The Overwatch | Issue 1
The Problem Wasn’t the Data. It Was the Stovepipe.
General Van Herk, former NORTHCOM commander, once wrote that as a commander, the two things he could never have enough of were time and information. That frustration is universal—felt by the watch officer who spotted an early indicator of a possible threat, but was unable to see it in context with other data streams and also with the current operations team, which saw an alert that would impact the mission, but did not have a way to pass it to a higher classification for detailed analysis.
Dataminr’s First Alert used to exist only as an individual’s account, and key alerts that potentially affected the wider mission had to be passed manually. That individual usage has real value—we’ve seen it across operations centers and force protection contexts spanning every geographic military unit. But it’s also a ceiling. When one person has to be the bridge between a real-time signal and a decision, the chain is only as fast as that person.
The First Alert API removes that ceiling.
From Individual Tool to Organizational Capability
When First Alert data flows directly into your existing systems—PowerBI, MSS, ADVANA, a watch center dashboard, an enterprise analytic platform—something fundamental changes. The data stops being something a person pulls from. It becomes something the organization runs on.
The analyst isn’t switching tabs or pasting alert text into a report. The commander’s dashboard isn’t waiting on a staff update. The tactical system isn’t dependent on a person being available. The signal is already there, correlated with the operational picture, resident in the platform.
That’s the difference between information access and information advantage.
Because the API is entirely platform-agnostic, the same nine structured data fields—processed by our AI from over 1.2 million public sources in more than 150 languages—can flow into any authorized system. What changes is where it shows up and what it gets correlated with. The result isn’t static data living in an individual dashboard but a dynamic common operating picture built specifically for every organization’s information requirements. The analyst has dynamic oversight of what changes in their operational environment. The commander can focus on the signals of the highest priority. Both are working from the same source.
That shared reference changes the analyst-commander conversation. Instead of delivering information, the analyst is adding judgment to information the commander can already see. That’s a faster loop—and a more impactful one.
What’s Actually Been Built
The demand signal has been consistent. Since mid-2019, we’ve received continuous requests for API integration from commands at every level and dozens of tactical units. We purpose-built a highly flexible, industry-standard API that can be integrated into any system. And it’s available to any unit at the enterprise level.
Today, the API is deployed across more than 100 units, covering enterprise, strategic, operational, and tactical levels across all 7 geographic combatant commands and every service branch. Organizations running integrated deployments have documented 72% cost savings per deployment, with a one-to-many architecture that lets a single integration support multiple units and mission sets simultaneously.
Where to Start
Not every organization is at the same point with this. If you’re still consuming First Alert as an individual platform, great! That option is still available to you, and we stand ready to support. If you are curious about the next step to integrate the same high quality, labeled data you already trust with First Alert, ask yourself “where does time and information run short – and what system is already available to us to leverage?”
That answer usually points directly to where First Alert data would have the most impact if it were resident rather than referenced.