OSINT Techniques for Foreign-Language Research

In this episode of Integrity Insights, Filip is joined by Skip Schiphorst of i-Intelligence, a specialist in multilingual open-source intelligence and online research. Skip manages the company’s language-focused OSINT courses, including Chinese, Russian, and Arabic.

The conversation explores a frequently overlooked aspect of OSINT: how to research effectively in foreign languages even if you do not speak them fluently. Skip explains why accurate searching in Arabic, Chinese, and Russian is about far more than translation, and why cultural, political and linguistic context remains essential despite the rise of AI tools.

Key themes discussed

• Language-based OSINT as a specialist discipline
   Skip explains how i-Intelligence trains analysts, journalists, and corporate investigators to search in foreign languages using the right methodology.
• Why translation alone is not enough
   The discussion highlights the limits of Google Translate, AI tools, and literal transliteration when researching foreign companies, individuals, or media sources. Getting the exact local spelling or company name right is often the key to the entire investigation.
• Culture, politics, and context
   Skip emphasizes that language research cannot be separated from local context. Understanding naming conventions, media ecosystems, religion, politics, and regional culture is often essential to interpreting sources correctly.
• Vetting foreign-language sources
   The episode looks at the challenge of judging the reliability of local sources, especially in politically sensitive environments, and why building human networks and simply asking trusted local contacts can be as important as technical search skills.
• AI versus methodology
   Skip reflects on how analysts increasingly turn to AI first, but argues that strong methodology still outperforms overreliance on large language models. In his view, AI can support research, but it cannot replace sound analytical thinking.
• Do you need to speak the language?
   One of the central themes of the episode is that speaking a language and knowing how to research in it are not the same thing. Skip argues that non-native speakers with strong methodology can often outperform native speakers who lack OSINT training.
• Why learning languages still matters
   The conversation closes on the enduring value of language learning, both for research and for human understanding more broadly, especially at a time of increasing geopolitical fragmentation and polarization.

Links:

Searching the Chinese Internet: Foundations Course

https://i-intelligence.eu/courses/searching-the-chinese-internet-foundations

OSINT: Searching the Russian Internet Course

https://i-intelligence.eu/courses/osint-searching-the-russian-internet-virtual-course

OSINT: Searching the Middle Eastern Internet Course

https://i-intelligence.eu/courses/osint-searching-the-arabic-web

Connect with Skip:

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/skip-schiphorst-721bb6200/

Skip's Instagram page where he shares his language learning techniques 

https://www.instagram.com/skipmovestolearn/

Connect with Us:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/integrity-insights/?viewAsMember=true
• Berlin Risk Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/berlinrisk/?viewAsMember=true
• Website: https://berlinrisk.com/

Transcript

 Skip. Welcome on the podcast, Philip Webinar. Thank you. Well, the Honor is mine. Uh. We, we just talked about before we, uh, started recording the, this podcast about the previous guest, Nico Dickens. And, and, and like Nico, you have also a, a really large, uh, digital footprint. So let's not spend too much time on the intro, but, uh, can you give a, maybe like a, just a brief version of your, of your kind of professional journey for all?

Listen. Indeed. Let's not spend too much time on Nico. No, I'm kidding. He beats me to it every time with podcasts. He's, he's, he's often the, the, uh, the guest who was right before I look up to him very much. And, uh, many of the questions I, I often receive, I could easily say same as Nico. So, uh, great guy.

Anybody listening to this one definitely needs to check out the episode with Nico. Um, brief intro. I am the, uh, course manager for eye intelligence with regard to all our language osint courses. Uh, those are Chinese foundations, Chinese advanced Russian Osint and Arabic Osint, or Middle East and North Africa OSI courses, which focus on how to teach specialists how to find information using, uh, foreign languages.

The ones I mentioned. For those who don't usually speak those languages, but also increasingly for those who already speak those languages, but just don't know how to research in those languages just as the people around you and I, uh, it's not because somebody speaks a language that they per se know how to research in that language.

