Google Earth didn't update its image of a military installation for eight years

Just replying to point out that this is true. I worked 3 summers for "Aerometric", a company that does exactly this. We flew flight lines from 10-20 thousand feet with a huge camera rig. Those photos were transmitted back to corporate, where they are stitched back together to form large high-resolution aerial maps. Our customers were usually timber companies, gas/oil companies, and occasionally FEMA.

Until that job, I naively assumed everything was a satellite image with some Bond-like zoom capabilities.

This is just art.

Satellite imagery in the raw form when it is not yet registered to a map has a beauty to it that is lost in everyday mapping products, e.g. satnav and weather maps. Normally satnav and weather maps interpret the image for you. With raw imagery you have to interpret the image for yourself. The imagery may not be in normal 'visible' colours, it can be like HDR on steroids, to reveal patterns and detail only once you adjust the levels/curves to fit the limited range of colours that a computer screen can show.

Perhaps the most fascinating remote sensing imagery is of the areas of the world you don't normally see, e.g. polar latitudes, the seas off coastal areas and the deserts. It is a bit like looking at the stars with a very powerful telescope but in reverse.

The thing is though is that you need to have quite a lot of inner child or actually be aged nine to truly appreciate the wonder and explore the dataset that bit more.

I think that good art has to get people asking questions and thinking a bit. Usually, as per the recent 'Banksy' spectacle (art business) there is a big price tag attached to the 'art'. This 'art' fails to get people beyond the question of 'how much is it worth in dollars' whereas here I think that with this Area 51 inspired 'installation' we have much better questions being asked and answered, as per what you wrote here. It is also good that the star of the show is the remotely sensed image, not the painting of it, no disrespect to the painting which I think is rather special and does the subject justice.

Isn't Planet Labs (https://www.planet.com/) doing exactly that?

Err.... you may be surprised.

If you're going to presuppose the piece is sensationalism, the speculative explanations are themselves sensationalist, because you're making value judgements: the explanations are reasonable, and some assumptions should be off the table. These are misdirection. Instead come in the form of additional questions.

I think it goes without saying there could be reasonable explanations, but why speculate or assume? If they exist, and it's a simple matter, then Google could simply answer. But they haven't. Why not is a completely reasonable question, even if it's a valid opinion to consider it boring and a waste of time.

FWIW, they've always been investigative editorialists, so I'm not surprised. Although, I do often enjoy their style, even if I don't always agree with their opinions.

But in more recent times it’s become harder to find these.

Personally I don’t see why it would be that surprising in the early days that military would ask for sensitive sites to be removed. It’s not to defend against Russian or Chinese threats. But states or groups that do not have their own satellite imaging. As satellite imaginng has become so common and accessible they seem to have re-evaluated the risk.

Not sure that anyone actually believes that online mapping is an "all seeing eye" though. Without any plausible licensing/security restrictions and despite having updated other parts of their UK dataset far more recently, Google Earth also hasn't updated their image set of my home town in the UK in about 8 years. Unlike Nevada lake beds this has changed quite a bit and better aerial imagery and mapping data would be pretty useful; Google Maps look very odd when it overlays an (incomplete) road network over bare fields. Friends that live on that newish estate advise people to use Apple Maps instead.