Cardinal Insights

Focusing on the public safety implications of emerging technologies

We research emerging technologies, harms, and threats. This work shapes public safety and security missions, grounding innovation and informing policy and operations for government departments, regulators, policing, and others.

Human intelligence for confident decision making

Human intelligence is central to our work. We complement our own experience by identifying, engaging, and challenging independent subject matter experts who cut through hype to get to the heart of the matter. We harness original thought, deep topic knowledge, and real-world practical experience, combining it with futures thinking to develop actionable insight and succinct recommendations. This human intelligence is often unpublished and otherwise inaccessible. It provides the evidence base to help our customers make defendable decisions, be confident in their foresight, ensure innovation survives contact with reality, and ultimately to exert strategic influence. While our methodology can be applied broadly, we have particular strength in deepfakes, disinformation, future crime, online harms, and the malicious applications of AI.

Partnerships built on intellectual honesty

We form close partnerships with our customers, taking on their challenges as our own, acting as trusted advisors and critical friends. We prioritise intellectual honesty, even when findings are challenging or provocative. Alongside deep research, we help our customers interpret breaking news and emerging trends with rapid conversational insights, clarifying complexity without losing nuance.

Collaborative delivery

Cardinal has developed a lean distributed approach that shortens time to value, working at the pace of a tech sprint not an academic cycle. We provide expertise direct, with our market intelligence partners, or via the Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE), a Home Office capability within the Homeland Security Group. We are part of the Vivace community, and are JOSCAR registered.