White House Situation Room is depending on live Belgian corporate intel feed to respond to terrorist hijackings
Mistakes in Pentagon procurement document redactions revealed the Belgian maritime intelligence firm Kpler as the live data feed provider; evidence deleted after White House staff was questioned.
Less than 24 hours after reaching the White House Situation Room for comment, U.S. public procurement documents revealing their dependence upon a near-real-time maritime intelligence feed provided by the Belgian firm Kpler have been silently deleted from public record on SAM.gov. The author is now used to such responses to critical public records reporting and is publishing cached versions of the documents directly in this article.
One of the now-rescinded documents justified the avoidance of an open competition for Kpler licenses by arguing that “If a vessel is attacked by a terrorist organization, it would be critical to know the shipping contents to assist and determine if there would be a potential ecological disaster.” The goal of the contract — whose period of performance was listed as January 17, 2025 to January 16, 2026 — was to purchase a “brand name specific Kpler custom bundle of intelligence data feed that includes 40+ commodities including Gas, Liquids, Petrochemicals, Dry and Energy transition data.”
The justification document further noted Kpler’s unique machine learning capabilities, as well as its incorporation of “AIS signals, satellite imagery, port calls, and trade flows to provide unmatched accuracy and speed across global parameters,” referring to the Automatic Identification System (AIS) collision-avoidance location broadcasts. The document further noted Kpler’s incorporation of data from two of its acquisitions, MarineTraffic.com and the former maritime division of Spire Global, which Kpler acquired for $241 million in November 2024.
The White House Situation Room point of contact for the contract was listed as Jacob Bradley, whose phone number was redacted by the author in the published documents. Mr. Bradley refused to comment when reached by phone early yesterday afternoon, instead requesting the author to carefully spell out their name. The documents cited as evidence in the call were quickly removed from public record.
Kpler similarly did not respond to a detailed request for comment submitted through the contact form on their website early yesterday afternoon, including regarding whether their Belgian domicile had proven to be an obstacle to sensitive contracts with the U.S. government.
The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA), the department’s representative in the U.S. Intelligence Community, helped arrange Kpler’s largest public U.S. federal contract in July 2022, through a sole-source agreement which has so far paid out $385,500 out of a potential $3 million over five years. The sole-source justification summary argued that, “With Kpler, INC’s detailed analysis on ship movement and STS [ship-to-ship] transfers, via their web-based subscription service, TFI [Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence] (notably OIA) will better be equipped to accomplish their mission and provide high quality products expected of Treasury Leadership.”
Kpler has also received more than $600,000 in payouts through a series of five contracts with the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources, beginning in late 2021.
The Belgian maritime intelligence firm first came to the author’s attention yesterday as part of finalizing reporting on the U.S. Air Force’s secretive Office of Competitive Activities having purchased commercial financial intelligence datasets and software as part of the department’s reorientation towards Great Power Competititon with China. The point of contact for the corporate records analysis firm Sayari, which has privately admitted to its products being used for the targeting phase of U.S. military offensive cyber operations, temporarily transitioned from Sayari to Kpler before moving to Sayari competitor Exiger.
Just over 24 hours after learning of the company’s existence, the White House Situation Room has apparently already intervened to erase public records regarding the author’s inquiry into Kpler.
https://open.substack.com/pub/taibbi/p/livestream-4-pm-et?r=1e5u7u&utm_medium=ios
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