AI-powered open-source intelligence should be a pillar of AUKUS security

May 23, 2025

Advances in AI are set to expand the technology’s role in security among AUKUS (Australia, UK, US) nations, says Dr. Brenton Cooper, CEO & Co-founder, Fivecast, bringing a new level of open-source insight to threat detection in border security, illegal immigration, people-smuggling, terrorist activity and violent extremism.

In the defence sector, AI is on track to revolutionise logistics, robotics, surveillance, cyber security and autonomous munitions. In light of this, AI has been included in the UK government’s £2.2bn MOD investment in emerging technologies along with drone technology and satellite capabilities.

AI, machine learning and natural language processing are also transformative technologies for open-source intelligence (OSINT), especially when combined with broad data collection capabilities across publicly and commercially available sources. The key enabler for defence and national security agencies is the technology’s ability to quickly analyse masses of data to identify and correlate risky content across social media platforms, news sites, watch lists, people and company databases, marketplaces and the dark web. Alongside the standard social media channels that people smugglers use, criminal, terrorist and commercial espionage groups use more obscure platforms and are at home in the dark web where they believe they can collaborate undetected.

Given the vast amount of data that intelligence analysts need to review and assess, obtaining insights that are accurate at speed is only possible through the finely tuned automation and risk analysis of an AI-driven OSINT platform. Effectively analysing the entire surface web, social media channels, notice boards, forums and dark web is far beyond the manual capabilities of teams in defence, policing, border security or intelligence.

Advanced AI-driven OSINT platforms can detect relevant content and follow the connections and footprints of criminal networks and extremist organisations across the full diversity of the online world. Within hours, or even minutes, suspicious relationships and networks can be uncovered – a process that would otherwise take days or weeks to resolve manually.

In border security and anti-smuggling operations, AI-enabled OSINT can detect criminal preparations on social media and correlate them with dark web activity. The technology can monitor agents, proxies and affiliates of potentially hostile nations or terror groups as they seek to enter a country or plan incidents before borders are breached or events are compromised.

For screening and vetting of visa applicants, illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers, the technology is invaluable. Analysts can fine-tune the AI-driven risk-detectors for fast and accurate detection of suspicious signs across large datasets. Insights from open-source intelligence can complement other human intelligence sources, as well as the data gained from sources of signals intelligence, such as, for example, the National Cyber Security Centre in the UK.

The reach extends across billions of data points and requires no data science expertise to operate or direct. Smart prioritisation saves thousands of hours at a time when public sector intelligence teams are feeling the strain of budget restrictions. Increased speed comes with vastly improved accuracy, while obfuscation ensures anonymity and security for intelligence teams.

AI will not, however, supersede human decision-making. All evidence can be manually verified before a skilled analyst passes the information up the chain of command. The UK is, for example, currently overwhelmed by the backlog in asylum applications which is not only a huge drain on public money but also a potential security threat.

AI-powered OSINT reduces the likelihood of under-resourced officials, with limited access to intelligence, making ill-informed asylum decisions, increasing both national security and fairness. Automated vetting with AI (operating to established ethical guidelines) is more than twenty times faster at verifying social media accounts. It significantly increases the efficiency and accuracy of vetting processes related to visas, national security roles and immigration, allowing analysts to quickly identify and focus on high-risk cases.

These advances in OSINT technology will give military, policing and immigration intelligence analysts a substantial increase in capability that is cost-effective and fully suited to mid-21^st century challenges. There is also great scope for these AI-driven open-source intelligence insights to be shared across the AUKUS nations to counter evolving threats in all corners of the globe and ensure a rich, combined approach to our common security challenges.

Cooperation between UK, US and Australian organisations will reduce the potential damage from vulnerabilities to commercial espionage, trans-national criminal organisations and global terrorist groups.

AI is set to transform many defence applications, but in threat detection and OSINT, it is already spearheading a revolution through its ability to comb through zettabytes of data and surface highly accurate insights. These are capabilities more organisations in the AUKUS alliance need at their fingertips.

Article submitted by Dr. Brenton Cooper, CEO & Co-founder, Fivecast

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