Janes

In this podcast culture expert Satgin Hamrah joins Harry Kemsley and Sean Corbett to discuss why understanding culture is crucial in providing context to your intelligence. They explore how ingrained cultural nuances and historical ties influence global security trends, decisions, and behaviours, and why grasping the subtleties of culture is essential for effective engagement and decision making in the defence intelligence community.

Satgin Hamrah is a PhD Candidate in History at Tufts University. Hamrah has a Master of Arts degree in International Relations from Boston University, where her thesis focused on offensive strategies to protect critical infrastructure against terrorism. She also has a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Southern California, with a focus on international development and state formation of post-Soviet states in the Caspian region during the 1990s with a focus on Azerbaijan. Hamrah was a Doctoral Fellow at The Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University between September 2016 and October 2018. She is the founder of the Iran-Iraq War Project.  Using an interdisciplinary and transnational analytical approach, Hamrah explores the complexities of religious and ethnic identity, examining how state and non-state political entrepreneurs shape these identities to advance their interests. Her research also investigates the role of identity in shaping conflict and violence on both state and non-state levels, including wars such as the Iran-Iraq War and the Cold War, as well as acts of terrorism. She also explores the nuances of Islamism and sectarianism, alongside the intricate intersections of trauma, memory, identity, and politics. Hamrah’s research examines how these dynamics shape both local and transnational landscapes, as well as their impact across different temporal and geographic scales.

Satgin Hamrah

PhD Candidate in History at Tufts University

The importance of cultural understanding for OSINT

Explore the crucial role of culture in global security with Harry Kemsley, Sean Corbett, and expert guest Satgin Hamrah on The World of Intelligence podcast. Uncover how deep cultural understanding shapes intelligence analysis. Click to listen!

Janes delivers validated open-source defence intelligence across four core capability areas threat, equipment, defence industry and country that are aligned with workflows across the defence industry, national security and government.

The World of Intelligence

In part two of our podcast, Jenny Town, Rachel Minyoung Lee, and Martin Williams from 38 North and Cristina Varriale from Janes join Harry Kemsley and Sean Corbett to continue to unravel the implications of the new US administration on North Korea’s place on the world stage and how its relationship with Russia might evolve in 2025 and beyond.

Martyn Williams is a Senior Fellow for the Stimson Center’s Korea Program and 38 North. He works on satellite imagery analysis and researches North Korea’s technology, infrastructure, broadcasting, and propaganda. He launched the North Korea Tech website in 2010 and most recently authored reports on the country's digital surveillance infrastructure and smartphone sector.

Martyn Williams

Senior Fellow for the Stimson Center’s Korea Program and 38 North

Cristina Varriale is a Principal Analyst and Manager on the APAC Country Intelligence team at Janes. Before joining Janes in April 2022, Cristina spent six years in the Proliferation and the Nuclear Policy Team at the RUSI think tank, culminating in a short period as acting director. Prior to RUSI, she worked with the International Center for Security Analysis at the Policy Institute, Kings College, London. Her work primarily focuses on researching and analysing North Korea's domestic security and stability, the country's WMD programs, foreign relationships and the implications for security.

Cristina Varriale

Janes Principal Analyst and Manager, APAC

Jenny Town is a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center, Director of Stimson’s Korea Program and the Co-founder and Director of 38 North. Her research areas include North Korea, US-DPRK relations, US-ROK alliance and Northeast Asia regional security. She is also a Visiting Scholar in the Department of East Asia Studies in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at John Hopkins University, an Associate Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a Nonresident Fellow at the European Centre for North Korean Studies, a Member of the National Committee on North Korea, and an Associate Member of the Council of Korean Americans. She serves on the Editorial Board for Inkstick, an online foreign policy journal for emerging scholars. From 2008-2018, she served as the Assistant Director of the US-Korea Institute at SAIS, and as an expert reviewer for Freedom House’s Freedom in the World Index from 2010-2022.

Ms. Town holds a BA in East Asian Studies and International Relations from Westmar University and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. She was named one of Worth Magazine’s “Groundbreakers 2020: 50 Women Changing the World” and one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business in 2019.

Jenny Town

Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center, Director of Stimson’s Korea Program and the Co-founder and Director of 38 North

Rachel Minyoung Lee is a Senior Fellow for the Stimson Center’s Korea Program and 38 North, where she focuses on North Korea’s domestic developments and foreign policy. She is also co-chair of the Steering Committee for the North Korea Economic Forum at the George Washington Institute for Korean Studies. Lee was a North Korean propaganda analyst with Open Source Enterprise in the US government from 2000 to 2019. During that time, she wrote on a broad range of North Korean issues, from leadership, domestic politics and economy, and foreign policy, to social and cultural developments. As Analysis Team Lead, Lee headed a team of collection officers and analysts to collect on, research, and analyse North and South Korean issues with implications for Pyongyang’s regime stability and regional security.