And that's how where we come in. I do this for, uh, a company called I Intelligence, a consultancy firm in Switzerland. And we do two most, uh, main things, consultancy, where we help people solve their problems. And we're more known for our courses, which range anywhere from the language courses I mentioned to open source intelligence foundations, social media intelligence, advanced, uh, intermediate, uh, dark web, and so on and so forth.

So that's what we, we do, we bring a value to organizations who want to learn how to, um, yeah, make a sauce out of all the noise out there on the internet. That's what we do. So you, if I understood it correctly, it's not, you don't only provide those, those courses, but you also do the research for, uh, companies in the, in the, in the private sector doing some Osint investigations.

Very much so. Very much so. Although we are more known for our courses, which range from everything I just, uh, just mentioned. Yeah. And are there, the courses, are there 100%, uh, virtual or do you also do some in in person courses? I would say that about, uh, 80% of what we do is going to be virtual and public webinars every few months, three weeks, we have different courses, which we teach in different time zones to cover, uh, the whole globe.

Uh, we teach virtually in private for companies who just want to have us for them, for, uh, the duration of a course. Uh, on occasions we get, uh, well quite often we get invited to travel abroad and teach. In person on a location that the client chooses. And sometimes we also just choose nice locations and teach there and people can sign up and see us in, uh, in, in flesh and blood.

So yeah, we, we do all that. Hmm. And you mentioned earlier that you, did you focus mainly on the, these three major languages, Arabic, Chinese, Russian? Do you like, how do, how are those courses structured? Do you spend any time on actually trying to teach the, the language itself? So I, uh, languages are really my passion.

I've been surrounded them since I was very young. So I'm, uh, I'm, I'm, I spun. I have, uh, the luck of sponging languages up very quickly. For example, to answer your question, uh, I cannot teach people a language in five sessions, five afternoons. What I can do, and this is pure out of hobby, is show people that, for example, Chinese isn't that difficult.

But more importantly, being able to type Chinese, understand how the language is structured and how these symbols, as people call 'em, characters function. Because if you understand a bit how a language works, syntax of a of a, of a sentence, of a search string on, uh. Uh, in Google, for example, that makes your, uh, searching, uh, so much easier.

Um, so that's really the value that we bring by on the first day. For example, just explaining a bit about the language, um, as a bonus, which we don't know, maybe even enthus some people to think, you know what, I'm gonna try and pick up this language, which, uh, which is something I also specialize in. But not, uh, not for, for our intelligence.

And do you focus also, you know, besides the, the, the actual linguistic aspect also on the, I don't know, some cultural, political. Social themes related to, to the country because I, I, I, I find it whenever I have to research in a language that I don't know, I usually really struggle. Uh, not, I mean, one thing is finding the information that's like the data collection part, but then, then the, the, the analysis part.

If I don't understand, you know, if I can, I trust this particle source, you know, this media source, is it affiliated with this political party or this one? Like how, how does this play around this, this political or social cultural aspect? This is a very refreshing question. The answer is yes. We find this extremely important.

Culture plays a very important role in, uh, in the courses we teach, especially with regard. Well, all the courses we teach on, on, on languages, uh. I would say increasingly, very much so, especially when we teach to think tanks, NGOs, journalists, academics, people that do geopolitics. Uh, unfortunately a lot is happening this year.

You probably noticed that, um, uh, geopolitics plays an immense role in everything we see online. How to interpret a message, how to tie in culture to research, what kind of influence that has. I, I'll give you a couple of examples on. The course on Arabic and, uh, middle Eastern, uh, north African Internet. We also talk about religious symbols.

We also talk, even my colleague talks about, uh, uh, architecture and how that, that ties into research that many people think, you know, you can get everything done with ai and to an extent, you can get a lot done with ai. You can even get a lot done with Google Translate. But a lot is not what we look for as analysts.

We want to be specific and that's where we have to focus on the nitty gritties, which is something I pride myself in doing and I know my colleagues do as well. Uh, speaking of our Arabic, I, I need to ask you this question because, uh, I come across this and all my colleagues, uh, come across this issue all the time.

When, let's say we are looking at a company based in, I dunno, Iraq or Egypt, and we only know, we only have the English. Name of the company, like how, what is the easiest way to make sure that we have the right. Arab the local name, right? Because often, I mean, the easiest thing is to run it through some online translator, but it doesn't, it would, could be often like a literal translation.

