ISHPI

Language and Regional Expertise and Culture (LREC) Services

Foreign language proficiency, regional expertise, and cultural knowledge are critical competencies essential to DoD missions, and ISHPI’s LREC competencies have been indispensable in penetrating cultural barriers and understanding unfamiliar, ambiguous, and seemingly irrational behaviors to develop accurate adversarial representations.

Our adversaries do not live in intellectual stovepipes, and ISHPI’s LREC analysts conduct open-source exploitation in foreign languages with the linguistic proficiency (up to a 4/4 Defense Language Proficiency Test score) and deep cultural understanding required to research, analyze, and operationally contextualize materials in foreign languages.

ISHPI delivers teams of analysts who effectively, efficiently and accurately research, analyze and report on open-source information in the target languages. These include professionals with specific academic expertise in relevant anthropological fields; analysts experienced in performing global security assessments and associated cultural studies; former military analysts with proven area of responsibility and mission expertise; and analysts with diverse focus areas and extensive overseas experience in applicable geographic regions—along with the requisite foreign language proficiency.

For the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) and U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), ISHPI personnel designed and implemented an interdisciplinary solution to identify the most pertinent sources of information from among the hundreds of social media sites available, including those in foreign languages without Western regional equivalents. ISHPI analysts are knowledgeable regarding unfamiliar regional cultures, many of which were long suppressed by foreign domination and others that are simply resistant to the 21st century global system. These sites, such as Maktoob (for Arabic-language analysts with a Middle East focus) and Cloob (for Farsi-language analysts with an Iranian focus), are critical for understanding current civilian perspectives on social, political, economic, and conflict issues affecting Counter-IED operations.