Neither yes nor no. Every door left open.
The statement: “I could definitely see it.” — Brian McClendon, Niantic, in response to the question of whether governments and militaries could purchase access to or licence Niantic’s Large Geospatial Model (LGM), at Bellingfest 2024.
The context: The LGM is trained on data generated by hundreds of millions of Pokémon Go players: real-world spatial data, at high resolution, from locations worldwide. At Bellingfest 2024, McClendon was asked directly whether the model could be sold to militaries for applications including drone navigation, target identification, and battlefield spatial intelligence. This was his answer.
What the sentence does: “I could definitely see it” is a sentence that neither confirms nor denies, neither commits nor refuses. It performs openness — I am not hiding anything, I can imagine this future — while making no commitment. The grammatical structure is important: “could see” is conditional and personal (in my imagination, this is plausible), not declarative (this will happen or this will not happen). Every commercial and ethical door remains open. The phrase also performs a kind of affability: the speaker is being candid, cooperative, not defensive.
A sentence that performs openness while committing to nothing — where every door is left open without any being entered.
The analytical work the sentence does: It is a companion to “adding amplitude to war is obviously an issue” — the same speaker, the same event, two different rhetorical moves that produce the same outcome: no commitment, every option open. Dual-Use Technology — technology with both civilian and military applications — is what the sentence is navigating: the question is whether a civilian technology will be sold for military use. The answer “I could definitely see it” resolves the dual-use question by declining to resolve it. Obfuscation — deliberate opacity — is the mechanism: the appearance of candour conceals the absence of substance.
Why this sentence matters: “I could definitely see it” is a phrase that does the work of an answer without being one. Once you recognise the structure, you can identify it wherever it appears — in investor calls, in regulatory hearings, in product announcements. The candid tone is the cover. The non-answer is the content.
Related terms: Dual-Use Technology · Military-Industrial Complex · Obfuscation · “Adding amplitude to war is obviously an issue.” · Digital-Military-Industrial Complex
Read more:
- Science in Action — Latour, B. (1987). Harvard University Press — on how facts and technologies are stabilised through statements
- The Future of Geospatial Intelligence with AI and AR — Goldstein, C. (2025). Niantic Spatial