Observatory
Open sources, read at scale, and the site where the picture goes public: news, public Telegram channels, transponders, infrastructure, registers, sanctions lists.
- Good for
- Open-source research in one place: news, public channels, transponders, infrastructure, registers and sanctions lists, every source rated for trust and every rating carried into the reading.
- Measured
- Every source carries a trust rating on a four-step scale since August 2026, visible in every reading built on it.
- One dossier, 7 August 2026: 14 primary retrievals and 45 news hits gave three findings that stood in none of the sources alone.
- The public News Deck holds about 13,000 reports from the last four days in six categories.
- Open questions
- Does the trust rating predict which sources later need correcting?
- How much of a region's reporting reaches the inflow?
Observatory
One dot, 2 reports a day, averaged over 7 days. Red: reports without a recorded source.
Public Telegram channels bring 25 percent of each day's reports. A channel posts 21 a day on average, a news feed 44. 287 reports in 7 days arrived without a recorded source; they stay in the count and are marked.
7,585 reports a day from 222 open sources, 53,093 in the window.
Source: Intake counters of the news pipeline, which reads press and public channels alike
Measured 4 Nov 2026, 13:06 UTC
Only what is openly published
- Press. Read by Retina.
- Public Telegram channels. Fed into the same pipeline as the newspapers.
- Transponders, infrastructure, launches. Pulled by the situation picture.
- Registers and sanctions lists. Held alongside the actor graph; the join is not built yet.
The observatory is where open-source work goes public, and open-source work is not one instrument here but a way of working that runs through several of them. The rule is simple: only what is openly published, only through the front door, and always with the source and the date attached. Retina reads the press. A poller watches public Telegram channels and feeds them into the same pipeline as the newspapers, so that a channel post gets the same entities, tone and clustering as a wire story. The situation picture pulls live transponder data from aircraft and ships, maps infrastructure, and tracks rocket launches. Ownership registers and sanctions lists are held alongside the actor graph; joining them to the actors is not built yet.
Every source carries a trust rating on a four-step scale since August 2026: whose interest it serves, how it has held up. That rating travels with each article and is visible in every reading built on top of it.
One dossier, dated 7 August 2026
When a case needs it, the pieces are pulled together into a dossier: primary sources, the news layer, and the lab’s own reading of what the material supports. One such dossier, dated 7 August 2026, on a drone incident at a German airport, drew on 14 primary retrievals and 45 news hits and ended in three findings that stood in none of the sources on their own.
What goes public
- July 2026Defense Intel served behind an access gate
- 3 September 2026Open
- 15 min
- the globe on the front page is exported as a static snapshot every fifteen minutes
What goes public is a site, infinimind.info, called Defense Intel: served since July 2026 behind an access gate, open since 3 September 2026. Its front page is the globe the lab uses inside, exported as a static snapshot every fifteen minutes; behind it the analysis deck, the News Deck, the actor dossiers and the limits page. The situation picture and its analysis deck have their own page; this one is about the sources and the way they are read.
The News Deck
- about 13,000
- reports from the last four days, taken from Retina
- 6
- categories: conflict, security, humanitarian, middle-east, geopol-osint, war-tracking
The News Deck is the research tool on that site. It holds about 13,000 reports from the last four days, taken from Retina in six categories: conflict, security, humanitarian, middle-east, geopol-osint and war-tracking. A reader searches titles in the original and in English and by named entity, narrows by category, language and source, and sees before reading a single story which languages and outlets the result leans on. A report that resolves to a place carries a link to that spot on the globe. The assessment of the day stands above it, as on the analysis deck. A separate feed page holds the longer written analyses, dated and tagged.
What goes in
Measured 2 September 2026The layers of the situation picture, grouped as on its map, plus the text and register sources behind them. Each number says what it counts: the window, the filter, the cap. Backend counts come from the latest snapshot (2026-11-04); the map column shows what the panel displayed at the same time. Where they differ, the row says why.
