A guy I worked with at Xerox about 10 years ago worked on a government project similar to yours back in the mid-80s to mid-90s. He never said it directly but it

A guy I worked with at Xerox about 10 years ago worked on a government project similar to yours back in the mid-80s to mid-90s. He never said it directly but it is clear it was for the CIA. Apparently even back in the 90s they had shockingly high-res images of a huge amount of the planet. One thing he said that always stuck with me was "whatever we have free access to today you can bet the [US] government had something just as good 20-30 years ago". It is very difficult to process such an idea though, at least for me. When I look at what we have today I find it almost impossible to think such a thing was possible 20 years ago or that governments might have things 20 years ahead of us today. It seems like a few years ago things I use today were impossible. Technology moves so fast I can't really comprehend 2 or 3 years ahead anymore!