Planet Labs, one of the world’s leading commercial satellite imaging companies, said Friday it is placing a hold on releasing imagery of some parts of the Middle East as a regional war enters its second week.
Planet wants to prevent “adversarial actors” from using images for “Battle Damage Assessment” purposes.
To me this translates to, “America’s military is being led incompetently and we don’t want anyone to see the real damage being done to it.”
Jesus fucking Christ, this is the stupidest possible way to start WWIII.
To be fair, wars have never started smartly, there is usually stupidity involved.
There are lots of ways to start a war but they all end the same: everyone sitting down to discuss peace. For some reason, no one thinks to try discussing peace first.
How are you supposed to make peace with a pedophile rapist who has staffed his office with racist Warhawk morons who are convinced they can do whatever they want with complete impunity, and they start bombing you while you are under diplomatic negotiations (twice!)?
This isn’t new behavior. This is regular western shenanigans. I mean, western propaganda is incredibly effective. The indoctrination process starts shortly after birth, but there’s plenty of information out there to see the west has been evil for hundreds of years, and probably longer.
The US has been involved in some form of war for roughly 230 out of it’s 250 years of existence. It’s what it do. War.
Europe’s record really isn’t very different, but maybe they got it out of their system after
WW2,India (Britain),Vietnam (France),Argentina (France & Britain)Bosnia,most of Africa, Kosovo.It’s all evil. All of humanity. You can’t possibly tell me forcing women under blankets and not educating them is okay. The genocide in China.
Fuck humans. Fuck the religions that humans made up. Fuck us all.
After Justice.
Which, the longer this goes, the more Justice will need to be served to get there.
Oh I think it’s even standard practice to do just that. But when the bully swings their dick and says there’ll be war if the don’t get their will, what’s the target supposed to do? Just bend over without at least trying something first?
There’s no motivation for the bully to see any reason there, their stance is that if they wanted, they can just take all they want, they are more powerful. Any “peace talks” before actually testing the merits of that assessment in real battle consist entirely of them demanding whatever they want and only path to “peace” is the smaller one just accepting to get fucked.
So, then when the bully comes around, it’s only sensible that the one in the right there defends their rights to exist and their right for sovereignty and all.
Just reflecting on Russia vs Ukraine here, but I suppose the same is true for Iran vs Israel/US too.
Satellite services are pretty amenable to hiding sensitive parts of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_with_missing_or_unclear_data?wprov=sfla1
It seems totally on-brand for the US government to request that bits of the war zone be hidden, and it’s entirely on brand for satellite companies to hide them.
Yeah it’s normal to ask for a warzone - but this isn’t a war of course.
The US government: “It’s just a special military operation, absolutely not a war. Hmmm? Department of War, no no it’s always been Department of Defense”.
Meanwhile, Trump: “The war…”
Are they really using the same terminology as Putin?
“This is a limited operation”
https://youtube.com/shorts/2lvEXrQ_bd0
😂
Congress voted it’s not war, doesn’t require war powers, so yeah anyone or private business treating this as a warzone is in the wrong. Except now after they decided that, we’re still seeing wartime excuses for gop behavior. Schrodinger’s conflict starting world war epstein, staying on brand for 2026.
I mean, you could have that opinion I guess. But the stated reasoning is perfectly valid. After you launch a long distance attack, it is in fact important to know how effective it was. This is a very strategically useful ability. Leaving your adversary in the dark has always worked to your advantage in war.
Look, we all know this war is stupid, there aren’t many who would deny that. But to be perfectly honest, despite the political leadership at the very top, the US military and it’s leadership are actually pretty good at what they do. I doubt they’re trying to cover up a failing war. To me, this looks more like operational security than a cover up.
Iran will have access to Chinese and Russian satellite images, as well as their own “on the ground” intelligence assessments. This move is more likely meant to control public perception in the US.
Well that’s actually a really good point. We already know that Russia is sharing intel with them and even if China wasn’t doing the same, I’m sure they have no problem with “sharing” that intel at a price.
With this perspective I’m actually somewhat convinced that the move could have more to do with outside perception (be it for Americans or for the rest of the world).
Still, there’s no telling what the quality or timelines of the imagery they’re currently getting is like. The difference between having 10 second old images and 4 hour old images is huge, and we really don’t know what they’re getting from Russia. So with that in mind, they don’t need one more avenue to get that data, especially one that could be more immediate imagery.
Edit: As another user points out, these images aren’t being blacked out entirely, they’re just being held back on a 72 hour delay. This does indicate that the company isn’t trying to prevent their images from being seen, they will be seen. But they can’t be used for tactical advantage on the battlefield, 3 day old information is not very useful for that.
So, make of all that what you will.
The stated reasoning sounds okay in isolation, but:
While I don’t have an answer for your first question, there is a really good answer to the second.
A delay is a perfect solution for eliminating the tactical advantage that its imagery could offer, while still maintaining an eye on the region, not letting war crimes go unnoticed.
The delay rather than a blackout actually reinforces the idea that this is really about not providing intel to Iran. Three day old troop positions are totally useless, those troops are somewhere else now. A delay is totally sufficient to make their imagery non threatening. But if they were trying to hide the actions of either side, a delay wouldn’t be enough, they’d need to hold those images back forever. Meaning, they aren’t trying to hide the truth.
I don’t believe the current us military is any good at all. The ones that were have quit. The rest are dick sucking psychopathic “god Trump” bitch boys.
That’s completely detached from reality. You could confirm that by talking to anyone in the military.
Probably half of our service members joined up just to pay for college. They’re not in the military because they’re psychopaths… it’s just a viable option for moving up in life. Many Americans hope to pursue advanced careers, but they can’t afford college and don’t have many job opportunities in their home town. Well regardless of what your town is like, the military is always hiring; and the recruiters are convincing. If you’re 20 years old and stalled out in your career, it sounds like a real good deal. Again, that does not make you a psychopath. AND regardless of what you think of service members, the effectiveness of the US military is exceedingly evident, they hardly need me to speak for them.
Yep, it is funny how many images of this shitshow are not showing up on like reddit. Full on censorship
Expect to see uptick in posts/comments critical of lemmy/fediverse because it’s critical of the USA.
Generally it’s framed as something else like UI, grammar, content, or people but with the goal of trying to dissuade people from using it.
The imperialists censorship works in multiple ways, by censoring content in their own platforms and also sowing distrust and reservation in platforms they don’t control.
Still better than the sandwich from WWI