You Need an OSINT Mindset
Uncover Opportunities in Life and Business (Part 1 of 3)
Hello everyone! I am really excited to be writing today’s article. I am just feeling great today and I have a lot to be thankful about. You see, this blog has always been an OSINT blog, but it has also always been a Network Science and Natural Language Processing (NLP) blog, because I do OSINT every day, and I use NLP and Network Science to do OSINT work.
Yesterday, I wrote a beginner friendly article. Actually, here are two articles that you should read:
In this first article, I challenged you. And then yesterday, I wrote a very, very beginner friendly article, because many of my readers are at the beginning, and it is good to help people take their first steps!
So, yesterday, I wrote this article to show you how to create your very first Web Crawler. I showed it first with only three lines of code, and then we expanded to pulling rich context from any website. This article did really well. It is nice to see so much enthusiasm for OSINT. My articles typically get 0-2 likes, not six.
The enthusiasm is magical to me. Let’s keep going and ride the wave of excitement! Yesterday, I showed how to build your first Web Crawler. Today, I am starting a three day series on the importance of developing your OSINT Mindset.
Here is what I have in mind for this three day exploration:
Day One: The OSINT mindset and what remains invisible without it
Day Two: How it changes your life and reveals opportunities
Day Three: How it supports business and life
Before I move on and start writing this, I want to say that I have really enjoyed the interactions that I have had with readers on Substack. I don’t really get much interaction on LinkedIn anymore. It feels like a dead social network to me, but Substack has become a valuable resource to me for science and engineering writing and for actually having fun with my readers.
So, to those of you who comment on my articles and notes, thank you so much. You are appreciated. This helps me keep going. It is so encouraging, and I love swapping OSINT and tool tips, too.
Finally, if you are interested in OSINT, I recommend you enroll in my Digital Detective training bundle that I offer. If you buy a bundle, you save money with a 20-40% discount, depending on the bundle you choose. The next wave of classes will start on September 1, 2026. Enroll today!
Oh, and don’t forget to get on GrooveSeeker. All work and no play is no fun. Download for iPhone or Android today and tell your friends about it. Help this introvert get the word out about his inventions.
Ok, let’s get to today’s article!
What is an OSINT Mindset
We can’t develop an OSINT Mindset if we do not define it, so let’s start with definitions.
First, OSINT is primarily a mindset, not an assortment of tools. If you have an OSINT Mindset, you will naturally discover techniques that may be helpful to you, and then you will discover the tools that support those techniques. This is the natural flow. It is not natural to go from tools to techniques to mindset. Develop the mindset first and you will not drown in tools. You will be more deliberate, outcome-focused.
In Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), an analyst uses information from a variety of sources, identifies actionable insights, combines them into OSINT reports, and delivers them to others who will take action on the intelligence. Learn More.
I do Agentic OSINT and go even further. I also use the information to make decisions and take action.
So, what is different about an OSINT Mindset? It has to do with being aware of the vastness and availability of useful information and how it can be used to reach opportunities or goals.
Vastness: There are BILLIONS of websites and BILLIONS of social media accounts you can learn from. There are lots of MCPs/APIs that you can integrate with for greater reach. There are many Python Libraries and open datasets that you can also use to fuel your research. On this blog, I have shown how to use Wikipedia, Spotify, and arXiv Python Libraries, for instance.
Availability: These online sources of information are accessible. That is why this is called OPEN Source Intelligence. If you know how to get to the information, you can harvest it for insights.
In other words, developing an OSINT mindset means to awaken to the realization of the vastness of information that is available to you to learn from as well as an awakening to the techniques that will help you use the information.
You need to realize that you are sitting on a mountain of opportunity, but you need to do a bit of work to tap into it. OSINT gives you the keys.
Can anyone develop an OSINT mindset?
Absolutely anyone can develop an OSINT Mindset. It is an awakening to opportunity. An OSINT Mindset does not develop automatically. Even if I show you how to crawl one website, that doesn’t necessarily awaken you to the realization that if you came up with a good business idea and crawled ten thousand websites you could produce valuable intelligence that people will pay for. You have to AWAKEN to realizations like that. I write articles to try to help get you there, but I’ve written more than a hundred of these, and it is still an uphill march. Meanwhile, I have created multiple businesses and written one book using OSINT.
Anyone can develop an OSINT Mindset, and I want to help you. Enroll to learn more.
Cool, where do we begin?
