The Triangulation Method

Triangulation is the foundational verification technique: no claim is accepted as verified until it is confirmed by at least three independent sources from at least two different tiers. The name comes from navigation — a single bearing tells you direction, two bearings tell you a line, three bearings tell you a position. Intelligence works the same way. A single source gives you a hypothesis. Two sources give you a correlated signal. Three sources give you a verified finding.

The "independent" requirement is critical. Three news articles all citing the same press release are one source, not three. Three analyst reports all using the same data set are one source with three interpretations. Independence means the sources acquired their information through different channels, used different methodologies, and have no upstream dependency on each other. A patent filing, a job posting, and an earnings call comment that all point to the same strategic direction — those are three genuinely independent sources, and that convergence is what high-confidence intelligence looks like.

1. Identify the Claim Be precise about what you are verifying. "Company X is expanding into healthcare" is vague. "Company X is building a healthcare-specific product team in Boston targeting hospital systems" is specific enough to verify or falsify. Specificity makes triangulation possible.
2. Find Source One The first source establishes the hypothesis. Note the tier, the date, and the specific claim. Do not start analyzing — just document what this source says and what it does not say.
3. Find Source Two (Different Tier) The second source must come from a different tier and a different information channel. If Source One was a news article (Tier C), Source Two should be a job posting (Tier A) or an earnings call (Tier B). Cross-tier confirmation eliminates the possibility that you are reading the same information recycled through different outlets.
4. Find Source Three (Independent) The third source must be fully independent of the first two — different origin, different methodology, different information chain. This is the hardest step and the most valuable. When three genuinely independent sources converge on the same conclusion, you have a verified finding.