Pentagon Acknowledges Adversaries Using Commercial Location Data to Target US Troops
The Story
US Central Command has confirmed receiving threat reports about adversaries using commercially available location data to target American military personnel in the Middle East. The acknowledgment, first reported by Reuters, comes after nearly a decade of warnings to the Pentagon from its own contractors, analysts, and intelligence agencies about the dangers of the data-broker economy. A bipartisan group of 14 lawmakers has now sent a letter criticizing the Pentagon for failing to adopt recommended cybersecurity measures.
Key Facts
- US Central Command confirmed “multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil US personnel in theater.”
- Warnings to the Pentagon began as early as 2016, when a demonstration at Fort Bragg showed commercial data could track phones from US bases through Turkey into a covert forward operating base in Syria.
- The Defense Intelligence Agency disclosed to Congress in 2021 that it uses commercially purchased phone location data on Americans without a warrant.
- In 2023, Duke University researchers, under an Army grant, bought data on service members for as little as 12 cents per record.
- In late 2024, WIRED and German outlets obtained a sample of 3.6 billion coordinates tied to 11 million phones in Germany, including devices passing through US military installations.
- A May 2025 Army Cyber Institute report found more than a fifth of most-visited web domains on stateside unclassified networks were commercial trackers and recommended restricting Chrome.
- A bipartisan group of 14 lawmakers sent a letter obtained by WIRED pressing Pentagon CIO Kirsten Davies to disable advertising IDs on military phones, remove Chrome, and enroll service members in data-broker opt-out systems.
- Centcom confirmed it only rolled out the ability to switch off location sharing on government smartphones this month.
- This month, the Army told soldiers to use personal phones for government work; those phones broadcast advertising IDs to data brokers.
Conflicting Reports
No conflicting reports identified in the source article.
Still Unclear
Why the Pentagon did not act on the warnings for roughly a decade; what specific measures will now be implemented in response to the lawmakers’ letter.
Misconceptions
No widespread misconceptions addressed in the source article.
Key Figures
- Kirsten Davies: Pentagon chief information officer
- Sean Vitka: executive director of Demand Progress
- US Central Command: officials who issued the letter
- 14 bipartisan lawmakers: signatories of the letter (not individually named in the article)
Sources: Wired