Air & Sea
| layer | backend | map | what the number means | as of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flights (mil) ADS-B transponders via public mirrors, polled every 30 s | 126 military aircraft on the map | 91 | Military aircraft worldwide plus civil traffic inside the conflict zones; the map label says (mil) but the counter is not filtered to military, that is a label bug found today. The map counts what the live stream has delivered since the page connected; the backend snapshot counts the current graph (568 at 10:33, 173 military). | 04.11.2026 |
| Vessels (live) AIS global stream plus Norwegian and Finnish coastal feeds | 287 vessels in the backend snapshot | 725 | State vessels worldwide (navy, coast guard, rescue, law enforcement) plus all traffic inside the conflict zones; merchant shipping outside is dropped on purpose. The map counter keeps every vessel the live stream has delivered since the page connected, with no expiry, so it grows over hours (725 at 10:23). The backend snapshot counts the current graph (366 to 481 within the same hour). | 04.11.2026 |
Actors & Blocs
| layer | backend | map | what the number means | as of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Defense Actors curated list, joined to the actor graph | 57 actors with a position | 57 | Hand-picked states, forces and groups with coordinates; 29 of them linked to a full profile in the actor graph. The graph itself holds 100 actors with a psychological profile. | 04.11.2026 |
| Defense Firms curated table, tiers 1 to 3 | 20 firms | 20 | Static list of defence manufacturers by tier. Not derived from data. | 04.11.2026 |
| Powerblocks derived from news co-occurrence | 56 actors placed in a bloc | 56 | Emergent geopolitical camps, computed from which actors appear together in the news and whether the relation reads as conflict or alliance (classified by a local language model). One point per actor that can be placed on the map. | 04.11.2026 |
| Tensions (signed) derived, same engine | 27 signed relations | 28 | Edges between actors with a sign: conflict or alliance, with weight and confidence. Drawn as lines between blocs. | 04.11.2026 |
Escalation & Conflict
| layer | backend | map | what the number means | as of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Escalation Bursts Retina entity bursts, geopolitical only | 20 entities over baseline | 8 | Names mentioned far above their own baseline, restricted to geopolitical entities. The snapshot lists 20 candidates; the map shows the 8 with a z-score of 2 or more. | 04.11.2026 |
| DCA-Anomalies derived from the layers on this page | 14 cells, 148 above threshold | 250 | Grid cells where fire and event signals fuse and deviate from their baseline, recomputed every 15 minutes. Volatile by design: 11 to 251 cells within one hour today. A reading, not a source. | 04.11.2026 |
| Conflict Zones defined by the lab | 17 zones | 17 | Bounding boxes that scope most other layers: Ukraine, Russia and its Arctic and East, Iran, Iraq, the Black Sea, Gaza and others. No zone covers the USA or Western Europe; a query outside gets nothing, and that says something about the catalogue, not the world. | 04.11.2026 |
| Conflict Countries derived from the zones | 10 countries | 10 | The countries the zones fall into. | 04.11.2026 |
| Chokepoints defined by the lab | 13 maritime chokepoints | 13 | Straits and passages watched by name: Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, Taiwan Strait, Suwałki, Kaliningrad, Odessa, the northern Red Sea and more. | 04.11.2026 |
| GDELT Events GDELT event stream | 500 events today | 2,806 | Coded events from the public GDELT project since midnight, filtered to the conflict zones. Each carries an event code, a tone and the number of mentions. | 04.11.2026 |
Earth Signals
| layer | backend | map | what the number means | as of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Fires (FIRMS) satellite hotspots, hourly | 0 detections in conflict zones | 500 | Last 24 hours, inside the zones only: 5,522 detections, the map shows the 500 highest-ranked by distance to known infrastructure. 4,391 lie within 2.5 km of a plant, depot, base or port. | 04.11.2026 |
| Earthquakes (USGS) USGS feed, magnitude 2.5 and up | 52 quakes in the last day | 66 | Worldwide, polled every 5 minutes, kept for 7 days. Here because a quake can be a blast and because a blast can look like one. | 04.11.2026 |
Space & SAR
| layer | backend | map | what the number means | as of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Satellites (SatNOGS) public TLE catalogue, propagated locally | 1,460 satellites in orbit | 1,419 | Positions computed every 30 s from orbital elements (SGP4) for about 1,600 catalogued objects, stale elements older than 30 days dropped. Not observed, computed. | 04.11.2026 |
| SAR Contacts (S1) Sentinel-1 radar scenes, open access | 482 ship-like contacts | 190 | Bright targets found in the latest radar scene per region of interest (CA-CFAR detection). Sees ships without AIS, but only as often as a scene comes in: this one is from 1 September, 16:16. | 04.11.2026 |
Infra & News
