Eliot Higgins

HIGHLIGHTS: Eliot Higgins

Jul 17, 202611 minFounder of Bellingcat

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→ WHAT IT COVERS Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins explains how open-source investigation using satellite imagery, social media, and public data has evolved since 2012 to expose war crimes, government lies, and disinformation across Syria, Ukraine, and beyond. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Geolocation as core skill:** Cross-referencing publicly available satellite imagery from services like Planet Labs — now taskable to specific locations within days — with social media posts allows investigators to verify conflict footage and weapons use without any classified access or journalism credentials. - **Platform-specific intelligence:** Each conflict generates data on different platforms — Syria on YouTube and Facebook, Ukraine on Telegram, criminal activity on TikTok. Investigators must continuously track platform migration patterns, since perpetrators often post incriminating content repeatedly before anyone analyzes it. - **Infrared satellite analysis:** When visual satellite imagery and internet access are both unavailable — as occurred during the Iran conflict — comparing infrared satellite data using specialized software produces heat maps revealing damage locations across entire regions, bypassing conventional imagery blackouts entirely. - **Engagement-over-truth information collapse:** The shift from top-down institutional media to peer-to-peer platforms like X rewards engagement over accuracy, systematically amplifying populist and conspiratorial content. Authoritarian movements exploit this by replacing truth-seeking with loyalty tests, making institutional accountability procedurally impossible. → NOTABLE MOMENT Higgins cannot currently travel to the United States after Elon Musk labeled Bellingcat a psychological operation, prompting State Department officials to search for communications that do not exist, reinforcing suspicions of a cover-up. 💼 SPONSORS None detected 🏷️ Open-Source Intelligence, Disinformation, War Crimes Investigation, Information Warfare

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Eliot Higgins: How Bellingcat Hunts Down the Truth

In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen

Jul 15, 202639 min

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→ WHAT IT COVERS Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, explains how his 35-person open-source investigation collective uses publicly available data — satellite imagery, social media, phone records, and flight manifests — to expose war crimes, identify Russian assassins, and counter state-sponsored disinformation campaigns across Syria, Ukraine, and beyond. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Geolocation as a core skill:** Satellite imagery from services like Planet Labs, available via monthly subscription, allows investigators to task satellites to specific locations and receive imagery within days. Cross-referencing this with social media posts enables precise verification of where events occurred — a technique that began with free tools like Google Maps in 2012. - **Speed window for narrative control:** When a contested event occurs — a shooting, an airstrike — investigators have roughly two to three hours before false narratives solidify. Once people form a belief, they rarely revise it. Publishing synchronized, multi-angle video evidence within that window forces governments and media to respond to verified facts rather than speculation. - **Gray-market data as an investigative tool:** In Russia, government databases including passport registration forms, house records, car registrations, and cell tower connection logs are purchasable through informal networks. Bellingcat used this data to map FSB agents' minute-by-minute movements across Europe, directly linking them to the Skripal and Navalny poisoning operations. - **Community scale multiplies investigative reach:** Bellingcat operates with 35 staff, roughly 200 trained volunteers, and a 43,000-member Discord community. The community surfaces leads investigators miss, and training others in open-source methods — including thousands of journalists and activists globally — creates distributed verification capacity that no single organization could replicate alone. - **Disinformation requires a receptive audience:** Russian influence operations targeting English-speaking audiences around Armenian politics generated near-zero engagement because the audience had no emotional investment. Disinformation scales only when it amplifies pre-existing distrust or grievance. Addressing the underlying institutional distrust — not just removing false content — is the necessary intervention for democratic resilience. → NOTABLE MOMENT After tracking FSB agents through purchased Russian phone records, Navalny personally called one of his would-be assassins while posing as a senior FSB officer conducting a debrief. The agent described in detail how Novichok was applied to Navalny's underwear — and the recording ran for a full hour. 💼 SPONSORS None detected 🏷️ Open-Source Investigation, Disinformation Campaigns, Russian Intelligence Operations, Democratic Erosion, Geolocation Techniques

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In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen

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Planet Labs

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HIGHLIGHTS: Eliot Higgins

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Eliot Higgins: How Bellingcat Hunts Down the Truth

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