Questions about who and what Sentient monitors are equally persistent and also nearly unanswerable, but there are a few clues about where the program may or may not be peeking. Spy satellites, like the ones used by the NRO [the National Reconnaissance Office], are primarily meant to focus on the world beyond the United States’ borders. And unlike its fellow intelligence agencies — including the NSA and CIA — the NRO hasn’t really been caught up in major domestic-spying scandals. Its biggest recent public upset was probably about the mission patch for the launch of its NROL-39 satellite: it depicts a giant yellow octopus mouth-suctioned to Earth — to North America, actually. Tentacles encircle the planet. The words “NOTHING IS BEYOND OUR REACH” smile in an arc below the cephalopod.

Despite the patch’s sentiment, there are some places where the NRO and Sentient are generally not supposed to reach. In heaven as on Earth, laws protect American citizens from unreasonable search and seizure by their government. “Under the existing statutory regime, Sentient-driven reconnaissance should not be taking place within the US,” says Aftergood. “If it were, that would of course immediately raise privacy and civil liberties concerns, and a whole set of related questions about how that collected information was being used and stored and so on. But right now it shouldn’t be collected in the first place.”

Now who’s being naive, Kay? FBI Used Undercover Agent to Cultivate Sources among Catholic Clergy and Leadership, House Republicans Reveal.

Via Richard Fernandez, who tweets, “The Ukraine 2023 spring offensive will be the first large scale test of space dominance’s effect on ground ops. The US has clear superiority in space assets vs Russia. It will also reveal how effective downstream systems have become.”