It's, it's, it's, it doesn't often result in the, the actual local name. Like how, how can, uh, how can, how can, uh, we achieve this? So, I'm glad you're aware of this. Uh, I'll tie in, I'll tie in a bit of, uh, of Chinese corporate research into this as well. You're absolutely right. There is no single, uh mm.

Convention for company names that range from the Middle East and North Africa all the way to, to Morocco, all the way to uh, uh, to, uh, to, uh, the Middle East and Eastern, probably Middle East. It's all going to be very specific to every single different country, which is the exact thing which we, we focus on, is you have to dig into, as an analyst, if you have to research the company name structure of Tunisia.

You have to focus on that and start researching on that, and you just cannot, uh, uh, trust, um, translation platforms for dust that, especially with company names. One of the reasons, by the way, that many people just fail at doing company research is in Chinese, because here it is, the, the name of a company in Chinese sometimes matches the name of a company in, in English.

But more often than not, the English name given to a company doesn't match. And your starting point for any corporate investigation, whether it's, uh, in North Africa or in China, is getting the name, the, the, the, the local name, so to speak. Uh, name absolutely correctly. I would go further to say that anything you want to find online, finding the exact right translation.

The name of the person, the last name of the person. Uh, the name of the organization that you're looking at, the more effort you put into funding that, then you can start off from that. If you add then keywords to that and work with your operators, uh, realize I'm not, I haven't even talked about ai. You leave that all the way at the end.

That's how you get your, uh, more accurate results and that, that's what we, uh, that's what we focus on. And, and speaking of keywords, that's, that's the same, that's the same issue, right? Like we, we have, we might have like a list of keywords in, in English, for instance, for, uh, some different types of, uh, corruption, like, I dunno, let's say kickback.

And how do you, you know, if you don't know the, the, the language, if you don't know Russian or Arabic or Chinese, how do you make sure that you have the right keyword? By vetting keywords by several, several options, by vetting keywords, by checking out if the translation you found on one platform corresponds to other platforms as well.

I mentioned Google Translate, but be careful with that. Wikipedia online encyclopedia. AI Deep L Translate, which is a free tool. I'm sure you know of it. It's really good. Deep L translate. Um, what other keywords are, are great are out there to find to, uh, to check keywords, finding lists on the internet of people who did the work I do before maybe somebody posted something.

Hey guys, I've got a list of keywords used specifically in Egypt about banking and corporations. If I can find that key list and I can use somebody else's efforts. To, uh, to, to, to find those keywords. And they're very important. Uh, I know some people like to hear free tools, and I've got one if you like to do research in foreign languages.

This is not a, uh, I'm not affiliated, just think it's a really cool developer. And the platform, it's completely free. It's called, um, no Nonsense Intelligence, and you can search by keywords about a ML. About red flags, about, uh, uh, political affiliations, negative, uh, uh, uh, things written in the press, et cetera, and that will generate.

Uh, prepared keywords for that subject, and it's really great. Maybe I can, if there's a way I can share that link in the, in the description that folks can benefit from that. No, that's really cool. Thank you for, thank you for sharing. Uh, one last question before I like to move on to the next topic, but, uh, regarding.

Again, this, uh, this, uh, this example of researching in, I mean, you said Arabic is a bit too broad, so let's be more specific. Let's say like Egypt. If, uh, I often find it complicated, even if I find a local source to be able to kind of trust, uh, the source, you know, given the kind of political climate, and I often have the.

Uh, impression that the English language sources, even though they are not, you know, like local sources, they are often more kind of detailed and objective and potentially even more reliable than the local sources. Is that, is that, um, you know, how do you, how do you think about that? It depends. So we're talking about news, news outlets, geopolitics.

It really depends. There are some people who post things who live in a, a country who have. Who are specialized in everything that happened, and they know everything and everyone, and they will post in their local language only. There are people who are the same, but they choose to post what they know and share that in English or French or something else.

