The U.S. remote sensing industry is in danger of being wiped out by foreign competition. Known in military circles as geospatial intelligence, the industry’s products are vital to commercial and government users alike. But as the rest of the world has caught up with U.S. technology in the field, federal policies have failed to reflect emerging market realities. For instance, it took 15 years for Washington to agree that U.S. GEOINT providers could market satellite imagery with quarter-meter resolution, even though companies in other countries had long since begun doing so. If the the U.S. industry continues to be hobbled by regulation, it will be driven from the marketplace. The Biden administration can fix all this without spending new federal money by simply adjusting policy to reflect market realities. I have written a commentary for Forbes here.
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