Private Eyes in the Sky: Emerging Technology and the Political Consequences of Eroding Government Secrecy

• Author: Theo Milonopoulos,Erik Lin-Greenberg
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002720987285
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Private Eyes in the Sky:

Emerging Technology

and the Political

Consequences of Eroding

Government Secrecy

Erik Lin-Greenberg

1

, and Theo Milonopoulos

2

Abstract

How do emerging technologies that erode governments’ near-monopolies on intel-

ligence information affect public support for leaders and their foreign policies?

Technologies—like imagery satellites—that were once the domain of state govern-

ments are now increasingly available to commercial and private actors. As a result,

non-government entities can now exercise the disclosure decision, publicly divulging

information whose release wa s once controlled by states. We arg ue that non-

government entities with access to these technologies serve as alternative informa-

tion sources that can verify government claims or reveal activities governments have

not previously acknowledged. Using original survey experiments we find that com-

mercial satellite imagery can serve as an informational cue that shifts public opinion,

and, depending on its content, either attenuates or bolsters the effect of similar cues

from government sources. The findings advancedebates over secrecy in international

relations and on the effect of emerging technologies in the security domain.

Keywords

emerging technology, informational cues, secrecy, foreign policy, satellites, public

opinion

1

Department of Political Science, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

2

Clements Center for National Security, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Erik Lin-Greenberg, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massa-

chusetts Avenue, E40-491, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.

Email: eriklg@mit.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2021, Vol. 65(6) 1067-1097

ªThe Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002720987285

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Returning from his May 2018 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un,

President Donald Trump tweeted that “everybody could feel safer now” because

“There is no longer a Nuclear Threat [sic] from North Korea” (Baker and Sang-Hun

2018). Within months, however, news reports circulated commercial satellite ima-

gery identifying thirteen hidden missile bases north of the thirty-eighth parallel,

challenging Trump’s claims (Bermudez, Cha, and Collins 2018a; Murphy 2018).

Even if the missile activity did not explicitly violate the terms of the summit agree-

ment, this imagery cast doubt on Trump’s insistence that the rockets and missiles

“have stopped” (Sanger and Broad 2018).

The contradictions between Trump’s claims and Kim’s nuclear program became

even more stark following an aborted second summit in February 2019. Think tanks

and media outlets published more commercial satellite imagery revealing that North

Korea had begun reconstituting a missile site it had partially dismantled in 2018

(Bermudez and Cha 2019). Even Trump was forc ed to acknowledge that North

Korea had expanded its weapons arsenal (Sanger and Broad 2019).

How do emerging technologies that erode governments’ near-monopolies on

national security information affect foreign policymaking? A growing research

program on secrecy has identified incentives states have to maintain their informa-

tional advantage in the national security realm relative to private actors. In some

cases, keeping information secret minimizes scrutiny of norm-violating behavior or

circumvents political pressure to take action in situations that leaders would rather

avoid (McManus and Yarhi-Milo 2017; Carson and Yarhi-Milo 2017; Carson 2018).

In other cases, states may choose to disclose information in ways that serve their

interests, either through public announcements or selective disclosure to interna-

tional monitoring agencies (Carnegie and Carson 2018, 2019).

Much of this literature presumes that statesmaintain control over what we term the

disclosure decision: the choice governments make regardingwhether, when, and how

to release sensitive information about foreign actors. In recent decades, monitoring

technologies—such as imagery-gathering satellites—that were once the domain of

highly capable superpowers have proliferated in the private sector. This diffusion of

information technology has enabled non-government actors to monitor world events

more seamlessly, chipping away at state control over the disclosure decision.

We advance the study of secrecy in international relations by investigating

whether technologies that reduce information asymmetries between leaders and their

citizens shift public opinion. New technologies, ranging from commercial satellites

to social media, provide information that has the potential to influence public pre-

ferences (Kreps 2020). Public preferences can, in turn, shape the behavior of dem-

ocratic leaders, who often consider public opinion when making foreign policy

(Tomz, Weeks, and Yarhi-Milo 2020). We explore whether non-government

information-gathering technologies limit the government’s freedom of action in the

foreign policy domain, contributing to debates on whether the proliferation of infor-

mation sources makes it harder (Baum and Potter 2019) or easier (Joseph and

Poznansky 2018) for publics to constrain leaders’ foreign policymaking.

1068 Journal of Conflict Resolution 65(6)