Where Did the Middle East Go? Satellite Imaging in the Fog of War

Planet Labs PBC, a satellite imaging company founded in 2010, has more than 200 satellites that photograph Earth’s entire landmass every day, a frequency unmatched by the rest of the industry. Although most of its competitors sell isolated images on demand, Planet operates more like an open streaming service, allowing customers—which include commodity traders, governments and humanitarian organizations—to download, publish and build on top of its data.

Recently, for a large part of the globe, that operation stopped. On April 5, Planet announced to customers that the US government had requested that all satellite imagery providers “voluntarily implement an indefinite withhold” of imagery retroactive to March 9 across a broad swath of the Middle East, including Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon and the Persian Gulf States. The company stopped releasing war imagery to its library and said it was moving to a “managed access model,” evaluating requests on a case-by-case basis. The Department of Defense and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which controls Planet’s ability to operate satellites, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Now its customers are turning to alternatives. Some have resorted to free lower-resolution data from NASA, which isn’t subject to the same restrictions. Others have switched to imagery from the European Space Agency and other international satellite operators that have no obligation to turn off their feeds in response to a war that the US and Israel are waging. Some are looking to China, which operates the largest commercial Earth-imaging program outside the US.

The fallout is reshaping the $5 billion Earth observation industry and raising the question of whether anyone can build a commercial business on infrastructure the government can effectively shut off at will. No other US company provides the same level of access to imagery that Planet historically has, an approach that’s provided value for an unusually wide range of clients. But that model also makes Planet vulnerable to government pressure. 

The situation exposes the complicated politics of geospatial intelligence. In the US, satellite imaging companies depend on licenses from the federal government that allow them to collect and sell imagery. The model dates to the 1990s, when the government first allowed private companies to operate their own imaging satellites, a technology previously reserved for intelligence agencies.