So it's, it's, uh, it, it's difficult to, to make that difference. It's one of the most difficult things of vetting a source, especially if you dive into an area of where you know nobody. What I. You could search for sources, you could search for Twitter accounts. What I suggest doing for journalists, for example, who are listening to this, just reach out to a fellow journalist, you know, who's in that region.

If you know something is happening in, for example, uh, protest in, for example, Jakarta last year, reach out to a journalist, you know, who operates from the region and ask that person who, what kind of sources can I use? What are the sources you can advise me to use? And this is something that we don't do enough.

So we have Osint, there's human, there's Cient, and there's this thing that my colleague actually coined as askin. Just ask people, ask people in your network. Luckily nowadays, especially with LinkedIn and Twitter, there's a, there's a lot of people you can just reach out to, and if they don't answer back, that means that they're not really people you want to engage with, especially journalism's.

That's how I would tackle it a hundred percent. No, that's a, that's a great tip. Uh, speaking of, uh, ai, I was wondering in, uh, in the context of, you know, your courses, do, do you, have you seen over the last couple of years a, a change in how people kind of search? You know, because I, I, I'm asking this because I had recently experience, I was at a, I was in some sort of seminar and I was sitting, you know, next to, next to two, two different people, and two clearly two generations.

And the way they. Kind of very, even like taking notes, but, uh, but especially searching on, I was completely, completely different. And I wonder how, how it is in your classes, especially the, you know, uh, the in-person classes where you can actually see and, and interact with the people. I would say very, very much so reflective of how society works today.

When Google just showed up, that was the way people would. Search, then we go to Google and that's, that, that still is the case for, for many people. With the arrival of, uh, LLMs and, uh, the AI platforms out there, we're seeing that more people don't go to Google, but they go straight to AI to get their, their answers.

I think that's fine if you do that depending on what kind of work you do. Uh, I also see, and I think my colleagues agree with that, is that increasingly people put way too much trust into AI to get an an answer. If I'm looking for a recipe of something, there's actually absolutely no harm in using ai, et cetera.

Uh, if you're looking for specific things, it can be misleading, but the way I see it, I see AI as this, uh, this kind of special weapon. So, uh, that, that you want to use later on. You first want to, if I can compare this to, I don't know, shooting for example, you first want to master basic, uh, marksmanship.

Before you start pivoting to, I don't know, something bigger like a sniper rifle or a machine gun. Um, how, and that's something we really focus on, uh, in our courses. Not marksmanship with machine guns, but focusing on the details of how to really accurately find information. The key words you mentioned, for example.

That's very important because the more effort you put into finding, uh, again keywords. The better your results are going to be with Google. If you put that in Google, the better your results are also going to be in your, the, the sentences, the questions you put into ai. Uh, and it's fun thing when we teach our courses the last day of our courses.

So I love ending, we all love ending our courses with a full session of just meaning exercises. Find this person, find this document, find uh, this area in the three languages I mentioned. And it is really cool because you're able to see that the people live in our courses can actually solve those quite complex questions within a few minutes.

Uh, to be honest, they could do so as well without our training, but it would take just more time and we just really shorten that time and make it more accurate. Now here's the thing, when people focus completely on AI to answer questions. They don't get the right results as fast as those who focus on methodology.

Mm. I really like this point about methodology versus, um, the use of these, uh, advanced tools. And I also got it from what you say that you don't really worry about. Um, uh, your future. I mean, there's, there's, there's still gonna be a role for people like you, even with these, uh, with these tools, right? It's still going to be there regardless of some people who thought when they saw there's this thing called ai, which is gonna take over.

What reassures me is that many of the answers I get from ai, uh, aren't that good, and in some cases absolutely misleading and garbage. Um, so that means that the role of the analyst is going to be even more important into sifting or filtering through all that noise to find the right information. So we're gonna see an increase in, uh, in, in that importance.

And do, do you see, actually, when you say, you know, o you o often don't get, you get like kind of un under underwhelming uh, responses. Is it, does it differ across, I dunno if you use, you probably use at least the, the, these languages that you teach, Arabic, Chinese, English, that does it. Is there, is there a difference in terms of, uh, how, how, uh, yeah, what responds you get?

