Google Trends is not marketed as an intelligence tool. It is presented as a utility for marketers and journalists trying to understand what people are searching for. But the data it surfaces—aggregated, anonymized, and publicly accessible—has properties that make it useful for open source intelligence work: it is behaviorally derived, it is difficult to falsify, and it updates in near real time. What people search for under conditions of stress, uncertainty, or crisis reflects what they actually believe and fear, not what they say in surveys or state media.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity released five new research programs in early 2026 under its Emerging Technology Accelerator framework, a procurement mechanism designed to move from solicitation to award faster than standard acquisition channels allow. The five programs — ARCADE, COSMIC, DECIPHER, LOCUS, and MOVES — were introduced at an IARPA Proposers’ Day in January attended by more than 550 participants, a turnout that reflects the degree to which commercial AI firms are now treating intelligence community research funding as a primary market rather than a secondary one.