Rachel Minyoung Lee

Unravelling the North Korea Enigma - part two

In the first part of this podcast, Harry Kemsley and Sean Corbett are joined by Jenny Town, Rachel Minyoung Lee, and Martin Williams from 38 North and Cristina Varriale from Janes to take a closer look at North Korea. With South Korea hitting headlines recently following President Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment, the panel discusses North Korea’s reaction to these events and what the new US administration means for US-North Korea relations.

Principal Analyst and Manger, APAC Country Intelligence

Unravelling the North Korea Enigma - part one

In this podcast Janes analysts F Xavier Casals and Claire Chu share their expertise with Harry Kemsley and Sean Corbett to explore the likelihood of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. They discuss the analytic tools and insight they use to provide a framework for indicator and warning analysis and why a non-military invasion may be more likely.

F Xavier Casals is a Lead Analyst within the Northeast Asia and Oceania Country Intelligence team at Janes. He is the primary analyst for China and Taiwan and has been studying China and the wider East Asia region since 2012, specialising in China’s foreign and security policies, China’s politics, and China’s outlook on national security. Xavier has travelled extensively around China, and has spent a year studying and working in the country. He is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and speaks nine other languages at different levels, including Catalan, Spanish, English, Italian, Greek, Farsi, French, Arabic, and German. Xavier holds an MA in Chinese Studies from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and an MA in War Studies from King’s College London.

F Xavier Casals

Lead Analyst - APAC, Janes

Claire Chu is a senior China analyst at Janes Group. She specializes in the geopolitical and national security implications of China’s global economic activity. She recently joined Janes in 2022 after the company’s acquisition of RWR Advisory Group, where she was in the same role, leading the firm’s China practice. Claire launched RWR’s Belt and Road Monitor in 2017, which provides a comprehensive biweekly overview of China’s overseas trade and investment activities and policy developments, and served as the editor until 2020. Claire previously held research roles at think tanks including the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin, Germany, the Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, and the Center for the National Interest in Washington, DC. She has also worked on rule of law and governance issues at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) and at Human Rights Watch. Claire has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and her commentary has been featured in major media outlets in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Voice of America, Foreign Policy, and Nikkei Asia.

Claire Chu

Senior China Analyst, Janes

Likelihood of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan

Harry Kemsley and Sean Corbett reflect on a year packed with podcasts. In the 26 episodes published in 2024, alongside their panel of guests, they explored emerging and current threats, global security trends, and the impact of misinformation, disinformation and artificial intelligence on open-source intelligence and society.

Round up 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models are becoming a mainstay in our daily lives, but how are these tools being used in delivering open-source intelligence? Janes Red Team Analyst Harry Lawson explores the role these tools have in intelligence tradecraft, uncovering the balance between cutting-edge technology and established analytical standards.

 
Harry Lawson is the current Red Team Analyst at Janes. Using established intelligence tradecraft, he has created a red teaming process that assess Janes’ capability to handle and answer complex intelligence-driven customer requirements against other open-source content providers and large language models. He previously managed quality assurance for equipment data as part of Janes’ Defence Data Development team.

Harry Lawson

Red Team Analyst, Janes

Large Language Models (LLMs) cure or curse for OSINT?

Rachel Minyoung Lee, Senior Fellow for the Stimson Center’s Korea Program and 38 North and Cristina Varriale, Janes lead analyst - APAC join Harry Kemsley and Sean Corbett to explore the closed environment of North Korea, its changing strategic allegiances and what the reported deployment of North Korea troops to Russia means for global stability.

Rachel Minyoung Lee is a Senior Fellow for the Stimson Center’s Korea Program and 38 North, where she focuses on North Korea’s domestic developments and foreign policy. She is also co-chair of the Steering Committee for the North Korea Economic Forum at the George Washington Institute for Korean Studies.
 
Lee was a North Korean propaganda analyst with Open Source Enterprise in the US government from 2000 to 2019. During that time, she wrote on a broad range of North Korean issues, from leadership, domestic politics and economy, and foreign policy, to social and cultural developments. As Analysis Team Lead, Lee headed a team of collection officers and analysts to collect on, research, and analyse North and South Korean issues with implications for Pyongyang’s regime stability and regional security

Cristina Varriale is Janes lead analyst on the APAC Country Intelligence team. Before joining Janes in April 2022, Cristina spent six years in the Proliferation and the Nuclear Policy Team at the RUSI think tank, culminating in a short period as acting director. Prior to RUSI, she worked with the International Center for Security Analysis at the Policy Institute, Kings College, London. Her work primarily focuses on researching and analysing North Korea's domestic security and stability, the country's WMD programs, foreign relationships and the implications for securities. 

Recent Episodes

SEASON 1

The importance of cultural understanding for OSINT

Unravelling the North Korea Enigma - part two

Unravelling the North Korea Enigma - part one

Likelihood of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan

Round up 2024

Large Language Models (LLMs) cure or curse for OSINT?

North Korea - The hardest OSINT environment?

About The Show

The World of Intelligence

Harry Kemsley

President of Government & National Security, Janes