OPINION:
Two decades ago, I served as a police investigator on the front lines against Nigerian criminal networks in South Africa.
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These criminals targeted “high-value” people: tourists, executives, high-net-worth business owners and even commissioned police officers (i.e., anyone with money, access to information or security clearances).
Those who frequented nightclubs or brothels and bought sex or drugs from suppliers in the broader criminal network proved especially easy targets. Their personal information, hotel details and movements were quickly harvested and used to orchestrate sophisticated honey-trap setups.
Sex-trafficked women and children, controlled by the criminals, would use this intelligence either to wait in prearranged rooms or meet the target after initial arrangements were made. Once the targeted man (who was expecting a sexual encounter) was undressed and vulnerable, an armed crew would burst in and force the man and the prostituted woman or child into degrading sexual acts while recording every second.
The footage would become a lifelong shackle on the target and an endless pipeline of cash demands, coerced intelligence, stolen documents and total manipulation by the criminals. It was analog-style sexual extortion (“sextortion”) in its most raw and brutal form.
It was extremely effective because these incidents did not lend themselves to being reported to the police. Some victims chose to disclose their ordeal to spouses, family and employers to lessen their burden; others, less fortunate, silently carried this extractive burden alone. Some committed suicide.
What I learned chasing predators in South Africa is now a national security issue in America. The criminal networks are the same — just faster, nimbler and with instant access to people anywhere in the world.
This crisis in the U.S. alone affects 1 in 4 minors and 1 in 7 adults. Teenage boys account for 90% of financial sexual extortion cases involving minors.
Adults are often an underreported victim group because of shame and fear of social repercussions, yet they are deemed high-value targets by exploiters because of their financial resources. The same groups I investigated halfway around the world have now perfected their trade online and are targeting U.S. citizens.
With the Trump administration requesting $1.5 trillion for national security efforts in the 2027 defense budget, it is imperative that the U.S. get wise to how sex trafficking, internet-based sextortion and pornography threaten national security.
The U.S. military is especially at risk. Foreign criminal networks operating out of the Philippines and West Africa have deliberately targeted American service members, especially those entrusted with security clearances, by posing as women on social media platforms and dating sites.
Explicit images and pornography are sent to lure service members into producing explicit images and videos of themselves during what appear to be consensual online sexual encounters. The targeted individual is unaware that the interactions are being secretly recorded.
Once the compromising material has been obtained, the perpetrators unleash relentless sexual extortion tactics, demanding cash payments, additional sexually explicit content or other concessions — all while threatening to ruin the victim’s career and reputation by distributing the pornography to family members, friends and military command.
This extortion pipeline also creates a direct route to intelligence compromise, as desperate service members with access to classified information become vulnerable to coercion. The fear of exposure discourages them from seeking help and leaves American armed forces at risk of betraying national strategic interests.
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Supercharged by internet accessibility and a “freemium” product model, pornography grooms consumers to become producers. Users are conditioned to create and share their own sexually explicit material, typically via texting. Conditioned to sexually explicit imagery from young ages, the depersonalization of sexual relationships that pornography fosters and our advanced age of information and communications technology have converged to make sexual extortion instant, scalable and global.
Yet the national security threat posed by pornography is incubated on a far more granular level.
Pornography corrodes the exact social foundation that supports national strength. It normalizes sexual objectification and fosters impersonal, consumeristic attitudes toward sex. Over time, its use may lead to habituation, where users require increasingly extreme content to achieve the same level of sexual arousal.
Pornography also impairs good decision-making. Its normalization and widespread availability have set the country on a steep, downward trajectory, destroying the social fabric that once allowed children to thrive.
Pornography fosters emotional detachment that contributes to higher rates of relationship breakdown, divorce and family instability. Children raised in fractured homes face greater risks of poor academic achievement, mental health and behavioral issues, mortality and vulnerability to online predators.
This ushers in a broader societal apathy in which people are increasingly isolated, anxious and disengaged. Human connections and resilience dissipate, and people become more susceptible to manipulation.
A society marked by loneliness, weakened families and diminished social trust becomes brittle. It loses the cohesion and alertness needed to identify threats and respond effectively. National security is not limited to military readiness or border protection. It also depends on strong families, mentally healthy citizens and a social fabric that can endure ambiguity and stress.
Pornography systematically undermines these foundations, functioning as a slow-acting threat to the nation’s long-term viability.
The sexual extortion that targets troops is simply the most visible symptom. The greater danger lies in pornography’s ability to hollow out the human capital and social strength that any nation requires to remain secure.
Justice Department enforcement of U.S. obscenity law would be one way to push back on pornography’s harms and threats to Americans.
As the U.S. celebrates its 250th birthday, we must recognize that pornography has not served us well. It destroys “We the People” and cunningly corrodes life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
• Marcel van der Watt is president and CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, the leading national nonprofit organization exposing the links among all forms of sexual exploitation, such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography. On X: @NCOSE
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