I think the Trump tweet from the other day confirms that this speculation is not at all unfounded. I think 20cm resolution from satellite images is even better than most people speculated.

From what I can tell that image was pretty much in line with what everyone watching the US spy satellite program expected and wasn't hugely far off what's commercially available now. For instance, this was the first article I found when looking for information about the resolution of commercial satellite images (up to 30cm apparently), and it puts Keyhole spy satellites in the 7-10cm resolution ballpark: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/04/21/h...

The significance of that release was overblown because it helped support a narrative about Trump damaging national security that the media and people on social media liked. In reality it doesn't seem to have revealed anything about the US satellite imaging capabilities that wasn't already known.

I'm surprised this wasn't interpreted by the media as a "flex" of the power of the US intelligence apparatus, frankly.

Which tweet?

He tweeted a picture allegedly from a classified spy satellite:

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/02/756673481/amateurs-identify-u...