B1 · Intermediate
14 min
technologypoliticsmediascience
El Ojo que se Cierra: Satélites, Guerra, y el Fin de las Imágenes
The Eye That Closes: Satellites, War, and the End of Images
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So here's a story that I think deserves more attention than it's getting.
Planet Labs, which is one of the biggest commercial satellite imaging companies in the world, has just agreed to stop publishing photos of Iran and the surrounding conflict zones.
At the U.S.
government's request.
Retroactively, going back to March 9th.
Bueno, mira, cuando leí esto, pensé inmediatamente en el periodismo.
Well, look, when I read this, I immediately thought about journalism.
Planet Labs no es una empresa militar.
Planet Labs is not a military company.
Es una empresa comercial.
It's a commercial company.
Y sus imágenes las usaban periodistas, investigadores, organizaciones humanitarias.
And its images were used by journalists, researchers, humanitarian organizations.
Right, and that's exactly the tension here.
Because on one hand you've got a private company making a commercial decision, essentially.
On the other hand, you've got the U.S.
government quietly pulling a curtain over a war zone.
And those are very different things.
Es que la pregunta importante es esta: ¿quién tiene el derecho de ver una guerra?
The important question is this: who has the right to see a war?
Antes, las imágenes del espacio eran secretas.
Before, images from space were secret.
Solo los gobiernos las tenían.
Only governments had them.
Pero eso cambió mucho en los últimos veinte años.
But that changed a lot in the last twenty years.
Let me give people a sense of what Planet Labs actually is, because I think a lot of listeners might not know the name.
They operate something like 200 small satellites in low Earth orbit.
Little things, the size of a shoebox, essentially.
And they photograph almost the entire surface of the planet every single day.
Sí, y eso es lo que hace a esta empresa tan especial.
Yes, and that's what makes this company so special.
Antes, las imágenes satelitales eran caras y difíciles de obtener.
Before, satellite images were expensive and hard to get.
Pero Planet Labs cambió todo eso.
But Planet Labs changed all that.
Ofrecía imágenes actuales, casi en tiempo real, y cualquier persona podía comprarlas o acceder a ellas.
It offered current images, almost in real time, and anyone could buy them or access them.
I mean, I used services like this during my time in the field.
You could track troop movements, you could see if a building that was standing on Tuesday was rubble by Thursday.
That's not speculation, that's evidence.
And journalists used it constantly in Syria, in Yemen, in Ukraine.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y ahora eso se terminó para Irán.
And now that's over for Iran.
El gobierno americano pidió a Planet Labs que no publicara más imágenes, y la empresa aceptó.
The American government asked Planet Labs not to publish more images, and the company agreed.
La decisión fue retroactiva, desde el 9 de marzo.
The decision was retroactive, from March 9th.
Eso significa que imágenes que ya existían también desaparecieron del acceso público.
That means images that already existed also disappeared from public access.
The retroactive part is what gets me.
You're not just closing a window going forward, you're reaching back and pulling photos out of the public record.
That's a different level of information control.
Bueno, y aquí hay que entender un poco de historia.
Well, and here you have to understand a bit of history.
Porque esto no es completamente nuevo.
Because this is not completely new.
En los años noventa, el gobierno americano ya tenía leyes para controlar las imágenes satelitales comerciales.
In the nineties, the American government already had laws to control commercial satellite images.
You're talking about the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment.
Which was this rule that basically said commercial satellite companies couldn't sell images of Israel at better than a certain resolution.
It was designed to protect Israel from having its military positions photographed too clearly.
It stayed in place for years.
La verdad es que ese ejemplo es muy interesante.
The truth is that example is very interesting.
La ley protegía a Israel, pero también ayudaba a ocultar lo que pasaba en los territorios palestinos.
The law protected Israel, but it also helped hide what was happening in Palestinian territories.
Eso generó mucha crítica de organizaciones de derechos humanos.
That generated a lot of criticism from human rights organizations.
And that law was actually quietly repealed in 2020, because the technology had moved so far beyond it that it was basically unenforceable.
But now here we are, 2026, and the government has found a different lever to pull.
Not legislation, just a phone call to a private company.
A ver, yo creo que eso es lo más importante de todo.
Look, I think that's the most important thing of all.
No es una ley.
It's not a law.
No es un tribunal.
It's not a court.
Es una petición.
It's a request.
Y la empresa dijo que sí.
And the company said yes.
¿Por qué?
Why?
