The founder of Pokemon received funding from the CIA-backed investment firm In-Q-Tel for his mapping company Keyhole. Years later, Niantic turned Pokémon Go into a global phenomenon while using its massive player base to help build increasingly sophisticated maps of the physical world. And after selling Pokémon Go, Hanke’s remaining company, Niantic Spatial, is now openly marketing that mapping and spatial AI technology for defense and intelligence applications. Making people question if the game had deeper intentions from the beginning.