Interview with Matt Makowski about Nostradamus Disinformation

Maciej “Matt” Makowski is a veteran of An Garda Siochana (Ireland’s National Police and Security Service), where he specialized in intelligence and cyber-crime. He was the first foreign national to be admitted to the highly selective police service and worked there over a decade. After retiring early in 2019, he currently is employed in the private sector in the information security industry. Matt operates the very interesting OSINT ME (osintme.com) blog which has a focus on open source intelligence methods (I’ve even found the site useful for my day job).

Recently I reached out to Matt noting that he had written in February about the utilization of the novel coronavirus in the context of nation state (dis)information warfare . Of specific interest to me, he traced using open source web data how a false Nostradamus prophecy was utilized by the misleadingly-named pro-Kremlin website Ukrainia.ru, which is actually based in Russia. This kind of insight on Nostradamus in disinformation lines up very closely with my observations from prior research.

In order to promote continued awareness about Nostradamus’ use in Russian information warfare, I reached out to Matt to share some of my papers. A question and answer session over email ensued about my perspectives on the subject. I found this an enjoyable experience and hope you will visit Matt’s blog to check it out. You may also learn a lot about open source intelligence in the process.

Nostradamus Prophecies and their Links to Russia @ OSINT ME