Back in mid-2016‚ while Hillary Clinton made Pokemon-themed campaign jokes a weird thing happened in US spy agencies - they started seeing Pokemon as possible national-security risks
The game became a world-wide hit (tens of millions of players took to streets with phones up high) and spy agencies got super-nervous about all that data users were giving away; Some facilities had rare Pokemon appearing in really odd places like near SCIFs or top-secret areas
We were all idiots. You know those movies where someone is sitting on a beach when the tidal wave hits? That was me
The games creator John Hanke and his San Francisco-based company Niantic (which started as Google project) werent ready for such success. They had zero people thinking about safety or geo-political issues when game launched - that led to some crazy situations like Pokemon appearing in Bosnian mine-fields
Different countries had different reactions to the game:
- Indonesia saw it as spy software
- Egypt called it security threat
- Russia thought its CIA tool
- Iran just banned it completely
- China blocked it due to “geo-security risks“
The NSA CIA and Energy Department got super-worried when Pokemon started appearing near their facilities. They sent out weird memos (some in Comic Sans font) warning about possible Chinese spying through the game - which was totally wrong since Niantic is US company with clean background
But heres the funny part - rare Pokemon kept showing up near secure rooms because people left their phones in storage boxes outside. The game thought those were popular hangout spots and spawned more creatures there
By 2022 the game still had 62-million players but spy agencies dont worry about Pokemon anymore - theyʼve got new things to be paranoid about (like TikTok)