It does. And the same with Google, when you search in a foreign language or in English, English is still the leading language online. You're gonna, you're gonna hear different, uh, different narratives and slight changes in the way it's being pre, um, presented to you by depending what kind of AI model model you get.

I find that very personally, I find that very interesting because looking at all, uh, the conflicts that are happening the, these days. If we only focus on one kind of source in one language, we're gonna hear the same narrative, whether it's about Venezuela, whether it's about the Middle East, about Ukraine, about uh, Taiwan, et cetera.

If you change, but there it is. How much time do you have? Right? How much effort do you wanna put into this? The way, uh, sources in North Africa or people in North Africa, middle East? Look at the con, the conflicts I mentioned is gonna be very different than the way, um, other people look at, at, uh, these, uh, these, these conflicts.

Uh, that I find that very interesting because even if, uh, it means that I have to read. Something with may, which may be challenges, my ideas that still, that still heightens my information position by by reading other perspective. I find that very important and unfortunately even with all the information we can get at.

Philip, uh, I think you agree with that with me, is that people just still stick to a bias and stick to 1, 2, 3 sources and find it difficult to go uncomfortably into different narratives because they just might find, uh, yeah. Different ways that, that people that don't always see the same as, uh, as us maybe challenge biases.

Yeah, so I, I mean, you, I mean, I, I anticipate the, the, the response, but, uh, uh, do you, do you still see value in learning foreign languages in 2026? Of course. I mean, just out of a personal perspective, languages have brought me so much, uh, so much joy for me. When I'm going somewhere, I'm able to speak in a, in a foreign language, even if it's a bit broken.

Uh, I love that. I, uh, I have once or twice in, or a couple of times in different countries. I actually wasn't able to speak that, that language. And you feel, uh, for me, I, I felt like a bit, a bit helpless. Um, so is there a need to learn languages if your question is, is not related to osint in general? Yes, of course.

Languages, build bridges because when you learn a language, you don't only learn how to communicate. You also invariably dive into. History, culture, et cetera. And that, I think that's very important. People need to, uh, we all need to be looking at other cultures and just, uh, especially in these, these horrible times where, where we're all being hyper-focused and there's an increase in people being ex, uh, extremely nationalistic.

I think there's nothing more important than just, um, reaching out to people. Um, bridging, understanding different cultures in terms of osint, do you need to learn a language to do osint? I think that, let's, let's, let's unpack that one. If you, if you choose to learn a language because you might get a job or because you've been selected for a job, I'm not sure if that's the right motivator.

How long are you gonna be in that job? Um, because learning a language is just not some, it's not something you just do in a few weeks. It's an investment in time. It's like a relation. You have to, you have to pour, you have to pour attention and love into it, and then it goes away. It's the same as. Uh, as working out.

If you do not train that muscle group, then, then the same with your brain, with languages, it's just gonna fade. So, um, making a decision to learn a language, uh, definitely yes, it can help with Osint, but I would not learn a language just for osint. Learn a language because you're interested in it. Try it out.

There's so many applications out there to try a, a language out, and before you really get passionate with that language, before you have that click with the language. Ask yourself if this is really something you want go down to. And then, yeah, when you, once you start investing time and learning a language and you're able to actually communicate with people, even if you mess up your grammar pronunciation, it's, uh, it's every time.

It's, it's very re rewarding to be able to do that. I find it one of the most enjoyable things out there. But, but do you, do you believe that you can be as effective in when we, you know, uh, when we talk about the, the osint, not, not just on a personal level, uh, as effective as an Osint investigator in Arabic without knowing the language, uh, but just know, you know, just knowing how to research in Arabic in many cases.

Yes. Uh, I'll, I'll, I'll let you know the, the first time I taught the, the Arabic course. Uh, the first people who joined were, I was hoping for just English speakers, but of course I was very lucky. And, and again, my, my Arabic is really not good, but good enough to explain how to use it online. And of course, the people who joined my class, of course, were not English speakers.

They were all people from the Middle East, uh, journalists and researchers who already. Who have Arabic as a mother tongue. So for me, a massive imposter syndrome. The first thing I thought before, uh, logging in to teach was, well, what the hell am I going to be teaching them if they already speak the language?

