Enemies Bought Our Troops’ Locations

The easiest way to find an American soldier in a war zone today is not with a spy satellite or a drone—but with a credit card and a data broker.

Story Snapshot

U.S. Central Command has confirmed adversaries are buying commercial location data to track American troops in active war zones.^[1]^[2]^[6]
Data brokers legally sell deeply detailed dossiers on service members, often for pennies per record, with weak checks on who is buying.^[3]^[4]^[6]
Congress finally banned sales of sensitive data to foreign adversaries, but loopholes and slow enforcement leave troops exposed.^[1]^[5]
The Pentagon’s culture still treats phones and apps as conveniences, not as radio beacons that can get Americans killed.^[2]^[4]

How a Smartphone Ad Became a Targeting System

U.S. Central Command has now admitted that American forces in active war zones have been targeted or surveilled using commercially purchased location data from their own smartphones.^[1]^[2]^[6] Adversaries did not need to hack a classified network; they simply bought data that advertising and analytics firms quietly harvest from everyday apps. Lawmakers disclosed that multiple threat reports warned of this exploitation, yet the same basic data flows from consumer apps into broker hands continued for years.^[2]^[4]

The risk here is not hypothetical. A 2024 investigation found that data brokers sold location data precise enough to follow individual service members as they moved around bases and then to off-base locations like their children’s schools, grocery stores, bars, and even brothels.^[4] That level of detail lets a hostile government map patrol routes, identify unit hubs, and spot personal vulnerabilities ripe for blackmail or recruitment.^[4] No missiles or malware required—just money and patience.

The Shadow Industry Selling Out the Front Line

Data brokers sit at the center of this mess. Duke University researchers showed it was cheap and easy to buy highly sensitive, individually identified data on active-duty troops, veterans, and their families, including health, financial, and religious information, from U.S. data brokers.^[3]^[6] Some records cost as little as twelve cents each.^[3]^[4]^[6] Controls on who could buy the data were inconsistent and often perfunctory, even when the buyer used foreign domains and obviously non-government fronts.^[3]^[6]

Privacy advocates and security analysts have warned for years that this laissez-faire market is a national security vulnerability, not just a consumer annoyance.^[2]^[4] The Electronic Privacy Information Center, for example, highlighted how these dossiers reveal patrol routes around bases and detailed records of officials, making targeting and influence operations dramatically easier.^[4] From a conservative standpoint, that is a textbook failure of government’s basic duty: protect those who volunteer to serve before funding the next tech pilot project.

Laws on the Books, Loopholes in the Wild

Congress finally reacted. The Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act, folded into a broader national security bill in April 2024, bans data brokers from selling or otherwise making sensitive personal data—including precise geolocation—available to entities tied to China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.^[1]^[5] The Federal Trade Commission can now pursue civil penalties when a broker hands that data to a foreign adversary or a front acting on its behalf.^[1]^[5]

That statute is a meaningful step, but it is not a magic shield. Enforcement depends on regulators detecting violations in a deliberately opaque ecosystem where data passes through chains of intermediaries and shell companies.^[2]^[5] Brokers can claim ignorance of a buyer’s true identity, while adversaries route purchases through cut-outs in friendly jurisdictions. Common sense says a hostile intelligence service will not present a business card that says “government of Iran” at checkout.

The Pentagon’s Responsibility and the Culture Gap

Documents released to lawmakers show that defense officials were warned as early as 2016 that smartphones made service members trivially trackable, yet the military did not seriously curtail the underlying data flows.^[2]^[4] That is not just a tech problem; it is a culture problem. The institution treated app-based conveniences as harmless personal choices, even in conflict zones, while foreign intelligence services treated them as a free targeting grid.^[2]

Data brokers are helping enemies target US troops. The Pentagon must step up, lawmakers say https://t.co/Ty016ewhFX via @DefenseOne @bobgourley

— Ghost Dansing 🐀☠️ 👻👽🐸 ghostdansing.bsky.social (@ghostdansing) May 29, 2026

A Pentagon that can dictate grooming standards and belt-buckle placement can also dictate phone configurations, app bans, and geolocation restrictions for deployed forces. A conservative reading of the facts points to a dereliction of priorities: leadership accepted avoidable digital risk to troops while Washington obsessed over abstract “disinformation” panels and boutique cyber initiatives. The basics—deny the enemy an easy targeting tool—lagged until Congress and outside researchers forced the issue.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[6]

What Real Protection Should Look Like

Fixing this requires more than one new statute and a stern memo. Policymakers serious about national defense would push three tracks at once. First, radically shrink the data available to be sold by limiting what apps can collect, store, and share in the first place; if brokers never receive the data, foreign adversaries cannot buy it.^[4]^[5] Second, impose strict, verifiable know-your-customer requirements on data brokers, with real penalties for willful blindness.^[2]^[5]

Third, the Pentagon should treat personal data as a battlefield asset and liability, the same way it treats radio discipline and emission control.^[4] That means default-off location services in theater, aggressive app whitelists, and active monitoring for commercial data trails tied to units and bases. Those measures are not about coddling privacy activists; they are about keeping Americans alive in an era when the line between “ad tech” and “weapons system” is dangerously thin.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[6]