How do emerging technologies that erode governments’ near-monopolies on intelligence information affect public support for leaders and their foreign policies? Technologies—like imagery satellites—that were once the domain of state governments are now increasingly available to commercial and private actors. As a result, non-government entities can now exercise the disclosure decision, publicly divulging information whose release was once controlled by states. We argue that non-government entities with access to these technologies serve as alternative information sources that can verify government claims or reveal activities governments have not previously acknowledged. Using original survey experiments we find that commercial satellite imagery can serve as an informational cue that shifts public opinion, and, depending on its content, either attenuates or bolsters the effect of similar cues from government sources. The findings advance debates over secrecy in international relations and on the effect of emerging technologies in the security domain.

侵蚀政府对情报信息几乎垄断的新兴技术如何影响公众对领导人及其外交政策的支持？像图像卫星这样的技术曾经是州政府的领地，现在越来越多地为商业和私人行为者所用。因此，非政府实体现在可以行使披露决定，公开泄露曾经由国家控制发布的信息。我们认为，有权使用这些技术的非政府实体可以作为替代信息源，可以验证政府的主张或揭示政府先前未承认的活动。使用原始的调查实验，我们发现商业卫星图像可以作为改变公众舆论的信息提示，并且根据其内容，可以减弱或加强来自政府来源的类似提示的效果。这些发现推动了有关国际关系保密和新兴技术在安全领域的影响的辩论。