Neil deGrasse Tyson's stark warning about the internet's impending implosion as an objective source of truth is no longer a futuristic prediction; it's our present reality. With tools like Google's Veo 3 capable of generating eerily believable fake news and videos, the "entire role of the internet as an objectively true source of information will implode." This presents an existential crisis for intelligence and security professionals who rely on open-source intelligence (OSINT), real-time alerts, and verifiable online research.

The problem is exacerbated by the current model of data consumption by market leaders. As Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has highlighted, the "grand bargain" between content creators and online platforms is broken. AI giants are voraciously scraping content, with ratios as extreme as 60,000 scraped pages to one visitor, without offering meaningful compensation or referral traffic back to the original creators. This uncompensated data harvesting isn't true crowdsourcing; it's a parasitic system leading to an "OSINT Apocalypse," where the very wellspring of accurate, reliable information is threatened by scarcity and a flood of synthetic content.

This issue isn't hypothetical; it's already impacting physical security. Existing intelligence platforms struggle to keep pace with the sheer volume and velocity of data, leading to "huge data gaps and analytical blind spots." Moreover, their "Western-centric analyst concentration risks biased perspectives, limited language coverage for processing diverse real-time data, and time zone delays." The sector is ripe for disruption.

The Solution: Rewarding Local Eyes for Global Threats

When the internet can no longer be trusted as an objective source, we need a fundamentally new approach to intelligence gathering, one that prioritizes verified contributions and rewards the source. This is the vision behind Crowd Threat, the first intelligence platform designed to monitor the entire globe by leveraging "local eyes on global threats." Unlike the current exploitative model, Crowd Threat proposes a system of compensated crowdsourcing to build a dynamic and scalable situational awareness network. Here's how it works:

• Global Network of Reporters: Crowd Threat will cultivate a network of thousands of local crowd members worldwide. These individuals, with their unique perspectives and access to local information in local languages, will collect data and submit it via a dedicated app.

  
  

• AI-Aided Reporting and Verification: Contributors will report threats aided with AI directly through the app. Critically, they will be paid for each unique, verified submission. This incentivizes accuracy and timeliness, directly addressing the core flaw of current uncompensated data scraping.

  
  

• Expert Verification and Processing: While AI assists with initial reporting, a small team of expert analysts at Crowd Threat will process the reported incidents to ensure accuracy. This hybrid approach combines the scalability of the crowd with the precision of human expertise.

  
  

• Unleashing Scalability: This model drastically increases coverage and processing capabilities. Crowd Threat aims to provide consistent local coverage and real-time reporting globally. This scales collection and initial processing to a proven, trusted crowd, powered with AI.

  
  

• Direct Value Exchange for Users: Businesses and organizations will access this unified threat intelligence through paid seats on the platform or via an API license. This creates a sustainable ecosystem where value flows from the local contributor to the end-user.

The Imperative for a New Era of Intelligence

The internet's trustworthiness is eroding. The urgent need for unified threat intelligence has never been greater, as complex threats multiply at speed and generative AI and fake news exacerbate information overload. Existing platforms are struggling, creating "huge data gaps and analytical blind spots". Without addressing the foundation of poor data, automating and amplifying these problems will lead to flawed analysis and potentially disastrous consequences.

Michael McCabe, CEO and Founder of Crowd Threat, with over 20 years in intelligence, including founding and scaling Intelligence Fusion, recognized this critical industry weakness. Crowd Threat directly addresses this by creating the first true global intelligence platform through scalable crowd-sourced intelligence.

The future of intelligence demands tools that can validate and verify information at scale, stronger, trusted human networks, and creative new methods to assess and mitigate risk. Crowd Threat offers a blueprint for this future, moving away from exploitative data scraping towards a model that truly rewards valuable contributions, safeguarding our information environment and our physical world.