Porque tiene contratos con el gobierno americano.
Because it has contracts with the American government.
Necesita esa relación.
It needs that relationship.
Which is not a conspiracy.
That's just how business works.
But it does raise a serious question about who actually controls the information infrastructure of modern warfare.
Because Planet Labs isn't a government agency.
It's a startup that went public on the New York Stock Exchange.
Mira, hay un fenómeno que los expertos llaman la privatización del espacio.
Look, there's a phenomenon that experts call the privatization of space.
Antes, los satélites eran del Estado.
Before, satellites belonged to the state.
Ahora, muchos de los satélites más importantes son de empresas privadas.
Now, many of the most important satellites belong to private companies.
Y eso tiene consecuencias muy grandes para la transparencia y para el periodismo.
And that has very big consequences for transparency and for journalism.
Here's what gets me historically.
In the 1960s, the U.S.
government ran a program called Corona.
It was the first spy satellite program, completely classified.
The photos were literally dropped from orbit in canisters that planes had to catch mid-air.
The public knew nothing.
Sí, y después de treinta años, esas imágenes se publicaron.
Yes, and after thirty years, those images were published.
Y fueron muy útiles para los arqueólogos, para los historiadores, para los científicos de clima.
And they were very useful for archaeologists, historians, climate scientists.
Porque eran imágenes del mundo de los años sesenta.
Because they were images of the world from the 1960s.
Right, so even the most classified imagery eventually enters the historical record.
That's a kind of accountability with a very long delay.
But what's happening now with commercial satellites is different, because we built a system that made this information public in near-real time, and now that system is being selectively switched off.
Bueno, y hay que hablar de OSINT, que en español significa inteligencia de fuentes abiertas.
Well, and we need to talk about OSINT, which in Spanish means open-source intelligence.
En los últimos años, hubo una revolución en el periodismo de investigación porque cualquier persona con internet podía analizar imágenes satelitales comerciales.
In recent years, there was a revolution in investigative journalism because anyone with internet access could analyze commercial satellite images.
Bellingcat is probably the most famous example.
They used commercial satellite imagery and open-source data to prove that Russia shot down MH17 over Ukraine in 2014.
The Russian government denied it for years.
Bellingcat proved it with public photos from space.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y eso cambió todo.
And that changed everything.
De repente, los gobiernos no podían mentir tan fácilmente sobre lo que hacían militarmente.
Suddenly, governments couldn't lie so easily about what they were doing militarily.
Porque las pruebas estaban ahí, en el cielo, accesibles para todos.
Because the evidence was up there, in the sky, accessible to everyone.
Look, I'll say this plainly as a journalist.
The advent of commercial satellite imagery was one of the single most important developments for accountability journalism in the last two decades.
More important than social media, in some ways.
Because a photo from space is harder to fake than a tweet.
La verdad es que tienes razón en eso, Fletcher.
The truth is you're right about that, Fletcher.
Y por eso esta decisión de Planet Labs es tan seria.
And that's why this decision by Planet Labs is so serious.
No es solo una decisión comercial.
It's not just a commercial decision.
Es una decisión que afecta directamente a la capacidad de los periodistas de documentar una guerra.
It's a decision that directly affects journalists' ability to document a war.
And here's the thing that complicates it.
The government's argument isn't unreasonable on its face.
If you're running an airstrike operation, you don't want your adversary to be able to watch your assets repositioning from a publicly available satellite feed.
There's a legitimate operational security argument.
Es que ese argumento siempre existe en tiempo de guerra.
That argument always exists in wartime.
Los gobiernos siempre dicen que la seguridad nacional necesita secreto.
Governments always say that national security requires secrecy.
Pero el problema es que ese secreto también oculta los errores, las víctimas civiles, los crímenes de guerra.
But the problem is that this secrecy also hides mistakes, civilian casualties, war crimes.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
And I've seen it firsthand.
In Beirut, in Baghdad.
The fog of war is sometimes natural, but sometimes it's manufactured.
And the tool that was starting to cut through that fog has just been switched off over Iran.
Mira, hay otro aspecto técnico que me parece muy importante.
Look, there's another technical aspect that seems very important to me.
Planet Labs no es la única empresa que tiene satélites de observación.
Planet Labs is not the only company that has observation satellites.
Hay empresas en Europa, en China, en otras partes.
There are companies in Europe, in China, in other places.
Entonces, ¿la decisión realmente funciona?
So does the decision actually work?
That's a sharp question.
