American Tech Giant Spied on India, Sold Sensitive Imagery to Pakistani Intelligence Before Pahalgam Terror Attack

In the shadowy world of espionage, a chilling scenario unfolded in early 2025. A Pakistani company, cloaked in legitimacy, approached an American technology titan specializing in satellite imagery. They purchased high-resolution pictures of India’s sensitive Jammu and Kashmir region—images so sharp they could pinpoint camouflaged military vehicles, hidden bunkers, and troop movements down to 30 centimeters. Weeks later, on April 22, 2025, a devastating terror attack rocked Pahalgam, claiming 26 civilian lives in the serene Baisaran Valley. This is no Bollywood thriller, not one of the 16 scripts rushed to register Operation Sindoor as the next blockbuster. This is reality—a tale of betrayal, greed, and geopolitical intrigue that has India questioning the ethics of a U.S. tech giant and its role in a deadly plot.

The Company: Maxar Technologies
At the heart of this saga is Maxar Technologies, a U.S.-based space technology leader headquartered in Westminster, Colorado. Maxar operates a constellation of satellites, including the WorldView series, delivering imagery with a staggering 30 cm resolution—capable of revealing minute details on the ground. Its services, used for urban planning, disaster response, and defense, make it a global powerhouse in geospatial intelligence. Yet, its open commercial model, allowing clients to order imagery via a mobile app, has sparked fears of misuse in sensitive regions like Jammu and Kashmir.

Maxar’s reach extends deep into India, where it serves high-profile clients like the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). These agencies rely on Maxar’s imagery for border surveillance, infrastructure monitoring, and operations like Operation Sindoor (May 7, 2025), which used Maxar’s data to execute precise missile strikes on terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Additionally, at least 11 Indian space tech startups, including Antrix Corporation, CYRAN AI Solutions, Lepton Software, and Satpalda Geospatial Services, partner with Maxar for geospatial analytics, underscoring India’s dependence on its high-frequency imagery.

The Pakistani Company: Business Systems International (BSI)
Enter Business Systems International Pvt Ltd (BSI), a Karachi-based geospatial firm with a dark past. Operating since 1980, BSI provides high-performance computing and GIS services, often to Pakistan’s defense and intelligence sectors. Its ties to Pakistan’s National Development Complex (NDC), linked to nuclear weaponization, and its owner’s criminal history raised alarms in India. BSI’s partnership with Maxar, established in 2023, gave it access to sensitive imagery, setting the stage for a dangerous breach.

BSI is owned by Obaidullah Syed, a Pakistani-American businessman based in Northbrook, Illinois, before his legal troubles. Syed’s dual citizenship and operations in both the U.S. and Pakistan made him a key figure in this controversy, bridging commercial interests with potential security risks.

In 2022, Syed was convicted in the U.S. for violating export control laws under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). From 2006 to 2015, he illegally exported high-performance computing equipment and software to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), an entity on the U.S. Entity List due to its role in nuclear weapons development. Sentenced to one year in prison and fined $247,000, Syed’s actions exposed BSI’s ties to Pakistan’s nuclear program, making Maxar’s 2023 partnership with BSI a shocking oversight.

How the Sensitive Information Was Acquired
Between June 2024 and April 2025, Maxar’s portal recorded an unprecedented spike in orders for imagery of Pahalgam, Anantnag, Pulwama, Poonch, Rajouri, and Baramulla—12 orders alone from February 2–22, 2025. These 15–30 cm resolution images, capable of exposing camouflaged Indian military assets, were available to any paying client through Maxar’s open platform. While Maxar denied BSI placed these orders, the timing—coinciding with BSI’s partnership—raised suspicions that Pakistani intelligence, via intermediaries, accessed this data, exploiting Maxar’s lax vetting.

How the Imagery Fueled the Pahalgam Attack
The Pahalgam attack, executed with chilling precision, targeted a civilian area in the Baisaran Valley. The terrorists’ knowledge of terrain and security layouts suggested access to detailed intelligence. Maxar’s imagery, ordered in the months prior, could have provided a blueprint, revealing hidden Indian positions and routes. The attack’s success—26 lives lost—underscored the lethal potential of such data in the wrong hands, raising questions about how it reached the perpetrators.

ISI’s Role and Pakistan Army’s Shadow
How did Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)-trained terrorists, often suspected to be Pakistan Army soldiers in disguise, obtain this imagery? The ISI’s history of orchestrating attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, combined with BSI’s links to Pakistan’s defense establishment, suggests a possible conduit. Did BSI, or another intermediary, funnel Maxar’s imagery to the ISI? The lack of transparency in Maxar’s client records leaves this question unanswered, but the coincidence of the imagery orders and the attack is too stark to ignore.

Indian Intelligence Raises the Alarm
Indian intelligence agencies, including the National Investigation Agency (NIA), red-flagged Maxar after The Print’s (May 9, 2025), exposé revealed the imagery spike. The National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) and ISRO scientists expressed alarm over Maxar’s partnership with BSI, given Syed’s conviction and BSI’s ties to Pakistan’s nuclear program. The orders for sensitive areas, detected by India’s NTRO, were seen as a potential precursor to the Pahalgam attack, prompting calls for accountability.

