UT Austin GDIL Team Featured on NGA’s Tearline.mil

On August 29th, the Global Disinformation Lab’s Tearline team published “Analyzing Strategic Value of Chinese-Built Infrastructure Projects in Papua New Guinea” on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Tearline.mil page. It was also picked up by the ODNI’s Intel.gov and spotlighted on The Public’s Daily Brief. The paper follows two Chinese infrastructure projects in Papua New Guinea. One (Momote Airport) was significant due to its proximity (6 km) to a naval base heavily occupied by the U.S. and Australia. The other was significant due to the disproportional level of Chinese financial investment in a project that included plans to build a naval and military base. The team used satellite imagery to tell the story of what could or couldn’t be seen in comparison to open-source articles and press.

GDIL’s Tearline-Asia Team is lead by Kim Nguyen and composed of 7 students, including co-author Varij Shah. You can read the full report here.