With help from Christine Mui It sounds like the plot of a doomsday novel: Washington’s adversaries detonate a nuke in space, killing thousands of satellites and kneecapping U.S. military capabilities. Communication blackouts spread around the world. Economies start to collapse, chaos ensues. Some call it the new Cuban Missile Crisis. U.S. officials say Moscow is developing an anti-satellite nuclear weapon in space, freaking out Washington and causing U.S. officials to use the United Nations and countries such as China and India to persuade Russia to back down from launching it into orbit. The Biden administration has stressed that there’s no immediate danger, but the prospect represents a very analog threat to the world’s digital future. Not much is known about the weapon, and the Biden administration hasn’t offered many details about it. House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who has been sounding alarms about the space nuke since (cryptically) unveiling the issue in February, said he’s “dissatisfied with the progress” the Biden administration has been making with those talks. The U.S. briefed all NATO members about the space nuke threat months ago, and it continues to be a regular topic of conversation among allies, a senior administration official granted anonymity to detail private conversations told DFD. The fact that there’s nuclear material in orbit isn’t what’s concerning people — it’s pretty normal for things in space to run on nuclear power. The alert level in Washington quickly changes, however, when it’s a weapon. Even a small weapon detonated in orbit could have a global effect very different from the use of a weapon on the ground. The U.S. has been ramping up its space capabilities, for military use and communication services, among other critical functions: Such a weapon could affect financial and consumer transactions, the commercial space industry and military assets in orbit. The Pentagon now depends on the new frontier for its day-to-day operations, said Tory Bruno, CEO of aerospace giant United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Think GPS systems, targeting and communication with troops. Last month, a top DOD official warned that the detonation of a Russian nuke in low Earth orbit — where the majority of satellites are, as well as the International Space Station — could make the area unusable for a year due to radiation and potential debris flying at high speeds. Sure, it would also knock out Russia’s and its friends’ capabilities too. But Moscow might see the move as a way to level the playing field on Earth, Bruno told DFD. “That's why we would think that's destabilizing — because it would be potentially an opener to a conventional conflict on Earth,” Bruno added, specifically noting the potential for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan suddenly becoming easier if America lost its military eyes in the sky. Of course, this idea is not totally new — and (maybe not surprisingly) the U.S. government tried it decades ago. In 1962, Operation Starfish Prime saw the U.S. launch a thermonuclear warhead on a Thor missile and detonate it in orbit. That explosion disabled only a few satellites. Depending on the size of a warhead today, a nuclear detonation could kill hundreds or thousands of satellites. Russia’s space nuke is the latest development Washington is concerned about. Space treaties now seem to be dividing along political lines on earth: Moscow and Beijing have their own agreement, which involves building a research station on the moon — counterting the Artemis Accords, the U.S.-led international agreement to create a set of norms for space exploration. With increasing dangers to satellites and other assets in orbit, as well as China advancing on moon exploration, Washington’s dominance in orbit is being threatened. “This second space race is far more consequential than the first,” Peter Garretson, a senior fellow in defense studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, told DFD. “The stakes are not just prestige — we are playing for the largest resource trove in human history and the entire economic future of humanity.”
| 