Maxar’s Moral Responsibility
Why shouldn’t Maxar bear moral responsibility for this breach? As a supplier to India’s MoD and ISRO, Maxar profited from India’s trust while partnering with a firm linked to Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions. Its failure to vet BSI, despite Syed’s 2022 conviction, suggests negligence. Shouldn’t a company handling sensitive geospatial data prioritize security over profits? Maxar’s denial of BSI’s involvement and lack of a formal apology to India only deepen the ethical questions.

The Ethics of Profit-Driven Tech
Should tech companies do anything for profits? Maxar’s open commercial model, allowing imagery sales to any paying client, prioritizes revenue over responsibility. Partnering with BSI, a firm with a criminal past, shows a willingness to cut corners. Such actions not only endanger lives but also erode trust in an industry that shapes modern warfare. Ethical tech firms must balance profit with accountability, especially when their products can fuel conflicts.

Why This Was an Unwise Decision
Maxar’s partnership with BSI was commercially disastrous. India, a “vast market” with clients like the MoD and ISRO, far outweighs Pakistan’s limited market potential. Alienating India risks losing lucrative contracts and invites scrutiny from U.S. regulators, given the U.S.-India strategic partnership. The backlash—BSI’s removal from Maxar’s partner list on May 10, 2025—shows Maxar in a poor light, exposing shallow ethical values and prioritizing short-term gains over long-term trust.

India’s ASAT Capability and Political Ramifications
India’s Mission Shakti (2019) proved it can shoot down low-earth-orbit satellites like Maxar’s using a DRDO missile. Targeting a U.S. satellite would be a last resort, justified only by imminent threats (e.g., real-time imagery aiding an attack). However, the political fallout would be severe: straining U.S.-India ties, risking sanctions, and inviting condemnation under the Outer Space Treaty (1967) for debris creation. Escalation with adversaries like China, with advanced ASAT capabilities, could spiral into broader conflict.

Jamming as an Alternative
India could jam Maxar’s satellites using radio frequency (RF) jamming, laser dazzling, or cyber attacks, disrupting imagery capture without physical destruction. DRDO’s Kali laser and NTRO’s cyber capabilities make this feasible. Jamming is less escalatory, avoiding debris, but risks disrupting India’s own access to Maxar’s imagery and straining U.S. relations. It’s a targeted option for immediate threats but not a long-term solution.

What should be India’s Response: Diplomacy and Pressure
India must combine diplomacy and pressure to prevent such breaches. It should leverage U.S.-India ties to demand stricter vetting by Maxar, as seen in the 2022 BSI conviction. Strengthening the Remote Sensing Data Policy and Geospatial Information Regulation Bill can restrict imagery sales. Public exposure, as in 2025, forced Maxar to act, proving media pressure works. India should also advocate global norms via the Wassenaar Arrangement to regulate commercial imagery.

The Way Ahead: Self-Reliance in an Interdependent Ecosystem
Future wars will not be fought solely by soldiers on land, jets in the sky, or ships at sea. Satellites, high-resolution space imagery, electronic intelligence, and AI-controlled drones and missiles will dominate, operating within a seamless, interdependent ecosystem. The 2025 Pahalgam attack, potentially aided by Maxar’s imagery, underscores the stakes: control of geospatial data and autonomous systems is now a battlefield. India’s ISRO, with Cartosat-3 (25 cm resolution) and RISAT (all-weather radar), provides a foundation, but gaps in revisit frequency drive reliance on foreign providers like Maxar. To counter this, India must accelerate its space program, launching more satellites to match Maxar’s daily revisits and developing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for continuous coverage. Supporting startups like Pixxel and Skyroot Aerospace, as outlined in the National Geospatial Policy, 2022, will bolster AI-driven analytics and indigenous drone technology. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Aatmanirbhar Bharat vision, self-reliance in arms and space tech—integrating satellites, electronic warfare, and autonomous systems—is critical. By building this ecosystem, India can secure its skies and thwart threats from adversaries exploiting commercial data.

The Maxar-BSI scandal is a chilling betrayal, exposing how a U.S. tech giant’s negligence and a Pakistani firm’s shady ties nearly armed terrorists with India’s secrets. Maxar’s denial of wrongdoing does little to erase the stain of its ethical lapses. As future wars shift to space, AI, and electronic intelligence, India must act decisively—wielding diplomacy, tightening regulations, and deploying countermeasures like jamming or camouflage. Above all, Aatmanirbhar Bharat offers the path forward: a self-reliant ecosystem of satellites, drones, and AI-driven defense to shield India’s sovereignty. The skies are no longer neutral—they’re a battleground. India must rise to dominate them, ensuring no foreign lens betrays its people again.

About the author:  Senior Journalist and News Analyst Mr. Alok Lahad is Group Consulting Editor (European Affairs) of Global Governance News. Research Scholar and Hispanist. Writes on Indian and European affairs Geopolitics from Barcelona, Spain.