The Art of War famously teaches that the most effective strategy is to defeat an adversary by turning the adversary’s own strength against them. One of its most enduring maxims is deceptively simple: “Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.” Another, even more relevant to the digital age, is the concept that a commander should exploit the enemy’s own structure, resources, and assumptions as instruments of defeat. One of the most striking revelations about the war in Iran is the way data – publicly accessible data, and some data which can be seen by hacking — can be used as an instrument of espionage and warfare.

For decades, governments around the world have invested enormous resources into building a surveillance society. Cameras were installed on streets to monitor crime. License plate readers were deployed to identify vehicles. Cellular networks and metadata collection programs were designed to identify communications patterns. Social media platforms were encouraged—sometimes overtly, sometimes quietly—to collect and retain massive quantities of personal information. The assumption underlying this architecture was simple: surveillance was a tool of the state. It was something governments used against others. But in the digital age, the worm has turned.

The infrastructure of mass surveillance is no longer controlled solely by governments, and the data generated within it is often accessible—directly or indirectly—to adversaries. In modern intelligence operations, the hunter increasingly finds that the very surveillance ecosystem it created can be turned against it.

During the Cold War, intelligence gathering was labor-intensive, dangerous, and slow. Monitoring the movements of a political leader within hostile territory required a complex chain of events. Intelligence agencies had to insert an operative or recruit a local asset. That individual would physically surveil the target, perhaps photographing movements, noting vehicle patterns, or identifying meeting locations. The intelligence would then have to be written into a report and somehow transmitted—often clandestinely—back to headquarters. Every step carried a risk. Agents could be arrested or killed. Communications could be intercepted. Information might take days or weeks to arrive. You know, we’ve all read about this in LaCarre novels.

Modern digital infrastructure has eliminated most of these constraints.

Today, cities are saturated with sensors: Traffic cameras watch intersections. Commercial doorbell cameras watch neighborhoods. Automated license plate readers capture vehicle movements. Cell towers record the location of phones. Social media platforms continuously record the movements, interests, and social networks of millions of users.

What once required a spy physically following a target through a city can now be reconstructed retrospectively using existing surveillance infrastructure. The target, in effect, carries its own tracking device. Individually, each system is justified as a security or operational necessity.
Collectively, they form something else entirely: A distributed surveillance network capable of tracking nearly anyone’s movements through a city.

And critically, these networks are rarely designed with national security threats in mind. Municipalities, private companies, or small contractors with varying levels of cybersecurity may operate them. Many are accessible remotely for maintenance or monitoring. If compromised, they provide exactly the kind of visibility intelligence agencies once struggled to obtain. If the report about Tehran’s traffic cameras is accurate, the system designed to monitor everyday traffic may have become an intelligence platform for tracking one of the most heavily protected political leaders in the world.

The transformation is even more profound when it comes to communications intelligence. Historically, intelligence agencies had to physically install listening devices in offices, telephones, or conference rooms. Wiretaps required access to telephone lines. Bugs had to be hidden in lamps or walls. Now, individuals carry powerful surveillance devices in their pockets. Smartphones contain microphones, cameras, GPS chips, accelerometers, wireless radios, and constant connectivity. Even without active interception, metadata alone can reveal extraordinary insights into a person’s activities.

Location data from cellular networks can show where someone travels throughout the day.
Bluetooth interactions reveal who they are near, and messaging platforms show social networks and communications patterns. The intelligence value of this data is enormous. And it is generated continuously by the targets themselves.

If smartphones are tracking devices, social media platforms are intelligence goldmines.
Individuals voluntarily publish enormous amounts of information about themselves: Where they live, where they work, who their friends are, where they travel and what events they attend.

Professional platforms such as LinkedIn provide additional insights. They identify employers, job titles, professional networks, and often the skills or credentials individuals possess. For intelligence services, this information can reveal organizational structures that once required months of investigation to uncover. Analysts can identify engineers working on sensitive programs, contractors with security clearances, or officials connected to specific defense agencies.

Apparently, while most social media is banned or restricted in Iran (and monitored by government agencies), a service called LINE, which includes social networking features such as Timeline posts, allows users to broadcast personal information to broad audiences from within the Islamic Republic. When Israel decided to bomb Tehran and other places in Iran, it already had a clear view of targets, locations, movements, and activities based on what it could learn from these sources.

Sun Tzu wrote that the highest form of warfare is not the destruction of armies but the manipulation of information. Modern surveillance infrastructure embodies that principle in unexpected ways. In fact, the more open the society, the more vulnerable it is to attack. Governments and corporations built vast systems to collect and analyze data. The systems were justified by public safety, efficiency, and convenience. But the existence of these systems means that enormous quantities of sensitive information now exist in digital form.

Once created, that data does not remain exclusively in the hands of those who collected it. It can be hacked, purchased, leaked, or exploited through open-source analysis. The result is a strategic paradox. The more surveillance infrastructure a society builds, the more potential intelligence sources exist for adversaries.

Perhaps the most striking change in modern espionage is that intelligence gathering is no longer limited to intelligence agencies. Researchers, journalists, and private analysts increasingly use open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques to investigate conflicts, track military movements, and identify individuals involved in events around the world. Satellite imagery, social media posts, and public databases allow analysts to reconstruct events with remarkable accuracy. The same techniques that allow journalists to identify war crimes can also allow hostile actors to identify targets. Information that once required covert collection now often exists in plain sight.

In the digital age, the most powerful weapon against a surveillance society may be the surveillance society itself.

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