The Indispensability of Zero Trust in India’s Defence Geospatial Agency

The rise of geospatial shutter control and AI-enabled battlefield intelligence underscores why India must build sovereign, zero-trust geospatial capabilities through its forthcoming Defence Geospatial Agency.

On 10 March 2026, when West Asia was witnessing projectiles flying in both directions across the Persian Gulf, the US-based geospatial company Planet Labs made an anomalous public announcement. Planet voluntarily proceeded, supposedly without any official instruction from the US Department of War, to announce a 14-day moratorium on the sale and resale of geospatial images. The measure is said to have been undertaken to prevent imagery from being used for tactical actions by Planet’s clients who could be adversarial to the United States. This action represents one form of geospatial ‘shutter control’ — a practice whereby entities generating geospatial images deny end-users access to such imagery.

Today, with shutter control imposed over large tracts of the Middle East and North Africa region, all ISR-gathering governmental agencies and commercial companies dependent on platforms such as Planet, particularly those with significant stakes in the region, are effectively blinded. As is well known, the Hormuz and Bab-al-Mandab straits are two vital global geoeconomic nerve centres. Geospatial shutter control is blinding commercial entities that have economic interests in this region. More importantly, the international news media, once dependent on Planet, is this time devoid of geospatial imagery in its reportage.

Read the original and longer version of this Expert Speak on the Observer Research Foundation website through this weblink - https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-indispensability-of-zero-trust-in-india-s-defence-geospatial-agency

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Commercialisation, Not Merely Privatisation: India’s Space Reform Strategy

The Emerging Drone–Space Panopticon in India’s Northeast Frontier

Untrusted Satcom: Imminent Dangers for Indian Tele-Education

The Global Surge in Solid Rocket Motors