The OSINT Output Hosted by Tim and Chris

By Jay Heisler, Freelance Canadian Jounalist

Bio: Martin So (LinkedIn Profile) is the Co-Founder and CEO of Panoptica Technologies. He began his entrepreneurial journey at 17 by joining the Canadian Forces while studying Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia. In 2022, upon graduation, he deployed overseas in Latvia as an OSINT analyst. Until 2023, recognizing the shortfall of current intelligence practices, he pivoted into data science and enrolled at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Master of Analytics program in 2024. Upon graduation he founded Pinocchio Technologies in AI slash machine learning platform that automates mundane tasks commonly found in OSINT workflows.

Can you explain a bit about your OSINT product?

This product’s core function is to improve the quality of OSINT collection and analysis. Intelligence has been the main driver of military operations. I often use the case study of Operation Neptune, the operation to kill/ capture Osama bin Laden. It highlighted the detail and comprehensiveness of how intelligence is integrated and used in high-stakes missions. However, in 2026, terrorists will leverage big data to plan and conduct attacks. Agencies often rely on manual data collection and analysis. Search methodologies are often time-consuming, labor-intensive, and mentally draining. We present an agentic open source intelligence analyst agent that leverages big data to collect and analyze intelligence faster, which reduces workloads and missed indicators (false negatives).

Can you explain a bit about how it uses AI?

The core of Watchtower’s platform is to have the AI generate a threat assessment. We have an AI agent that pulls from two databases: one containing a historical set of events and another, a “tactics database,” of common doctrinal practices adversaries use. For example, if I received a report that a Ukrainian vehicle got destroyed by a Russian Lancet The database would retrieve past similar events of Russian Lancets being employed in similar situations. It would also pull common tactics that the Russians use for their drone TTPs. From there, we overlay terrain and weather constraints. The agent fuses those entities to generate a threat assessment.

What has been the reaction to making your OSINT product free for use to target the crisis in Mexico?

It seemed a lot of people liked it; I mean, it does help that I gave it away for free for a limited time. I guess three comes in two ways: the platform is rattled with bugs, and it’s not perfect. But I’m so glad that the people are reaching out, and people who are testing the platform is patient enough to give feedback on how we can improve.

What is it like being a startup founder while still a Canadian Armed Forces reservist?

It’s like wearing two hats sometimes you have to switch off one hat to put on another There’s more structure in the reserves as opposed to a startup but I think my time in the reserves helped me prepare for challenges I face in the business world I think the mindset of being in the military does help to a certain extent in terms of leadership at delegation in giving out tasks or orders.