BLUF: Operation Epic Fury

Wartime communications were once delivered slowly, via verified channels, and from credible voices. These filtered updates were digested in a steady drip resulting in a calmer public who trusted that the information was accurate and as complete as possible. 

This week marked the starkest departure in history from this traditional approach: X had its biggest day in history on Saturday. And then broke that record on Sunday, flooding feeds with anonymous OSINT (open-source intelligence for those not familiar with the shorthand) accounts posting geolocated footage, radar pings, instant claims, and realtime footage of carnage and heroism alike.

Algorithms surfaced pseudonymous handles—like OSINTdefender (2M+ followers)—with superior geolocation or faster timestamps ahead of official announcements. Like all of you, we flocked to these anonymous feeds to “monitor the situation,” yet the tsunami of sourceless material makes intent difficult to gauge—obfuscating verified statements and enabling manipulation. 

Unfortunately, opening this floodgate invites exploitation. AI-generated videos of nonexistent strikes spread rapidly—one fake clip purporting missiles over Israel garnered millions of views resulting in X triggering its first major AI-war-content crackdown this week, suspending undisclosed fakes from creator revenue sharing for 90 days. Heck, CENTCOM even had to directly debunk OSINTdefender’s unverified F-15E crash claim early this week as "baseless." 

But it is not all bad and these accounts are serving critical functions. For example, in Ukraine, civilians decide “basement now” based on anonymous Telegram channels aggregating drone and missile vectors and the people are rightly very comfortable erring on the side of survival over official branding every time. And everyone would agree that Bellingcat-style OSINT crowdsourcing exposing war crimes faster than ever in Ukraine is a net positive for the world. 

For anyone with a loved one that wears the uniform, the single best potential of this new phenomenon in wartime communications is the potential of knowing if your loved one is safe. So we will leave you with this: imagine for one moment being the mother of this American pilot who was forced to bail out over Kuwait, knowing she was flying in this conflict and the relief that had to wash over her seeing that smiling face in near real-time…all because these OSINT accounts and this new form of wartime communications exists.

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