Civilian technologies, particularly OSINT, social media data, and satellite imagery are important for modern warfare, but they are complementary and will not replace old intelligence methods.

This was stated by Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, in a conversation with Mick Ryan, a military strategist and retired Major General of the Australian Army.

The head of the Ukrainian intelligence service noted that information from open data can indeed be useful, for example, to confirm the effectiveness of operations. However, for this to happen, someone must be in the right place with a camera and publish images or videos on social media. According to Kyrylo Budanov, in many cases, this does not happen.