JEffrey Lewis was able to identify clear signs of the Russian attack on Ukraine hours before the official announcement of President Vladimir Putin's “special military operation”: on the mapping service Google Maps.
The professor and military expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California shared a screenshot on Twitter (now X) in the early morning of February 24, 2022, shortly before the start of the war, in which Google Maps showed a traffic jam message near the Ukrainian border. For Lewis and his research team, this was definitive proof that the Russian invasion was imminent: “This confirmed our assumption that a Russian unit was advancing on this road,” Lewis told the FAZ
The fact that a simple traffic jam report on Google Maps predicts a major military attack initially sounds absurd. But the war in the Middle East also proves that warring parties could draw military-tactical conclusions from publicly available traffic data.
Some functions are suspended
The American companies Google and Apple restricted their navigation systems for the region shortly before the start of the Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. Since the end of October, no information about the traffic situation and occupancy on the streets of Israel and Gaza has been available on the popular map services Google Maps, Waze (also from Google) and Apple Maps – apparently at the request of the Israeli army, as the Bloomberg news service reported.
Google collects location and movement data from Google Maps users' cell phones to display traffic volume. In peacetime, a useful tool for civilian users to avoid traffic jams or accidents, in wartime this data can provide important information about troop or refugee movements. In the context of the Ukraine war, Google switched off some functions of its navigation system, among other things after consultation with local authorities. When asked, a Google spokesman told the FAZ: “As we have done before in conflict situations and in response to the developing situation in the region, out of consideration for the safety of the local communities, we have temporarily deactivated the ability to display current traffic conditions and traffic information in Israel and Gaza.” However, the routes to a specific destination would still be displayed, it is said. The travel time can also still be seen on Google Maps. The company left unanswered questions about the expected duration of the restrictions and whether they were at Israel's request.
Apple has not yet responded to a request to this effect. However, no traffic jam reports in the region were recently displayed on Apple Maps; only the expected journey time to the destination was shown.
The approach of Jeffrey Lewis and his team impressively shows how troop movements can be verified using real-time traffic data. In the weeks before the start of the war, the scientists initially monitored Russia's troop deployments on the Ukrainian border using satellite images. Most of these recordings indicated that “the Russians were staying there for a while – camping, so to speak,” says Lewis.
“Nobody believed us”
But eventually the team noticed a satellite image that was different from the others: what appeared to be a large armed Russian unit with military vehicles, including tanks, on the move on a road from the Russian city of Belgorod, close to Ukraine. This was evidence that the Russian attack would probably begin in the next 24 to 48 hours. “We tried to share this with the press – but no one believed us.”
So to verify, the scientists used real-time traffic data from Google Maps to detect any unusual movements. “We saw a traffic jam report on Google Maps, exactly where we located the Russian unit on satellite images,” Lewis said. That was a very big coincidence – which obviously wasn't.
The Google Maps data indicated that the Russians had set up road blockades there, explains Lewis. Previous traffic data showed that there had never been a traffic jam at this point at this time, 3 a.m. local time. The traffic jam shown on Google Maps was moving towards the Ukrainian border. “From that moment on it was clear: Russian unity was marching towards Ukraine.” A few hours later, shortly before 6 a.m., Vladimir Putin declared war on the neighboring country in a televised speech. Lewis believes that the cell phone signals collected by Google did not come from Russian soldiers because they were given instructions not to use mobile devices. It was probably data from civilian users who were held up by the road blockades.
Switching off traffic data will deprive all warring parties of the ability to track enemy troop movements using public map services, said Lewis. In contrast to Hamas, Israel probably doesn't need that. Its intelligence capabilities and secret services are known to be among the best in the world.
#Gaza #Ukraine #Google #Maps #reveal #militaryrelevant #data