Nongovernmental actors that conduct intelligence collection, analysis and operations increasingly are being shown to operate in parallel and at times in place of traditional intelligence agencies. This creates a more complex informational, analytic and operational environment that offers tradeoffs for policymakers. A variety of nonstate actors, including for-profit companies, private groups and even individuals, always have provided intelligence functions. Recent news coverage and broader global trends — such as diffusion of open-source information, online social media and digital capabilities — are drawing growing attention to their activities. Bellingcat , an international collective of independent researchers, has made headlines multiple times in recent years for its open-source investigations of high-profile incidents that provide strong evidence for assumptions that had yet to be confirmed, at least in public, by government officials. Most recently, its 2020 investigation of the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny provided robust proof of Russian culpability.