisions, which then can be fed up the chain of command if you need to engage in a regional or theater level strategy.

strategy, right? And so the drones just, they're a tool that allow you to do it. And I guess something else that we've seen quite a lot of use of since Russia's full-scale invasion is open source intelligence. And I know sometimes this can intersect with sort of misinformation, disinformation, you know, how do we actually know that this is coming from a reliable source? But could you talk a bit about how, you know, you've been watching that

given your background, this kind of proliferation of open source intelligence? And do you feel that that actually has had a real sort of influence on the way that, you know, maybe both sides are able to interact more?

within the military context as well? Well, so military and strategic context, I would say. I always like to tell this story that when the invasion of Ukraine started last year, I was in the United States sitting on my couch and I was watching TV

TikTok, out of all platforms, right? You remember everybody was just like, when are they going to cross the border and go into Ukraine? And I remember of all the intelligence sources out there, you know, from national to satellites and all this stuff. I remember two particular TikTok feeds. One

One was of the border crossing, I think it was in Belgorod, between Russia and Ukraine. And Ukrainians had a feed of their outposts, and there's one dude that's sitting there waiting. And he has his helmet and battle gear and all that stuff. And there was the second feed of a former drone pilot who had a channel, and he was able to monitor military drones like MQ-9, which is more of a strategic level drone.

Because they needed to deconflict their position with commercial air traffic. So they're pinging, they're making noise, right? And so this guy's just following that online. And two events happened concurrently. One about 30 minutes before the other one. And so the MQ-9 guy is looking at the feed, just like Flight 24 radar, whatever, these open source feeds.

And he's like, I have never seen an MQ-9 fly faster west than I've seen in the last 20 minutes, right? And he's like, something big is happening, right? And so just based on that one data point, something unique that he had not seen over Ukraine was happening. And then immediately followed up by the guy in the border outpost abandoning his post and the camera going dark 20 minutes later.

Those two things, those are open source indicators, right? And so if they're constructively used with lots of other data points, then open source becomes this very powerful tool for intelligence analysts to be able to feed more information using, you know, whether that's big data from the internet or just these one-off APIs, these, you know, cameras and these flight tracks for UIS systems, right?

And these analysts now have a super powerful weapon to make more informed choices, which is the goal of any intelligence analyst, right? They're producing reports. So policymakers read these reports and take action based on all available information. And so OSINT,

has really provided, credible OSINT, has really provided the ability for you to get greater fidelity for whatever you're looking at, right? Just think if you were looking at the weather in Kiev or in Moscow, just think of all the open source data that you could use today to feel very comfortable that you think you know the temperature in Moscow, right? And it's just quite proliferated. On the flip side of that is these unverified,

streams of open source information, which if you have a propensity as the government to create propaganda or utilize the weaknesses in democratic structures to push your agenda, then open source sources can be manipulated, right? And so you would hope that when someone does all source analysis, including OSINT, including

that they're able to discount the outliers and say, you know, this is a active measures campaign. This is the propaganda campaign. This is something that is not what it appears to be, right? And so again, you're relying on that human in the loop, not AI, not machine learning, but a human in the loop to say, you know what, this does not go with all the other data points. Therefore, there's something suspect about it, right? And so you've seen since 2016,

people take a more critical eye to just information out there on the internet. You know, is it true? Is it false? So just use your own analytical judgment that you were trained to do on this new source of information so you don't arrive at false conclusions.

Yeah, that's right. And there's such a proliferation of information out there that really that step of the analysis becomes even more important and almost like there's information overload oftentimes or, you know, particular images or particular pieces of information that almost sort of blow out of proportion because they become shared over and over again. And then it's hard to really evaluate what is the true importance of, you know, that one image or

that one piece of information that's now proliferating. Let me ask you a question too, like in secondary school and high school, right? You would always hear this rumor, these rumors, right? About like, oh, hey, this person likes you, this person doesn't like you. And so what are you doing when someone tells you that information?

You're seeing if it makes any sense, right? So you're internally evaluating that information and be like, wait a second, why is this conversation even coming up? Who said this? Then the second thing you're looking at is the source that told you that information and what bias do they have, right? Are they friends with this person that just said this? Are they some random stranger?

Are they a friend of yours? And so the whole idea of bias gets introduced into the intelligence collection, which is a serious problem, by the way, because politicians use bias to achieve agendas that they set, right? And so you have to be careful of this stuff. And so in that high school scenario, maybe I asked five other people, right? And just to get a collective, and then I make an informed decision based on all the people's input and not just some salacious,

clickbait one-off data point. And so there's no difference in open source and there's probably no different in SIGINT or QMINT. You're doing all source analysis based on multiple sources of information. There's no secret to that. Mm-hmm.

And something else that has struck me, you know, since sort of a bit prior to Russia's full-scale invasion was the way in which actually state governments were sharing intelligence as well. So we had in particular the United States and the UK prior to Russia's full-scale invasion really sort of putting out their intelligence that they seem to have about Russia's intentions and

But then we've also seen them sharing intelligence with Ukraine since the point of Russia's full-scale invasion and possibly even to an extent that we're not aware of. How unusual did that strike you as being that state governments would be sort of so upfront in that regard about sharing intelligence that they have?

