Satellite imaging company Planet Labs recently restricted public access to satellite imagery over Iran and surrounding regions. Now, images will be subject to a mandatory 14-day delay before being made available, with the intention of preventing ‘adversarial actors’ from conducting Battle Damage Assessments (BDAs) of Israeli and American attacks—a military technique used to evaluate the effectiveness of strikes and adjust targets for future attacks. Though commercial users face this delay, authorized government clients, including U.S. agencies, continue to receive more immediate access to Planet Labs’ imagery archive.
Planet Labs’ decision highlights the growing geopolitical influence of private satellite companies in how conflicts unfold and are observed, documented, and later understood—despite being framed as a security measure. Planet Labs’ restriction of satellite imagery during the war in Iran highlights how commercial satellite infrastructure shapes the politics of war. McGill University, a research partner with Planet Labs, is therefore also a participant in these geopolitical dynamics. While McGill has repeatedly framed itself as impartial in response to calls for the university to take positions on geopolitical conflicts, the maintenance of this partnership despite the company’s preferential treatment of U.S. interests challenges its claimed institutional ‘neutrality.’
Planet Labs’ new imagery policy in Iran displays how selectively restrictive satellite imagery reorganizes access to crucial wartime information. The company, despite having placed a hold on releasing images from the Middle East, has permitted authorized government users to retain immediate access to the company’s archive for ‘critical’ operational purposes. As a result, the U.S. military—a key partner with Planet Labs, having contracted $151 billion USD this year to the company’s operations—maintains access to satellite imagery, while Iranian and Gulf intelligence agencies lose access completely. This asymmetrical access to information has consequences beyond military strategy.
During the ongoing war, journalists and researchers have relied on satellite imagery and verified video footage to document damage to civilian infrastructure following strikes by the U.S. and Israel. Recently, in Minab, a U.S. missile strike on an elementary school killed at least 175 individuals, primarily children. The strike was justified by the U.S. as an ‘accident’ resulting from outdated data that failed to account for changes to the site over time. U.S. intelligence relied on dated images from 2013, which identified the site as a military base; however, images from just //three// years later reveal a portion of the base had since been converted into a school. This incident demonstrates how accurate and accessible satellite imagery can play a critical role in verifying military claims and identifying failures in targeted processes. When access to such imagery is selectively restricted, independent verification becomes far more difficult, consequently limiting the public’s ability to scrutinize wartime actions.
In 2020, McGill University entered into a partnership with Planet Labs to provide students and researchers access to satellite imagery archives for geospatial analysis and environmental monitoring. Such applications have clear academic value; satellite imagery clearly can be—and has been—used for researching and promoting global betterment and safety that would otherwise be largely inaccessible. The technology has also been used to monitor deforestation in the Amazon, track sanctioned Russian oil tankers moving through international waters, and document violations of international law. While such imagery is often framed as an unbiased tool to promote transparency and research, private satellite companies, by controlling who has access to that data, exert significant influence over how geopolitical events are observed.
The issue is not that satellite imagery can support military operations. However, when the companies controlling this infrastructure actively shape the flow of information during wartime, the technology quickly becomes contentiously entangled in the geopolitics of conflict. Planet Labs’ new policy regarding imagery in Iran exposes a contradiction within McGill’s ethos, as the institution claims ‘neutrality’ despite maintaining its partnership with Planet Labs. Ending this partnership does not, in any way, imply support for the Iranian regime or its actions—but continuing it //does// actively support the U.S.’s brutal and unsubstantiated war on the region.
McGill must confront the political implications of the partnerships it forms, and how they contradict its assertions of ‘neutrality.’ These technologies offer clear academic value, but the institutions that support them cannot ignore the political consequences of how they are deployed. McGill should review its collaboration with Planet Labs, establish clearer ethical guidelines for future partnerships, and consult students and faculty when entering agreements with companies whose technologies intersect with global conflicts. Students also have an important role to play: Voicing their concerns, demanding transparency, and pushing the administration to justify its partnerships are necessary steps to challenge complacency. Universities cannot claim neutrality whilst benefiting from infrastructures that selectively shape the politics of war.
