Criminal enterprises and terrorist groups are becoming more sophisticated and capable every day. National security threats including drug trafficking, forced labor and financial scam rings from sub-state organizations like drug cartels are becoming more difficult to address because they are increasingly being run like legitimate businesses.

These sub-state organizations often have structured processes, a current strategy and even key performance indicators. But intelligence officers have a new tool that is gaining prominence in fighting crime: business activity intelligence, or BizINT.

What Is BizINT?

Jason Lee, Moody’s senior director and chief intelligence officer, told ExecutiveGov in an exclusive interview that BizINT, or digital footprints left behind by bad actors, provides insights through publicly-available business records about how bad actors utilize legitimate professional activities to serve the interest of parallel criminal activity.

The use of BizINT is growing so fast in the intelligence community that it has been coined by units in the Office of Naval Intelligence, or ONI, and the Department of Treasury. BizINT, Lee said, provides extremely valuable targeting activities that further the discovery of new entities and people. It also provides tips and cues for where an investigation should go next.

Be the first to learn about the newest crime-fighting tools in intelligence at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Intel Summit on October 2! Learn about the latest threats to U.S. national security at the “Addressing the Triple D of Bad Actor Threats – Disproportionality, Disinformation, and Deception” panel discussion, moderated by Lee. Discover the latest in how the federal government is thinking about industry partnerships. Sign up today for this prestigious GovCon event and prepare for increased revenues in FY 2026! Use the promocode Intel25AI for a 10 percent discount.

How Is BizInt Used?

Lee said BizINT also provides substantial contextual information, or the “how” and “why” behind criminal schemes. These are non-obvious gaps in fragmented pieces of classified information that agencies collect through clandestine means.

“The one thing intelligence professionals need to keep in mind with BizINT is that it can be used to address non-financial crime issues as much as it can with obvious financial crime problems such as anti-money laundering and threat finance,” Lee shared.

What makes BizINT even more valuable, Lee said, is that sub-state organizations are patient and think longer-term than individuals, who can be impulsive. Organizations can also have associations with governments, either officially or with corrupt officials, without a witting legitimate government.

“[Criminal] organizations have a support system that facilitates obfuscation much earlier and [provides] the ability for global reach to operate in countries [where] unsuspecting victims don’t think it is even possible for such bad actors to have a presence,” Lee said.

BizINT’s value to investigations is large but often understated: it can provide insight to not only financial crimes such as money laundering, but also to physical crimes with a financial core such as human smuggling, terrorism, counterfeiting and more. Importantly, BizINT’s detail is sufficient enough to allow investigators to conduct pattern and trend analysis.

Learn More About BizINT at the 2025 Intel Summit

Threats from bad actors in intelligence is a dynamic and fast-moving topic. At the 2025 Intel Summit, attendees of the “Addressing the Triple D of Bad Actor Threats – Disproportionality, Disinformation, and Deception” panel discussion will dig into countering adversary tactics built on misdirection and strategic surprise. They’ll also be part of the conversation about understanding how “Triple D” challenges vary across signals, geospatial and open-source intelligence disciplines and how to build resilient frameworks to disrupt information at speed.

Find out more about our industry-leading panel participants:

Jason Lee (moderator)

Senior director & chief intelligence officer, Moody’s

Lee possesses 30 years of expertise in national security analysis and the investigation of financial crimes. For 17 years, he was employed as an intelligence analyst with the FBI, during which he was detailed to the CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. Lee ultimately achieved the position of senior national intelligence officer, a senior executive role within the federal government. Previously, Lee was also associated with UBS and Guidehouse and he established the security consulting firm ThreatPlaybook in 2018.

Austin Wang

Vice president of intelligence, MITRE

Wang spearheads MITRE’s initiatives to foster comprehensive, collaborative and multi-agency solutions. He integrates efforts across the IC and the broader national security framework while also influencing MITRE’s, and the nation’s, approach to addressing national security issues.

With nearly three decades of experience in leadership roles within the IC, Wang became part of MITRE in 2022 after dedicating 21 years to the CIA, where he most recently served as a senior executive and led clandestine technical operations.

During his time at the CIA, he oversaw the human intelligence, or HUMINT, technology office for the directorate of science and technology, a.k.a DS&T. Wang also managed a global organization within the intelligence community, overseeing comprehensive activities related to unique intelligence, encompassing collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination.

Joe Landino

[Retired] chief information officer and director of mission systems, National Counterterrorism Center

Landino committed 40 years to U.S. national security efforts in roles both in and out of government. He was an officer in the Air Force, held the title of vice president at two major technology research and development companies, and worked in the CIA’s senior intelligence service, overseeing technology development and operations in the geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, open-source intelligence, a.k.a. OSINT, and counter-terrorism fields. He also completed assignments at agencies including the National Reconnaissance Office; the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency; and the National Counterterrorism Center.

David Marlowe

Vice president at Amentum, former CIA deputy director

Marlowe spent more than 30 years at the CIA, mostly living and working across the Middle East. Most recently, he served as the deputy director of CIA operations, supervising the operational workforce and global clandestine intelligence collection activity.

Marlowe earlier served as assistant director of the CIA for the near east, managing all CIA work such as intelligence collection and analysis related to the Middle East and north Africa.

Catherine Aucella

[Retired] National Security Agency executive director

Aucella spent 41 years at the NSA, ultimately serving as the executive director, the second-highest civilian position within the agency. In this capacity, she collaborated with the NSA’s director and deputy director to lead the agency’s global operations and to represent the NSA at numerous external engagements.

These included the IC, congressional committees, industry representatives, academia and various professional organizations. Aucella was responsible for directing strategic initiatives and corporate responses to the nation’s most intricate cryptologic challenges and requirements.

Aucella began her NSA career as a linguist and intelligence analyst. She later held numerous operational and corporate leadership roles. Notable achievements in her career include overseeing NSA’s Office of Counterterrorism in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, acting as senior liaison and chief of the NSA’s integrated workforce at the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

Dr. Dan Taninecz Miller

Director of NLP & LLMs at BigBear.ai

Taninecz Miller is an AI and machine learning director and practitioner focused on national language, information campaigns and geopolitics. His doctoral research examined using computational tools to analyze issues including state-sponsored propaganda on social media, Chinese international foreign investment policy and extremist group behavior on YouTube.

As a computational social scientist, Taninecz Miller has used programming languages such as Python and R to treat “text as data” and evaluate large collections of qualitative data in new ways. As principal data scientist at BigBear.ai, he works to use large language models, or LLMs, and other national language processing, a.k.a NLP, models to better understand national language data.