That’s wonderful! Anyone can learn this! Where do we begin? I have a few suggestions:
Try to learn to look outwardly with an open, attentive, and proactive mind. OSINT leads to heightened awareness. If you are not open or attentive, you will not become aware. If you do not become aware of things, you cannot be proactive to reach opportunities or avoid danger.
Start by realizing that the internet is made of billions of websites, not just the six we visit all the time every day. LinkedIn is one website. Google is one website. This blog is one website. There are billions of other websites on the multilingual World Wide Web. There is a ton of information to learn from.
I can actually remember the day my OSINT Mindset really activated. One night, I was stuck in a room, bored to death, but I couldn’t go anywhere. My options were to read a book and learn something or just be bored. So, I read a book about Mining the Social Web.
I very quickly learned how to crawl Wikipedia, then Twitter, and then the World Wide Web itself. Naturally, my mind wandered to the interesting questions. I started crawling UFO and Bigfoot data for the fun of it and got hooked. :) That’s how good learning happens, right? If it’s not fun, it’s not going to stick. That’s why I try to write a fun blog and do not shy away from researching things I am curious about.
But then over the course of several years, I learned to use OSINT for very serious things, such as:
Predicting future phishing attacks based on Social Media mentions (celebrities and happenings)
Detecting manipulative headlines
Detecting scams and fraud using Social Media data and Text Classification
Protecting people and important organizations
But it was that one night where my options were to a) learn something or b) sit there bored until I fell asleep that changed my life. I made the correct choice. Will you?
Anyway, readers can begin to develop their own OSINT Mindset by:
Reading my book and this blog that you are reading right now. Read all 100+ articles! Visit the website directly to see everything!
Try out some of the beginner friendly articles! Challenge yourself to do something small and then do it! Crawl one website! Start at the start!
Use the crawlers I have given away in this series. I have made them for Spotify, Wikipedia, and Bluesky. Yesterday, I showed how to crawl the web.
Just go to my blog website (or use the Substack app) and search for the Crawler type you would like to try out. I recommend you start with a Wikipedia crawler. And I recommend that beginners start out on Google Colab rather than installing anything. That’s easier than learning Anaconda/Jupyter in a day. But if you want to download the Anaconda distribution, it is a great tool. I use everything that I recommend.
Benefits of an OSINT Mindset
There’s a whole bunch of benefits to developing an OSINT Mindset:
Learning OSINT awakens you to the richness of opportunities that exist around you. GrooveSeeker is a fun example of that. Download it to see if your area is covered. If it is not, send me a message and I will expand visibility into your region.
As I mentioned previously, an OSINT Mindset has to do with awakening and understanding. Mindset leads to techniques, and techniques lead to tools. If you develop the mindset first, you will not be drowning in an ocean of tools. You will be more deliberate. You will select the techniques that help you reach your goals, and then you will select the tools that help you apply those techniques. Techniques endure as tools change and improve. This blog shows that. I no longer use Newspaper3k for fulltext extraction. That was a very useful tool to me before, but a better tool has emerged. But the technique of fulltext extraction remains very important.
You awaken to the vastness and richness of information and opportunities that exist around you. That is why my first company had the word “vast” in its name. The internet is vast and full of information. If you mine it, you will find a vastness of insights that can help you reach opportunities and goals. Want to start a business? Why not use OSINT to collect intelligence to power your business? Enroll in my classes to learn how. Buy a bundle and save money.
OSINT encompasses everything openly accessible. If you can reach it, you can analyze it. If you can observe and analyze it, you can learn to understand the phenomenon. This is science.
Haha. Just a funny scene from one of my favorite shows. YEAH SCIENCE!
OSINT really lets you see things more clearly. If you can see more clearly and with greater depth, you can do things with that awareness. You can use it for your own advantage. You can sell insights to give others an advantage. You can build products (like GrooveSeeker) to help people reach opportunities. Or you can build new tools to get ahead of dangers in ways that older companies do not know how. Eat the dinosaurs. :)
What do people fail to see without one?
This is the big question. You GAIN a lot by developing an OSINT Mindset, but you miss out if you ignore OSINT. What do you miss out on?
You miss out on noticing countless opportunities that are already in front of you that you do not know how to see.
You miss out on noticing the dangers that are slowly and gradually developing in front of you that you don’t know how to see. You hear hints of the outrage on Social Media, but you are powerless to see what is really going on for yourself and have to take the word of your preferred media source or learn from Social Media.
