I came across an article titled Pokémon is a Western intelligence tool, Belarus claims on Politico EU. I found this to be a nostalgic headline. It reminded me of some of the wild stories and Pokémon claims from the height of Pokémania in 1998/99. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was in power in 1999 too. Perhaps he missed the Poképlot back then or is rekindling an old classic. But, of course, there is no way whether Pokémon is a western intelligence tool. The original games were genuine works of art and most of the subsequent entries have been good. Why would I need to read this?
But it was in my feed reader, so I decided to give it a read.
I read the first sentence:
A Belarus Defense Ministry official has accused the once wildly popular mobile game Pokémon Go of being an instrument of Western intelligence.
(The quoted official is Alexander Ivanov, identified in the article as the Belarusian Defense Ministry’s head of ideological work.)
What did I think?
Oh, they’re talking about Pokémon GO. Why didn’t Politico say so in the headline? That makes much more sense.
Nicholas A. Ferrell
I never understood Pokémon GO. I generally avoid downloading proprietary data vacuum apps on my phone, and I am not sure why I would want to spend my pleasant walks outside staring at my phone. If I am doing anything on my phone outside, it is contributing to Open Street Map, not being tracked by whoever is running Pokémon GO. I know people who like Pokémon GO, but I never played it and do not get the appeal (but to be fair, my friend and colleague Victor V. Gurbo did send me some Meltans so I got what I needed from Pokémon GO anyway).
But is Pokémon GO a tool of Western intelligence? Let us see Belarus’ evidence, courtesy of Mr. Ivanov:
“Where do you think there were the most Pokémon at that time?” Ivanov asked on the Belarusian talk show Essentially earlier this week. ‘On the territory of the 50th air base, where the runway is, where there is a lot of military aviation equipment. That’s where there were the most Pokémon. Is this not intelligence information?’
Interesting. I had to think for a minute about how this would work. So I guess the theory is that ordinary Belarusians install Pokémon GO and go where the AR Pokémon are. The Pokémon are on the Belarusian air base. Pokémon GO is sending information back to the CIA – maybe even live camera feeds, so the CIA is turning the Belarusian Pokémon GO players into unwitting spies.
Something like that, probably.
(Pre-publication aside: Considering someone just made Hezbollah’s pagers spontaneously combust, I suppose anything is possible.)
But then again – if the CIA already knows where everything it needs to tag with AR Pokémon is, does it really need Belarusian Pokémon GO players to spy there for them? Moreover, does Belarus just let people wander around its air bases? Or is their concern that Belarusian airmen and other military personnel are avid Pokémon GO players? Maybe they should clamp down on their troops playing phone games on the job then. Even we managed to do that against TikTok on official devices.
According to the article, Belarus’ sometimes-friend Russia apparently lodged similar allegations against Pokémon GO years ago, causing the game’s developer, Niantic, to deny that Pokémon Go was used for spying. A likely story. That is exactly what would expect Niantic to say if Pokémon GO was an espionage tool and it did not want anyone to know about it.
(I looked it up and confirmed that Pokémon Go is still available in the Russian Google Play store. Mighty suspicious, no?)
All things considered, it does seem like Belarus’ Pokémon Go espionage theory is probably too cute by a half. If anything, that sounds more like the kind of stunt that Belarus would try.
Does this mean that Pokémon GO is not a CIA espionage tool?
Let us not get carried away.
It definitely has quite a few trackers and demands a hardy 42 permissions (residing in F-Droid land, 42 permissions is something I am not familiar with). Maybe we should err on the safe side and call it Pokémon GLOW (not the Volbeet kind of GLOW).
