Geospatial Intelligence in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: The Democratized Analyst-Operative and the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (Geopolitics and Defense)

In 2016, placing a single control point on a migration corridor required a state's imagery contracts, trained analysts, and an institutional intelligence pipeline. Ten years later, a satellite feed is a free API call, a GIS platform is a free download, and an AI system can read a satellite image and answer a question about it directly.

This book asks what happens to structured intelligence analysis once those tools are no longer scarce.

Built around a master's thesis on the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) and the Greece–North Macedonia migration corridor, this revised and expanded edition traces three converging developments — open data, accessible software, and AI-assisted reasoning — that have moved meaningful geospatial intelligence work from institutions toward individuals.

The original 2016 case study is preserved exactly as conducted, dated and labeled as historical. Around it, this edition adds:

• A current review of geospatial AI and the research shaping it, including a frank look at where the technology still falls short
• An engagement with a decade of critical research on the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses technique
• An updated legal and humanitarian framework grounding the border-management case in binding international and domestic law
• A new closing chapter documenting a working AI-assisted fire-detection and incident-reporting pilot system, built single-handedly and piloted with Macedonian forestry and police authorities

Every claim in this book is sourced, dated, and weighed against its own limitations — including the ones the author built.

Whether you are a student of intelligence analysis, a security studies researcher, or simply curious what artificial intelligence is doing to a field that used to require a national budget, this book offers a grounded, evidence-based answer.