You fail to notice the relationships and larger patterns connecting seemingly isolated happenings in the real world. You fail to notice the dotted lines.
You miss out on an opportunity to develop deeply informed perspectives. OSINT supercharges your Systems Thinking, but only if you apply it and learn from it.
You fail to notice opportunities until after the opportunity has passed. Have you ever missed an opportunity and been frustrated because you could have captured it if you knew about it in advance?
You fail to notice danger until it has arrived. Would you rather know that you are going to be attacked, when, and by whom? Or would you rather know that you have been attacked and these are the things that have been destroyed? I’d rather hunt the attackers, but that’s just me. :)
OSINT gives me more opportunities than I can even handle. If I look at my GrooveSeeker app, in my “My Picks” section, I can see:
Two music events I am interested in going to today, and one of them is free! I will probably go to the free one! It is a free opportunity for me to enjoy a show!
Five music events I am interested in going to tomorrow. Four of them are free!
One event I will go to on Friday. That is a regular event that I avoid missing, so I will not go to any other events on Friday.
Three music events that I will go to on Saturday, all free. One of them is an album release show and signing.
See for yourself, and follow me on Instagram!
So, in the next four days, I have eleven musical opportunities in front of me because of OSINT, and nine of them are FREE. GrooveSeeker is powered by OSINT. Verdant Intelligence is OSINT AI. I call it World AI.
I am a musician. I play guitar and I sing. These are not just fun things for me to go to. These directly benefit me, my business, and even my music ambitions. These are networking opportunities to me. :)
Download GrooveSeeker to enjoy the benefits of OSINT without even learning it. Scroll up for the links for iPhone or Android. Maybe that is the real first step. Download it and then click the “Map” tab. Then explore the world. Then you will see the vastness of opportunities that surround all of us.
Begin Developing Your OSINT Mindset
I have been writing this blog for three years, and I completed the original #100daysofnetworks first series in 2020, so many of my readers are already a bit along the path to discovering their own OSINT Mindsets. Also, this blog is an OSINT blog, so some of my readers are experienced Intelligence practitioners and already have the mindset.
But most people do not! Everyone starts at the start! I started at the start! The first things I can remember doing with Web Crawling in 2004 had to do with:
Capturing the Yen to Dollar exchange rate
Capturing typhoon information
I was a Web Developer in Japan in 2004, and this information was useful to my readers. It didn’t take me very long to go from figuring out how to pull two things from two websites to figuring out how to build a platform that used information from hundreds of RSS feeds in 2005.
Start at the start! Maybe start with building your first Web Crawler and crawling your favorite website just to see what the data looks like!
Or if you want to read the very first article I wrote for this series, that is another great place to start!
Or maybe read my book! Apparently, people really like it. It was published more than three years ago and is STILL rated five stars out of five. I do not know of a more highly rated NLP and Graph book. Can’t beat 5/5! Can’t beat a 100% score! A lot of people think it is a very good book and I think that you should read it!
But the ultimate option is to just learn from me directly. I have been doing this for so long that it is just how I live. I am the OSINT Mindset in human form. It affects everything that I do. If you want to learn Programmatic or Agentic OSINT, you should learn from me. Enroll in a bundle to save money.
That’s all for today!
That’s all for today. Thank you for reading. I appreciate it. I have really enjoyed some of the Substack conversations.
And a special thank you to all who attended the first wave of my trainings. If you ever want to attend again, we give steep discounts to returning students who want to come back to learn more! Message me or email me and we can help you out!
For everyone else, here’s the upcoming schedule I currently have in mind:
Week of September 1, 2026 - Digital Detective: Intro to OSINT
Week of September 8, 2026 - Knowledge Graph from Scratch
Week of September 15, 2026 - AI for Everyone
Week of September 22, 2026 - GraphRAG from Scratch
Students have already enrolled in all four of these. Enroll today to learn along with us! I would love to meet you!
That’s all for today! Have a great day! The sun has come out and I’m going to go enjoy my day! Download GrooveSeeker and have a good time! Help me out by telling your friends! I am a bit of a quiet introvert, so I need your help spreading the word! Thank you!
Here’s some cool GrooveSeeker merch, if interested! I love my hat so much and wear it every day. The hoodies are super comfortable. I love my swag. :)
Anyway. Feel empowered by this article. Let’s go!
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