And do you think that that, you know, is and sort of has been particularly important to how Ukraine has been able to approach the war as well? I'll give you somewhat of a corporate answer here. So if you go to the DNI, Director of National Intelligence website, you know, they talk about the importance of cooperation with liaison partners, right, throughout the world. And so...

if you look at conflicts in the Middle East or Afghanistan, right? That you as a government make a decision that do you use a liaison or a local government as a force multiplier in whatever conflict you're trying to fight, right? And so in Afghanistan, would you rely on coalition partners and their intelligence because you guys are sharing a common battle space, right? And so that's,

The DNI has said that, you know, intelligence sharing is an important role of the 16 agencies within the DNI for the United States. And so they've made a concerted decision to say yes in this case. And as far as Ukraine is concerned, I mean, I have no inside information. I don't know what they share or how they share it. But authorities within the United States have made the decision that it is in the

national interest in the United States to provide Ukraine with some level of intelligence. And this is all based on my own open source, right? It's what I've read. Now, what you also referred to in there, which is not speculation, but it's fact, is not only are they sharing it with the government, but the information has been released to the public, right? Some aspects have been released to the public.

And so I think that's a complete different strategy, which is maybe you're dissuading actions. Maybe by coming out publicly, you're saying we know about your... Because of this propensity to use propaganda and false information, if you precede that and you say...

We know what you're going to do. Don't use this trick. And we have information that you keep using the same trick. Then it discredits the trick you're about to put out there. You know, oh, the Russians are going to blame the Ukrainians for an internal attack in Russia.

And if you know that and have credible information and as a government it's decided that's in the best interest for you to put it out, that's what they do. Yeah, absolutely. And we have definitely seen that a few times where it seemed that that sharing of intelligence into the public domain actually may have dissuaded Russia from certain actions or at least changed the perception of those actions. You know, there's a whole trust factor within this space, right?

And so if you're the little boy who cried wolf all the time and you misused this ability, then your credibility sort of goes out the window and then no one is going to believe you.

you. And so you don't want to do this every single time. You know, hey, Russia is going to do this, Russia is going to do that. And then you just start pinning random things in the world against Russia or China or whoever it may be. If you misuse that ability, then you're really in danger of losing your credibility. Yeah. You never know when you're actually impacting the final outcome through your action. So it could be it was going to happen and then it didn't because of the action that you took. We never know the counterfactual. So

So I guess finally, I would just ask you to reflect on, you know, we've seen sort of Ukraine and Russia dealing quite differently with the information space since the full-scale invasion. And in a way, you know, there's the military conflict, but there's also this really important dimension of shaping the narratives using information and kind of engaging in that domain as well. How do you see the way in which

Ukraine and Russia have kind of differently and distinctly engaged with that information dimension? I'll say it this way, and I'll kind of keep it broad.

When you fought wars back in the day, you weren't looking at public opinion polls. You were looking at tactical objectives on the battlefield, right? But you are fighting a political war in Ukraine. And so who controls the information space with what information is a huge issue within this war in Ukraine right now. And so how do you shape that information space? And so historically, if you were to look at, say, the Russian side,

going back to 1917 revolution the russian soviet government did not

have the ability to establish ties with Western governments back in the 20s and 30s. And so they created this sort of whole illegals network and the ability to propagate disinformation. And so if you were good at it 100 years ago, why did you stop doing it? Right. And so they haven't stopped doing it and they continue to do it. So the Russians look at this as a weapon to

whatever objectives are looking for to gain public approval for internal consumption within Russia. But you would have to imagine that, you know, remember all these countries were together for 60 years. So you ask yourself what lessons in

in shaping public information have the Ukrainians taken away themselves? And how are they implementing those lessons as well? And, you know, I can't speak for either side, but like, who's putting out your press statements, right? Are they coming from credible sources? If you ask, again, the weather analogy, but if you said, you know, what's the weather in Bakhmut today? And

you got an official Ministry of Defense response and say, well, it's 24 degrees Celsius. I didn't ask the military that question. Should I be concerned that the military answered that question or not? And so always look at the sources of the information to say, you know, why is this source telling me this? You know, if that MQ-9 pilot back at the beginning of the war was saying, hey,

hey, the MQ-9 left Ukrainian airspace, and I think the Ukrainians are advancing on Russian positions. Well, I would just discount that second part because he has no access to the second part.

but is a trained MQ-9 pilot, which he self-prescribes as he has credibility in that sphere. He does not have credibility in I think this, I think that. And that's what you see on the media today, right? Well, thanks, James. This has been such an interesting discussion. I really appreciate it and I've enjoyed it very much myself. So thanks for coming on to the podcast today. You're very welcome.

Thanks for listening and thanks to Gonca Verol for our theme music.