[xxpor]

The operators of most of those satellites for the US, which I find most people haven't actually heard of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligen...

Like you mentioned, they do use their capabilities for some things other than just GEOINT:

>In addition to using GEOINT for U.S. military and intelligence efforts, NGA provides assistance during natural and man-made disasters, aids in security planning for major events such as the Olympic Games,[9] disseminates maritime safety information,[10] and gathers data on climate change.[11]

[m2fkxy]

The NRO would be actually the operator. NGA takes care of exploiting the data

[xxpor]

Ah shoot, you're right, I totally forgot.

It does make me wonder what the NGA does with a ~5 billion dollar budget then, in my head most it was allocated to new sats. Other than buy approximately 10 3080s I mean ;)

[m2fkxy]

Good point... those 10 3080s sure would be useful for the ML stuff they probably do, hehe.

Also, probably going towards buying a lot of third-party commercial data.