At the recent South America in Competition Conference hosted by the Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI) and Carahsoft, leaders from the public and private sectors gathered to examine the growing role of adversarial networks in the Western Hemisphere and the critical importance of open-source intelligence (OSINT) in countering them.

The Adversary Networks and OSINT panel, hosted by David Cook, brought together Dr. Ryan Berg from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Quantifind cofounder John Stockton, and VP of Government Phil Fuster of SpyCloud to discuss how governments and companies alike can illuminate hidden influence, financial corruption, and infrastructure compromise across South America.

Great Power Competition in the Global South

The panel opened with a stark geopolitical reminder: South America is no longer a peripheral theater of competition. As Dr. Berg explained, “In many ways, this is a Latin America-first administration. They recognize the U.S. can’t be prosperous unless its immediate and shared neighborhood is also safe, prosperous, and economically integrated.” 

He emphasized the need to define which sectors the U.S. should prioritize in its economic competition with China. “We’ve got the best AI, we’ve got great ICT infrastructure, but we haven’t outlined the areas where we have comparative advantage.” Berg noted that China has been clearer about its goals: “The Chinese have done this. They’ve laid out the ABCs of competition in the next round of competition with the U.S. They’re focused on what they call ‘new infrastructure’ and trying to get most of the global south, which includes Latin America, Africa, and much of Southeast Asia partnered mostly with them.”

The Role of OSINT and Commercial Intelligence

Panelists argued that to keep pace with adversaries, the U.S. must leverage open-source intelligence and commercially available data, not just classified sources. “If we’re going to engage heavily with the foreign private sector as a competitive advantage,” said Stockton, “then we have to know that space intimately via OSINT. What we [Quantifind] do as a company is take all of the publicly and commercially available information, use AI to do the entity resolution, relationship extraction, and risk labeling, then build a knowledge graph that serves as a map of which entities to trust… who to lean in on and who to avoid.”

He added that discovering foreign incentives is key. “There’s a global alignment problem between our private and public sectors. You need OSINT to granularly map where there are connections to foreign entities and other signals of risk, from sanctions to money laundering to help cover the defensive use cases.”

Stockton highlighted critical new guidance from the intelligence community, in the form of ICS 206-01, which provides directions for private industry to produce OSINT itself, with proper citation and provenance. “The new ICS 206 is starting to allow private industry to produce actual OSINT. It’s setting futureproof standards in a good way, so the government can necessarily move more of the analysis of data upstream to partners.”

From Financial Flows to Digital Dust

The panel shifted to financial crime, spotlighting how Chinese criminal networks are now deeply embedded in South America’s money laundering ecosystem. “Chinese organizations have become some of the best money launderers in the region,” Berg said. “They operate through diaspora networks and bank accounts that stretch from the region back to the mainland.”

SpyCloud’s Phil Fuster emphasized the role of digital identity in tracking bad actors. “There’s always a person behind the keyboard. They reuse passwords, get infected with malware, and leave behind digital dust.”

Stockton elaborated on how open-source data reveals financial exposure. “Criminals can’t hide in the dark forever. They have to launder from the dark realm to the light realm, and that’s where you get them.”

OSINT-Based Diplomacy

Beyond enforcement, the panel highlighted OSINT’s role in strategic influence and diplomacy. “We need to use OSINT as a resource to do a form of ‘intelligence based diplomacy’,” said Stockton. “We can do this across Africa, South America, and the rest of the global south, helping allies avoid exploitation by adversaries by exposing illegal fishing, illegal mining, wildlife trafficking, or any other form of resource exploitation.”

He explained how the sharability of OSINT can amplify the effectiveness of collaborations and help governments stay aligned with their partners. “What’s critical is that OSINT is open, so you can basically deputize the whole of society in the fight against non-controversial problems, not just companies like Quantifind, but NGOs and others. Because OSINT is sharable, that enables a huge opportunity to get that force multiplier from the rest of society.”

A Call for Smarter Collaboration

The panel ended with a push for more structured, standards-based collaboration between government and industry. Stockton argued that the government should be demanding of industry in terms of transparency and interoperability, to simultaneously avoid lock-in and promote continuous competition.

He added that regulators need to define ownership of new enforcement regimes, including tariffs and trade compliance. “If you don’t have teeth, nobody cares [about tariff enforcement and evasion]. The AML regulatory system is strong and has deputized banks in the fight, and you could make the analogy to tariffs by establishing more clear ownership of [tariff] regulations and OSINT itself.”

Berg concluded with a challenge to the audience: “We need a phrase that’s better than ‘debt trap diplomacy’ that’s analytically descriptive of what Latin America countries feel when they get indebted to China.”

Summary

The South America in Competition Conference highlighted a new truth: intelligence is no longer the exclusive domain of the government agencies. With the right tools, OSINT produced by public and private institutions alike can expose hidden risks, support democratic institutions, and strengthen ties with allies.

Quantifind is proud to help illuminate adversary networks and strengthen financial intelligence through our AI-powered risk platform. Want to learn more about how Quantifind supports public and private sector efforts? Contact us to schedule a conversation.