There's Maxar, there's Airbus Defence and Space, there's a French company called Spot Image.
The European Space Agency has its own Sentinel satellites with public data.
The U.S.
government can pressure an American company.
It can't pressure all of them.
A ver, eso es cierto.
Well, that's true.
Pero Planet Labs era la empresa más importante para el periodismo independiente porque tenía las imágenes más frecuentes y más accesibles.
But Planet Labs was the most important company for independent journalism because it had the most frequent and most accessible images.
Las otras empresas son más caras o más difíciles de usar.
The other companies are more expensive or harder to use.
Right, so even if the blackout isn't total, it removes the most democratized version of the tool.
The one that a scrappy nonprofit investigation team in Amsterdam could actually afford to use.
That matters.
Bueno, y también hay que pensar en el futuro.
Well, and we also have to think about the future.
Si esto funciona para el gobierno americano ahora, ¿otros gobiernos van a hacer lo mismo con sus empresas en el futuro?
If this works for the American government now, will other governments do the same with their companies in the future?
China tiene empresas de satélites también.
China has satellite companies too.
Rusia también.
Russia too.
The extraordinary thing is that we might be watching the establishment of a new norm in real time.
Where governments treat commercial satellite imagery as a strategic military asset that they can switch on and off according to their operational needs.
That's a very different world from the one we had even five years ago.
La verdad es que eso me preocupa mucho.
The truth is that worries me a lot.
Porque la historia de la tecnología de comunicación es siempre la misma.
Because the history of communication technology is always the same.
Primero, la tecnología da más libertad a las personas.
First, the technology gives more freedom to people.
Después, los gobiernos aprenden a controlar esa tecnología.
Afterwards, governments learn to control that technology.
I mean, we saw it with the internet.
Open, wild, ungovernable in the nineties.
And now it's carved up by national firewalls, surveillance apparatus, platform moderation rules.
The satellite imagery revolution followed the same trajectory, just in a compressed time frame.
Sí, pero también hay algo diferente aquí.
Yes, but there's also something different here.
El espacio fue siempre un área de competición entre países.
Space was always an area of competition between countries.
Cuando los Estados Unidos controlaban las imágenes del espacio, eso era poder.
When the United States controlled images from space, that was power.
Y ahora ese poder pasó a manos privadas, pero el gobierno quiere recuperarlo.
And now that power passed to private hands, but the government wants to take it back.
Look, here's what I keep coming back to.
We're in a war right now where a lot of the most important evidence of what's actually happening, of civilian casualties, of infrastructure destruction, of where strikes are actually landing, lives in satellite data.
And that data is now classified by request.
Es que eso no es solo un problema tecnológico.
That's not just a technological problem.
Es un problema histórico.
It's a historical problem.
Los archivos del futuro van a tener un hueco.
The archives of the future will have a gap.
Los historiadores del año 2060 van a buscar imágenes de esta guerra y no las van a encontrar para este periodo.
The historians of 2060 will look for images of this war and won't find them for this period.
That's a genuinely haunting thought, Octavio.
I spent twenty-five years documenting things precisely because I believed the record mattered.
That future accountability depended on present documentation.
And what we're describing here is a systematic gap in the record being created in real time.
Mira, para terminar, yo creo que hay una lección importante aquí.
Look, to finish, I think there's an important lesson here.
La tecnología que creemos que es pública, que creemos que está disponible para todos, en realidad depende de decisiones políticas y económicas.
The technology we think is public, that we think is available to everyone, actually depends on political and economic decisions.
Cuando hay una guerra, esas decisiones cambian muy rápido.
When there's a war, those decisions change very fast.
And the question that doesn't have an easy answer is whether there's any architecture, any international framework, any legal structure, that could protect this kind of public information access.
Because right now there isn't one.
There's just a company, a government, and a phone call.
A ver, yo no soy optimista sobre eso.
Well, I'm not optimistic about that.
Pero creo que la gente tiene que saber que esto pasó.
But I think people need to know that this happened.
Que el ojo en el cielo, que pareció tan democrático, tan abierto, se cerró porque alguien lo pidió.
That the eye in the sky, which seemed so democratic, so open, closed because someone asked it to.
Eso es importante entender.
That's important to understand.
Exactly right.
And that's why we're talking about it.
A story like this doesn't get the front page, it doesn't get the urgent bulletin.
But it might matter more in the long run than a lot of things that do.
The eye that closes quietly is the one worth watching.