Reports fielded by military officials indicate that U.S. forces operating in active theaters have been the subject of surveillance and targeting enabled by commercially available location data.
In a letter shared with lawmakers, U.S. Central Command said it had "received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater." The communication, dated April 14, did not provide further operational details. Centcom's area of responsibility covers the Gulf region, where U.S. forces have been engaged in tensions with the Iranian military near the Strait of Hormuz.
Lawmakers described the disclosure as the first official confirmation that U.S. personnel were being targeted with location feeds while deployed in an active war zone. A bipartisan group of legislators has pressed the Pentagon for more information but said their attempts to obtain additional details from military officials were unsuccessful.
Why location data matters
Location information is a core commodity in the digital advertising ecosystem. The data commonly originates on smartphones or other connected devices, collected by apps or service providers, and then flows to data brokers that aggregate and resell it through networks of intermediaries.
That market has long drawn scrutiny for privacy reasons. More recently, lawmakers and advocates are highlighting the national security implications when granular movement data about personnel and installations becomes available to potential adversaries.
The correspondence to the Pentagon warns that "commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes."
Historical reporting and recent analyses
Past reporting cited in the lawmakers' correspondence includes an account dating back to 2016, in which a U.S. defense contractor reportedly used commercially available location data to track special operations personnel from domestic bases to a sensitive staging area overseas. More recently, journalists working with large datasets obtained from a data broker analyzed billions of location coordinates and highlighted detailed movements of people at or nearby 11 U.S. military and intelligence sites in Germany.
Industry groups representing digital advertisers did not provide comment when contacted. Two organizations mentioned by lawmakers - the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Association of National Advertisers - did not respond to outreach seeking comment.
Legislators urge specific protective steps
The letter from lawmakers to the Pentagon suggested several measures that could mitigate the risk to deployed personnel. Recommendations include disabling the unique advertising identifier that is associated with government-issued devices, automatically turning off location sharing on smartphones used in the field, and directing staff away from web browsers perceived as less protective of user location signals.
One cosigner of the lawmakers' letter, a former U.S. Army Special Forces officer now serving in Congress, criticized broadly used browsers, saying they are engineered to collect and share user data and that continued use of such software on government devices effectively hands adversaries a weapon against U.S. troops.
Alphabet's Google provided a statement noting that its Chrome browser has "industry leading security" and that the company has "long advocated for stronger rules and safeguards against data brokers." The Pentagon did not return requests for comment on the substance of the lawmakers' letter or on operational countermeasures.
What remains unclear
The information disclosed so far is limited. The April 14 message to lawmakers, while confirming multiple threat reports, did not include specifics about the incidents, such as how frequently targeting was observed, which units or facilities were affected, or how the reports were validated. Lawmakers say their follow-up efforts to obtain additional information from military officials have not produced further details.
As debates continue in Congress over the role of advertising-driven data flows and the responsibilities of technology firms, the military and lawmakers face immediate choices about technical and policy steps to reduce exposure of personnel in the field.