I Really Hope the U.S. Isn’t Using X to Decide Who to Bomb

The U.S. has been carrying out a bombing campaign in Yemen in recent months, as part of an aggressive effort to target militant Houthi rebels who have sworn a vendetta against Israel’s actions in Gaza. A new report suggests that, when it comes to dropping bombs, the Pentagon may be taking its cues from a not altogether reliable source: social media.

Drop Site News writes that “serious allegations have emerged that the U.S. military has been relying, in part, on anonymous X accounts who post coordinates that they dubiously claim contain military assets.” The outlet notes that the government has been known to use sophisticated AI programs that algorithmically sift through open-source data to assist with government targeting capabilities. If that were the case, there are plenty of sketchy “open source investigators” online who could be responsible for feeding inaccurate information to those algorithms.

For example, Drop Site notes that an amateur OSINT X account, @VleckieHond, identified a particular location in Yemen as the site of an underground Houthi base in early April. On April 28th, CENTCOM carried out an airstrike at that location that reportedly killed eight civilians. It all raises the question: is the government getting its information on where to drop bombs from random online accounts? I certainly hope the answer is no, but, honestly, in this day and age, nothing seems beyond the pale.

This week, @VleckieHond apologized for having previously suggested that the location was an underground base: “Allright, time for me to go through the mud,” Vleckie posted. “Based on satellite imagery I’d marked this quarry as an underground base, and tweeted is out as such. I’m fairly certain Centcom doesn’t take their targeting data from Twitter, but this still is a very severe mistake.” She added: “I should never have posted it.”

The report notes that there’s no direct evidence that the government used the open source information to assist in its targeting, but states that @VleckieHond’s account has been cited before in defense publications:

To be sure, it may be a mere coincidence that the amateur sleuths identified the location before CENTCOM struck it, but the account used for the Sana’a strike is known to officials in the military, increasing the potential likelihood that it was relied on—at least, in part—for the tragic targeting. @VleckieHond has been publicly cited by reputable military-linked publications, including the influential Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Sentinel, which referred to the “ever-resourceful analyst @Vleckiehond,” in an April 2024 report citing her analysis on U.S. air operations against the Houthis.

Gizmodo reached out to the Defense Department for comment.

Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department has been rocked by ongoing turbulence ever since Trump took office. Hegseth, who previously served as a Fox News personality, was humiliated last month after accidentally texting war plans involving the Houthis to the head editor of The Atlantic. Many other related scandals have popped up since then, and one of Trump’s national security advisors, Mike Waltz, was booted on Thursday. Earlier this week, the Navy also lost a $60 million jet after it slipped off an aircraft carrier amidst evasive maneuvers in the Red Sea.