its author Post OnX was referring to an online intelligence dashboard following US-Israeli attacks against Iran in real time. Created by two guys from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, it combines open-source data like satellite imagery and ship tracking with chat functions, news feeds, and links to prediction markets, where people can bet on things like who will be Iran’s next “supreme leader” (recent selection). Mojtaba Khamenei left some bookmakers with a Payment).
I’ve reviewed over a dozen other dashboards like this in the past week. Several people were apparently “vibe-coded” within a few days with the help of an AI tool, including one who noticed From the founder of intelligence giant Palantir, the platform through which the US military is accessing cloud-like AI models during warfare. Some were produced before the conflict in Iran, but almost all of them are being advertised by their creators as a way to beat slow and ineffective media by connecting directly to the truth of what is happening on the ground. One commentator said, “Learned more in 30 seconds by looking at this map than by reading or watching any major news network.” wrote On LinkedIn, a response was made to the scene of Iran’s airspace being closed before the attack.
Much of the headlines on AI and the Iran conflict have focused on the role that models like the cloud can play in helping the US military. decisions About where to attack. But these intelligence dashboards and the ecosystem around them reflect a new role that AI is playing in wartime: arbitrating information, often for the worse.
There is a combination of many factors in this. AI coding tools mean people no longer need much technical skill to gather open-source intelligence, and chatbots can rapidly analyze it if it’s suspicious. The increase in counterfeit material has led observers of the war to seek raw, accurate analyzes typically only accessible to intelligence agencies. Demand for these dashboards is also driven by real-time prediction markets that promise financial rewards to anyone sufficiently informed. And the fact that the US military is using Anthropix Cloud in conflict (despite this). designation as supply chain risk) have indicated to observers that AI is the intelligence tool that professionals use. Together, these trends are creating a new kind of AI-enabled wartime circus that may distort the flow of information as much as it clarifies it.
As a journalist, I believe these types of intelligence tools have a lot of potential. While many of us know that real-time data exists on shipping routes or power outages, actually seeing it aggregated in one place is a powerful thing (although using it to watch the war while eating popcorn and placing bets turns war into warped entertainment). But there are real reasons to think that these types of raw data feeds are not as informative as they may feel.
Craig Silverman, a digital investigation expert who teaches investigation techniques, has been keeping a log of these dashboards (he’s up to 20). He says, “The concern is that there’s an illusion of being on top of things and in control, where you’re really just pulling a lot of signals and not necessarily understanding what you’re seeing, or being able to get true insight from it.”
One problem relates to the quality of information. Many dashboards feature “intel feeds” with AI-generated summaries of complex, ever-changing news events. These may introduce inaccuracies. By design, the data is not specifically curated. Instead, the feeds display everything at once, with a map of strike locations in Iran next to the prices of obscure cryptocurrencies.