And then, and then they say, oh, wait a minute. When you, once you start talking about how to use that language online and separate things and use those letters in an online form. Uh, when they say, when they send you messages or when they say, oh, I didn't know that about my language. Uh, either did do that to make me feel less silly and weaken my imposter syndrome, but I get the feeling that it, it helps, um, uh, a a lot.

So, to answer your question again, um, many times in our courses, people join our courses who already ha speak a language or have grown up with a second language or have invested time to learn that language. And like I said previously, it's not because somebody speaks a language that they're able to also know how to research in that language.

If you look around you, your friends family and you, you see how they search for something in English or whatever other languages we speak, you look over your shoulder, over their shoulder and you're tempted to tell them, and that's not how you research online. You're tempted to correct them because you actually know these, these tricks of osint.

Um, so let use that. In, in many cases, actually, people find information more accurately and faster if they just stick to methodology compared to somebody who's a native speaker, but just doesn't know how to, to research online yet, it certainly helps, right? I mean, especially if you dive into more thick narratives, like long political text, technical documents, et cetera.

If you speak the language a hundred percent, that's gonna help you so much. But in finding content, um, it will help you, but not per se. And are there, are there major differences, you know, in, in tho those, at least those languages that you teach in terms of how easy it is to find information without really knowing the language?

Yeah, so we, we usually stick to one methodology, which we applied to the three languages courses. We do Russian, Arabic, and Chinese. We also have a course which focuses on how to search online in general using foreign languages. And in general we use the same methodology and then. We add building blocks, special building blocks for for Chinese, for Arabic and Russian.

Uh, so some, some instances we spend a bit more time on some things and a bit less time on other things. For example, with Arabic, the, the section we spend a lot of time in is explaining how naming conventions are right in English or in Europe or in the US you would have John Smith. There's only a couple of ways you can write John Smith, right, Jonathan Smith, Smith, John, et cetera.

If you're looking at naming conventions in Middle East and North Africa, they can be very, very long indeed. Especially if you start transliterating those from Arabic to English, uh, moham with one MAU, an m an O, that that makes difference. And again, again, I'm going back to details. If you know where somebody is from.

Have a look how people usually spell and transliterate their name, the people, how people will write the name Moham, for example, in Nigeria, it's gonna be a bit different from, uh, Tunisia, et cetera. So the, the, the details are, are very important. So we, for example, for the Arabic part or naming convention, we spend at least three hours explaining all the different variations.

And, uh, luckily for example, in Chinese is quite straightforward, uh, it's quite easy to search for. For Chinese names because there's not so many different versions of searching online, uh, for names. Cool. I will make sure to put the, uh, eye intelligence link in the, in the show notes. Is there any other, uh, besides the, the, the company website, any other kind of social media account or, or platform where people can reach out?

Just a website and people can follow me on LinkedIn. I post a lot about our courses. I post a lot about languages. My other passion of course. So if people can osint me, I'm quite ible. Uh, LinkedIn is a place where people can, can reach out to me and, and ask me questions about language and Osint or my colleagues.

And I know they're also passionate to answer these all questions related to language and osint. Alright, one, one last question. What, what uh, languages are you learning at the moment? Japanese. Uh, and it's not easy. It is not, um, I chose Japanese because. People said, it's one of the most difficult ones. So I thought, yeah, I'm, I'm gonna have to do that.

But it's, uh, it's good fun. So I talk, I talk a lot about discipline and how to research languages on an Instagram page. I give tips on that, and I gotta say, I've been failing the last few weeks because the work is keeping me quite busy with everything happening in the world. So I'm, I'm, I'm a bit failing, but I'll pick it up again.

Uh, here we go next week. So, consistency. Uh, but it's, it's, it's a tough one. It's a tough one. I very, very ambitious, but I'm excited. Maybe next time we speak, uh, um, I'm, I'm sure you'll be hopefully fluent by the time that is not gonna happen.

Alright. But thank you. Thank you very much for your time, skip. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Yeah, good. Good luck with the Japanese and all your projects. Thank you very much for your time as well. Uh, great questions.