Spatial data has become a weapon of war in the US-Iran war

We are in the geospatial era of warfare in which information derived from satellites is as strategically critical as territorial control. The progressive dissolution of the distinction between the civil and military domains, made possible by commercial and dual-use space systems, has turned visibility into a weapon of war. This transformation is playing out in the current United States-Iran conflict through two developments: the reports of Iran using Chinese-connected commercial satellite systems to produce intelligence on U.S. assets, and the constraining of satellite imagery over Iran and other war zones by Planet Labs at the behest of the state. [EDITOR’S NOTE: One of those companies, Emposat, said in a statement that it had not “engaged in cooperation with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran (IRGC) or any military-related entities.”]