On a Thursday in late summer 2026, Google quietly added a button to Google Earth that lets anyone generate AI-fabricated satellite imagery from real geospatial data — and in doing so, may have begun unraveling two decades of carefully built institutional trust. The tool, powered by Google's Nano Banana 2 system, was framed as a creative aid for visualization and planning, but researchers and intelligence analysts recognized something more consequential: a credibility engine that could launder fiction into fact. What makes this moment distinct from ordinary AI image concerns is that the fakes d