Description
In April 1986, radioactive smoke bellowed out of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine due to multiple explosions. For the first time, news outlets around the world used commercial satellite imagery to provide their viewers a snapshot of disaster in denied territory. American and Soviet officials immediately recognized that this newly available satellite technology would forever change the nature of state secrecy. For most of the Cold War, the U.S. government went to great lengths to protect its satellite imagery technologies behind a high wall of security classification. Many American officials worried that publicly sharing satellite images of locations in foreign countries without their consent could upset U.S. relations with other states, potentially generating an international movement to ban satellite reconnaissance, or that such disclosures might lead to Soviet interference with U.S. satellite operations. By the 1980s, however, the veil of secrecy surrounding satellite imagery was starting to lift, due in large part to nascent efforts in the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union to commercialize satellite imagery. In the final decade of the Cold War, changing international political conditions, technological transformations, and commercial interests converged to unleash an open-source satellite imagery revolution that continues to shape the nature of intelligence specifically and international political developments more broadly.
