Case Study: Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office detects gray-zone threats with KNIME

Applying Tensor Completion to the Study of Inter-State Competition and Irregular Conflict

The Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, a U.S. government organization focused on combating terrorism and irregular adversaries, needed a better way to detect gray-zone conflict signals hidden in open-source data. Working with KNIME Analytics Platform, the team aimed to make sense of noisy, fast-changing information such as news, social media, economic, cyber, and demographic data, while reducing manual cleanup and human bias.

KNIME helped enable VANE, the Virtual Anticipatory Network developed by partner BigBear.ai, using tensor completion and custom nodes to analyze 14 open-source databases and 660 metrics in a single workflow environment. The solution was shown to be effective at detecting information operations, cyber campaigns, and other indirect influence activities, and it improved the team’s ability to deliver quantitative insights for decision makers, with more than 15 custom nodes built to extend the platform.

Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office

Curtis Fox

Advanced Analytics Team