Disclaimer

About Defcon Level

Defcon Level is a private intelligence gathering organization dedicated to keeping the public updated on current world events, threats and conflicts around the world. We attempt to assess events and threat levels as accurately as possible when deciding what to set the alert status to.

Our Approach

The current alert levels on this site are a community effort to reflect what the DEFCON level's alert status is, as accurately as possible at any given time through intel sharing and mutual monitoring of U.S. and global events.

The official government alert status is not made available to the public in real-time. Click to see a list of the Official Changes to the DEFCON level that have been made available to the public.

Intelligence Methodology

Our alert estimates are based on:

• Open source intelligence (OSINT) from verified sources worldwide
• Analysis by experienced military and intelligence professionals
• Community contributions from our global network of contributors
• Continuous monitoring of geopolitical developments and military movements
• Intel sharing within our community of military personnel, veterans, and analysts

Every report and alert we publish must trace its claims to primary sources, and material we could not confirm is marked as unconfirmed rather than smoothed over. Our team wrote those standards and is accountable for the result.

Reports and refined alerts are reviewed and approved by our team before publication. Our Rapid Alerts stream is a faster channel, carrying both team-written and automatically generated items, and every item in it is checked against our sourcing and consistency rules before it appears.

Our Estimates

A "guess" is a casual or spontaneous conclusion. An "estimate" is based on thought and/or data. We collect large amounts of data and put forth an estimate of what our intel community believes it should be based on all of the intelligence and data we've collected from around the world and our analysis of that data.

The live alerts are in no way trying to guess the official government alert status - it is a separate assessment based on data that we have. Some of our levels are official when confirmed, while others remain OSINT estimates based on available intelligence, information, and data.

Learn More

For more information about how we operate and frequently asked questions, please visit our About Page.