Militaries of the World, China Too Can See You Coming

The Space Diplomacy Newsletter-Event Tracker

Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, commercial satellites tracked the Russian buildup at the borders of Ukraine. The images were often front page news and private companies like Planet Labs and what was then Maxar built a convincing picture of a country militarily on the move prior to any formal invasion. If you were following along, those capabilities were startling, bringing live intelligence to a worldwide audience.

Now China has shown it is capable of operating from the same playbook. MizarVision, a company based in China, tracked and relayed to a worldwide audience, including on social media, just what the U.S. might be up to as it amassed American military forces in the Middle East. This too was pre-invasion information, suggesting to its readers that America was readying for a possible strike which it did eventually carry out against Iran. Again, as in 2022 so also in 2026, live intelligence was available for free to a global audience.

The point is not so much about what kind of imagery capabilities Planet or Maxar or MizarVision can or cannot bring to the diplomatic game of communication and persuasion on a global basis. I have spent some time thinking about what this kind of constant and scaled surveillance means for military postures, including through a joint research project on small satellites-big data (SSBD) that was published in International Security. Whether on the oceans or on land, one important conclusion that emerged from our work is captured below, and is on point.

The ability of SSBD technologies to observe and catch wrongdoing is important for governments as well as the commercial, academic, and nongovernmental sectors that have vested interests... But findings indicate that transparency alone is unlikely to deter misconduct or change the behavior of powerful states.

Simply put, great powers are not deterred from doing what they must even under the glare of satellite imagery. What we are seeing unfold on militarization and force postures – say, China in the South China Sea, Russia in Ukraine, USA in Iran – can be imaged, traced, and mapped using satellite imagery.

All this should make us pause and reflect on what satellite imagery equivalence across the leading space powers implies. Information warfare will only go so far. Whether or not satellite imagery is acquired commercially, doctored intentionally, and released strategically, it does not deter, and will over time lose its ability to persuade convincingly. No one is advantaged, and even if so, the effect fizzles. So doesn’t this mean we should preemptively think through the “who, what, when, and where” of satellite imagery for a more trustworthy information ecosystem to underwrite diplomacy...?