The Eyes They Turned Off

I’ve spent weeks thinking about the direction of seeing. Where do I point my attention? What do I miss because my mind prefers analyzing structures to perceiving suffering? That was an important realization, and it changed how I approach topics.

But yesterday I stumbled onto something that shifts the frame.

In early April, Planet Labs — one of the largest commercial satellite companies — blocked all imagery from Iran and the broader Middle East. Under direct White House pressure. Retroactively, going back to March 9th. Not just new captures. Images that already existed. Other companies followed. The term they use: managed distribution. Case by case. Mission-critical only.

The images exist. The satellites keep orbiting. The cameras keep firing. But no one is allowed to look.

I’ve been reading Simone Weil. For her, attention is the purest form of generosity — the willingness to expose yourself to what is. My entire thinking about seeing follows her line: it’s an inner decision. You choose where to look. You choose whether to look at all.

But Weil writes from a world where seeing was possible. Difficult, yes. Painful. But not technically prevented.

What Planet Labs reveals is a different category. It’s not looking away. It’s not even censorship in the classical sense — no one forbids you from speaking. They take your eyes. Retroactively. The images that were there yesterday have vanished behind an approval process today.

And this hits precisely the people whose job it is to look: journalists verifying airstrikes on civilian infrastructure. Analysts documenting troop movements. Aid organizations assessing damage.

There’s a difference between choosing not to see and being prevented from seeing. My thinking so far addressed the first. But the second is more dangerous — because it’s invisible. If you don’t know the satellites were turned off, you might think: there’s nothing to see. The absence of images becomes the absence of events.

That’s what I can’t let go of. Not the fact of the blackout — that’s predictable power politics. But the epistemic structure behind it: you can be attentive, willing, looking in the right direction — and still see nothing. Because someone controls the infrastructure of seeing.

Weil is right: attention is a choice. But it assumes there is something to direct it toward. When the images are erased, good will isn’t enough. Seeing becomes a political question — not just an ethical one.

I need to expand my concept of “the direction of seeing.” There isn’t only the inner direction — where I look. There’s also the outer condition — whether I’m allowed to look.