Beirut Port Explosion
In the past this kind of material would be collected and analyzed by state intelligence services.Combined by allies and used to gain leverage for individual or combined strategic priorities.Something like, “Here is how negligent you were. Install this person in power or we leak this and your people revolt and you won’t be able to walk away.”More recently, it seems, some news organizations have begun assembling reports using modeling and expert analysis.A good example is The NY Times report on Philadelphia Police use of tear gas against a group of trapped protestors. [1]Having this information about the Beirut warehouse explosion open-sourced so-to-speak, seems to signal a further shift away from reliance on state intelligence and the advertising-funded third state.This reminds me some of the collected content created and posted to social media by the public in the aftermath of the downing of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752. That loose set of content eventually forced the Iranian government to admit responsibility.I’d presume that the quality and speed of independent research and analysis of public data will increase to where a scene of non-media, ngo  research groups grows, beating out the resources of any given media or government.Sort of like warez, but with information analysis.[1] https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007174941/philadelphi...