How Location Data from Your Phone Could Put US Soldiers at Risk

The Pentagon has confirmed that hostile foreign powers have purchased personal location information about American troops and used it to target or track them. The Department of Defense acknowledgment marks the first time the military has officially admitted that enemies have weaponized the commercial data broker ecosystem — the largely unregulated market where data about people's movements gets bought and sold.

The confirmation came through letters between Senator Ron Wyden and U.S. Central Command. According to these documents, adversaries purchased commercially available location data in order to track and potentially target servicemembers. The threat exploits the same advertising technology infrastructure that powers much of the internet.

How the Threat Works

The problem is more concrete than it sounds. Back in 2016, a U.S. defense contractor ran an exercise demonstrating the risk. Using only location data that was for sale on the commercial market, they were able to track special operations forces from their home bases to a staging post in Syria. The data came from the same sources that advertisers use to target you with ads — information that your phone apps and websites collect about where you are, when, and what you're doing.

Here's the simple version: when you download an app or visit a website, it often collects information about your location. That data gets sold to data brokers — middlemen who aggregate it and resell it to advertisers. But there's no wall separating that data from foreign governments or hostile groups who want to buy it too. They purchase the same datasets, use them to find military personnel, and track their movements.

The U.S. Central Command has now received multiple reports of hostile countries actually doing this — not just testing whether it could work, but actively running surveillance and targeting operations using purchased commercial location data.

What the Government Is Doing About It

Bipartisan lawmakers have sent recommendations to the Pentagon about how to protect troops. The suggestions include turning off advertising tracking features on military-issued phones, automatically disabling location sharing on smartphones that are deployed overseas, and having troops use privacy-focused web browsers instead of Google Chrome.

Senator Wyden has gone further, publicly arguing that the advertising technology industry itself poses a national security risk. The FBI has also weighed in with advice for ordinary people: use ad blockers to reduce how much data is collected about you by apps and websites.

Why This Is Harder Than It Sounds

The challenge here runs deeper than just "turn off location sharing." Modern smartphones collect location data constantly and automatically. Apps request permission, you agree, and then the phone sends out signals telling advertisers and data brokers where you are. Many people don't fully realize how detailed and continuous this tracking is, or where the data ends up.

The data broker ecosystem has almost no oversight in most countries. Foreign governments can hide behind intermediaries — shells and front companies — to buy this intelligence without being easily traced. What started as a way to show you ads for restaurants near you has become a way for enemies to locate and potentially harm military personnel.

The broader context is worth understanding: this threat shows how technology designed for one purpose — making money through advertising — can become a weapon in a very different way. The companies creating this advertising infrastructure didn't build it with the intention that governments would buy it. But once the data exists and is for sale, controlling who buys it and what they do with it becomes nearly impossible.

Congress Is Starting to Pay Attention

Multiple Congressional committees have begun investigating how commercial data brokers pose a threat to national security. The Senate Armed Services Committee has held hearings on the subject. The Senate Intelligence Committee has reviewed how commercial data could be exploited by enemies. This reflects a growing recognition in Congress that the advertising industry's data practices have crossed from a privacy concern into a security concern.

Military leaders now have to rethink how to keep troops safe in an environment where detailed information about their movements is for sale to the highest bidder. The traditional ways of protecting military secrets — keeping communications secure, controlling who knows about operations — don't fully protect against a threat where your phone itself is the source of the leak.