Space Sovereignty — incident
Snowden and the Five Eyes
The Snowden disclosures lay out the satellite-intelligence partnerships of the Five Eyes in unprecedented detail. Allied governments, embarrassed in public, quietly start funding sovereign communications alternatives.
Beginning in June 2013, disclosures by NSA contractor Edward Snowden expose the satellite-intelligence partnerships of the Five Eyes — particularly programmes such as RAMPART-A and TURMOIL — in unprecedented detail. Allied governments embarrassed in public quietly start funding sovereign communications alternatives.
Commercial satellite operators reconsider their willingness to host US-government tasking on shared payloads, and a new generation of European, Brazilian and South-East-Asian sovereign satellite-communications procurements gets greenlit. The Snowden disclosures are arguably the single most consequential trigger for non-American sovereign communications spending in the post-Cold-War era.