CORONA and the Competitive Advantage of Multidisciplinary Intelligence
In the emergent days of the Cold War, the United States relied on defectors, double agents, spies, and other types of human assets to gain information about the machinations behind the Iron Curtain. Then came the U2 spy plane, giving the burgeoning U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) the ability to see and either corroborate or disprove the human intelligence (HUMINT) that agencies like the CIA had collected. Despite the high altitude flights, the U2 was not invisible to radar, and on one specific occasion, not immune from surface-to-air missiles (Lowenthal 2025). In its time, CORONA, the world’s first photographic reconnaissance satellite, was a technological revolution. It gave the United States the ability to see without being seen. Its declassification decades after its shelf life was hard fought, even still (Ruffner 1996). But CORONA was not immune to the laws of nature; cloud cover or a deviation in the requirements of mechanical photography could nullify any advantage this new tool provided (Cloud 2001). As such, the USIC must rely on a multi-pronged approach of collaborative, multidisciplinary intelligence, using the best tools for the job or risk disasters ranging from embarrassing diplomatic events to damning intelligence failures resulting in loss of life.
CORONA may have revolutionized the data that the USIC could collect, but geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), and all other forms of intelligence in isolation can only tell a specific slice of the story. James Clapper’s “[intelligence] is things in places” (Lowenthal 2025) applies to GEOINT, as well. The USIC could now see Soviet airstrips, but the level of fidelity was somewhat limited. Resolution was measured in meters, not feet or inches as it is today. GEOINT on this scale is also extremely cost prohibitive. During the Cold War, the national security warranted spending at these levels due to the potential of existential threat from the Soviet Union. In the modern world, the appetite to launch a massive, expensive, and secret reconnaissance satellite program might be muted given the alternatives in the technological landscape (Lowenthal 2025).
While GEOINT can illuminate a “what” and “where,” HUMINT can offer a “why.” HUMINT can give intelligence analysts a look at the thought process behind these actions and provide a clear train of thought to the events as they unfold and identify those responsible. The drawback is that HUMINT, when accepted on its face and without criticism, can avoid the scrutiny of objectivity. Information alone is not intelligence; information needs to be analyzed, interpreted, and corroborated to be considered intelligence. One of the largest catastrophes in USIC’s history centered around the human asset, codenamed Curveball. Curveball asserted that Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi government was building mobile weapons units. Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations hinged on Curveball as the primary human source for their mobile biological weapons labs case. Unfortunately, Curveball turned out to have fabricated his entire story, reading about weapons inspections from the UN’s own website and passing it off as his own, secret knowledge (Drogin 2007; Chulov and Pidd 2011). Curveball’s story damaged the credibility and working relationships between the CIA and DIA while the US toppled and occupied a regime looking for mobile biological weapons factories that did not exist.
Open-source intelligence (OSINT), ironically, is what Curveball used against his German handlers (Drogin 2007). This method of intelligence collection relies on publicly available or purchasable data, while its sibling, signals intelligence (SIGINT) relies on digital, radio, or other technological intelligence. While CORONA gave the USIC a technological cutting edge, SIGINT and OSINT offer the possibility of intel superiority through volume. Lowenthal (2025) refers to this as a vacuum problem, however. Vast amounts of information require vast amounts of analysis, curation, and, when dealing with US persons, careful legal or oversight guardrails.
In today’s USIC, there are multiple tools for every job. HUMINT, GEOINT, SIGINT, measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) and other “INTS” play crucial supporting roles to provide intelligence analysts and agencies with a complete picture of the national security landscape. As Curveball shows, danger lurks when one intelligence discipline is favored, uncritically. Put plainly: when ‘INT’ is a hammer, everything can look like a nail. Intelligence collection becomes more valuable when disparate pieces can come together to support, corroborate, or even contradict each other. Emerging threats to national security won’t be singularly focused, they will require coordination across disciplines, obtaining information from wherever it is and building an analytical framework to deal with them.
The Russo-Ukrainian and Myanmar conflicts offer a glimpse into a world where MASINT must work with SIGINT for drone and counter-drone warfare. The United States’ drone program has operated with impunity against overmatched opponents, but as Calcara et al. (2022) argues, in peer- and near-peer, RF-denied environments like these modern battlefields, technology alone might not be a deciding factor. Radiofrequency MASINT plays a key role in the collection of drone and UAV RF frequencies as part of the continuing cat-and-mouse game of counter-drone conflict (Graceffo 2025). Because these drones require some telemetry to operate (Calcara et al. 2022), MASINT about specific frequencies, cadence, and signatures would prove invaluable. For on-the-ground wars, like a hypothetical Sino-Taiwanese war, MASINT and SIGINT will play a key role in finding an advantage in an RF and signal-contested environment. However, they must be folded into the entire collection picture to provide the most complete insight into the adversarial landscape.