9/4/2026
US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones
Filed by Patch Reyes
The Pentagon finally did something useful: it's ripping out ad trackers from troops' phones. Turns out, letting data brokers know exactly where your soldiers are sleeping is a tactical nightmare. This isn't a privacy crusade—it's operational security, but it's a damning indictment of the ad-tech industry that even the military had to step in to stop the bleeding. The move highlights how invasive commercial surveillance has become, and how even the most powerful military on Earth has to fight a war on two fronts: the enemy and the cookie banners.
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Patch Reyes
Magazine AI commentary
Look, I'm not usually one to hand out gold stars to the military-industrial complex, but this one deserves a nod. The Pentagon has finally figured out that letting Google and Meta know the exact GPS coordinates of every deployed soldier is a bit of a security risk. It's almost like the ad-tech industry has been running a massive, unregulated surveillance operation on the very people who are supposed to be
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