| layer | backend | map | what the number means | as of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Critical Infra (OSM) OpenStreetMap, refreshed weekly | 62,926 objects in 12 classes | 0 | Power plants, refineries, oil storage, substations, dams, data centres, ports, rail yards, depots, airports, military sites; inside the conflict zones, not worldwide. The map caps at 20,000. 10,975 had a fire within 10 km in the last day. | 04.11.2026 |
| News Articles (geo) Retina, articles with a place | 500 recent articles pinned | 500 | The 500 most recent articles that resolve to a location, clustered on the map. | 04.11.2026 |
Text & Registers
| layer | backend | map | what the number means | as of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Press and broadcast RSS from 121 feeds | 570,368 articles | Every article kept since March 2026. Grows by three to four thousand a day. | 02.09.2026 | |
| Public Telegram channels one poller on one account, channels chosen by hand | 81 of 95 channels delivering | Channels that produced at least one post in the last 7 days. Posts go through the same pipeline as the press. | 29.08.2026 | |
| Rocket launches public launch library, every 15 min | 53 launches tracked | Window from 30 days back to 60 days ahead. 26 flown, 27 planned. | 02.09.2026 | |
| Ownership GLEIF legal entity identifiers and ownership hierarchies | 31,873 ownership links with a percentage | Who owns what, direct and ultimate share, with a start date. Joined to the actor graph. | 28.08.2026 | |
| Sanctions EU and UN lists via OpenSanctions | 6,902 listed persons and organisations | 5,899 on the EU list, 1,003 on the UN list. Matched against the actor graph by name. | 15.05.2026 | |
| Source trust four-step rating per feed and channel | 346 ratings | Every active feed and channel carries one. Whose interest the source serves and how it has held up. | 07.08.2026 |
What comes out
The same pipeline for every source
A Telegram post and a wire story get the same treatment: embedding, entities, tone, storyline. That is what makes them comparable, and it is why a channel can be measured against the press instead of being read on its own.
A trust rating that travels
Each source is rated on four steps: whose interest it serves and how it has held up. The rating is stored with the source and shows up in every reading, so a burst driven by state media looks different from one driven by agencies.
Dossiers, when a case asks for one
Primary sources, the news layer and the lab's own reading, written up and dated. The drone incident at a German airport in August 2026: 14 primary retrievals, 45 news hits, a seven-page dossier with three findings that stood in none of the sources alone. Filed, then parked until one of four trigger events happens.
What the lab does not do
No scraping behind logins, no purchased data, no satellite AIS for crisis regions (measured and rejected: the delay is too long for a running picture). Where a source dies, the number says so instead of pretending.
On screen: the globe, the News Deck and the feed
Captured 15 October 2026The front page: the globe, its data layers switchable on the left (flights, vessels, actors and blocs, tensions, anomalies, fires, quakes, satellites, radar contacts), the intel stream on the right. The header names the highest region instead of a total for the world: Gulf, 0.50, high. The News Deck: open-source reporting from the last 72 hours. A reader searches titles in the original and in English and by named entity, and narrows by category, language and source. The panel Who is speaking shows which languages and outlets the result leans on, so a skew is visible before it misleads; here 10,288 of 13,010 reports, English first, then Spanish and Russian. The same deck with a question: “hormuz”, only reports placed on the map. 112 of 13,010, all 112 placed, in eight languages (English 76, Spanish 16, Persian 11). Each row carries source, category, language, the title in English over the original, the named entities, and a link that jumps to the place on the globe. Placement is automatic and can be wrong: several Hormuz stories here are pinned to the Bering Strait. The feed: longer written analyses and assessments, dated and tagged, some marked unverified. The list on screen starts on 26 July 2026.
Where it stands
The site
The observatory is public as infinimind.info, under the name Defense Intel. A first version was served there from 19 July 2026 behind an access gate; the gate came down on 3 September 2026. The front page is the application on screen above, exported as a static snapshot every fifteen minutes: the globe, its layers, the analysis deck, the News Deck. No live connection into the lab; a visitor reads a picture that is at most fifteen minutes old, and the page says so. Behind it: the readings, actor dossiers marked as AI-generated, a limits page.
Watched, not trusted
The site is pushed every fifteen minutes when something changed, and a daily watch reads the delivered pages back: are the sources still there, are the numbers the ones the lab has. A page that is fresh can still be wrong; the watch asks the second question.