In September, Department of the Air Force Secretary Troy Meink acknowledged for the first time that the Space Force has deployed on-orbit space control weapons. What do you make of that acknowledgement, and do you think these weapons will act as successful deterrents or contribute to further escalation?

This deployment is an effort by the United States to deter China and other adversaries from conducting activities in space that are hostile towards U.S. and friendly satellites. The focus of deterrence is to answer the questions, “What will happen if I do something that I'm not supposed to do? “What is the consequence?” Action results like this are really important, but the missing piece is knowing when the U.S. would use this military capability. The deployment is an important step in the right direction toward coming up with a proper deterrence framework, and it's not something to be taken lightly. However, there are a lot of different types of space military capabilities. This kind of action helps deter a specific type of threat, but I wouldn’t call it a whole deterrence framework. For this activity to be more effective in deterrence, you need to think about the building blocks that come next. Let's talk about Russia. In the past week or two, we've seen and discussed hostile behavior of Russia in space with the Russian satellite Kosmos 2612 approaching a U.S-registered satellite from an aperture radar constellation, which happened after the acknowledgement of U.S. on-orbit space control weapons. This may be an indication that there is a need for further action in addition to the acknowledgement of the weapon’s existence in order for this capability to be something that's sustainably effective for deterrence.

Your April 2025 article “The Future of Military Power is Space Power” called the Golden Dome Initiative a “paradigm shift” in space defense, but emphasized a need for the U.S. to dedicate more attention to questions of long-term stabilizing capabilities. In what ways has your assessment changed or stayed consistent in the last 12-16 months?

When I wrote that with Melissa Dalton, we said that we didn't fully understand what the Golden Dome is, what its objectives were, and what it was trying to do. Today I still don't quite know what it is, and more importantly, what it wants to be when it develops. Those questions remain unanswered, and a lot of time has passed since that piece was written. This matters because it influences more than just military power. Military capabilities are just one tool that the United States government uses to maintain its security and national interests, from economic, to social, to everything that its citizens do on a daily basis in our lives. There are other tools that you need to think about, not just military power on its own that leads to security. A standard framework for these tools goes by the name DIME (Diplomatic, Informational, Military, Economic). Because of this multitude, some tools are essentially tradable, which is why we have functioning arms control. Golden Dome is important because it shows what the United States is willing to do to strengthen its military power to gain security, but it also presents itself as a tool that could be bargained away. This is the essence of arms control: to gain a larger goal, which is ensuring national security. We can understand this clearer if we zoom in on a specific capability—for example, space-based interceptors. This is a constellation of satellites that could hit not only orbital ballistic missiles, but targets on Earth. I don't know that most Americans would be comfortable having such satellites controlled by China always orbiting over the U.S. The Golden Dome presents the idea of very strong ballistic missile defense, but also makes everyone aware of possible risks and escalations. It's these extensions that open up the door for strategic stability discussions between powers, and these are the same types of discussions the U.S. had with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

How do you understand the current trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship in space? Can we compare it to other areas of competition between powerful rivals on Earth, or is it fundamentally different?

There's something different about the relationship between the United States and China compared to the relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. U.S.-China competition is broader geopolitically, and that’s reflected in how the U.S. views China from a standpoint of national security, economic business, scientific development, and prestige, and this all carries into space. As an example, even at the height of the Cold War, NASA was looking for ways to cooperate with the Soviet Union in space: it started with a program called Echo, which led to Apollo Soyuz, which eventually led to the International Space Station. I have a hard time seeing even the seed of cooperation between NASA and any of the space agencies or space entities in China. The question of why it is so different is a really good and active discussion. I don't have a good answer for it, but from the way actions and counteractions continue to unfold on Earth and in space, it’s clear that it's a very different relationship.

What constitutes space “superiority” (U.S. Definition) vs. “supremacy” (Chinese Definition)?

These are really squishy terms; they have meaning in the eye of the beholder. The idea of “supremacy”, of “superiority”, of “dominance”, of “control”—you don't need a specific definition to get a sense of what that means. We want to be first. We want to be a leader. We want to be the ones that set the rules in space. It’s the same type of rhetoric that could be observed on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Even at that time, leaders on both sides still found areas where they could coordinate. The framework for international civil aviation from the Chicago Convention after World War II included the Soviets, and so did the Antarctic Treaty in 1959. The Outer Space Treaty from 1967 is just a set of principles that doesn't say much, but we were able to agree on that. Language of superiority and dominance in U.S. security policy is the same language the Soviets used and that Beijing uses it now. But at the same time, it didn't preclude finding those areas where there are common interests and shared objectives. Space right now is a greenfield opportunity for both sides of the U.S.-China relationship to see if they can achieve what diplomats in Washington were able to do with their counterparts in Moscow for decades during the Cold War.

The U.S. and China diverge in their approach to regulating counterspace weapons: the U.S. announced a voluntary moratorium on destructive direct-ascent ASAT deployment and tests, while China’s PPWT proposes a complete ban of weapons in orbit. What do you make of this difference?

I'm not sure if there is a fundamental difference in what each country wants. The Artemis Accords don’t say anything fundamentally different than the International Lunar Research Station when it comes to development of the moon. So why is there no cooperation? It comes down to pride and perceptions. The U.S. didn't ask China for their opinion on the Artemis Accords, and it fits then that China doesn't seem to be interested. Returning to the Antarctic Treaty, the Soviets said, "Yeah, we'll do this, but you have to give us a seat at the table.” The same applies to the moratorium on ASAT testing. Is there really a fundamental disagreement in what both countries want, or is it just the packaging and the timing and the politics around it? If you want to find where those Venn diagrams overlap, the plan needs to be completely free of any political agenda. For China to join the Artemis Accords, they have to feel like they have a pony in the race, and right now they don’t. The International Lunar Research Station is the flipside of the same issue. The U.S. is not going to sign up for something that China and Russia came up with together. So it's mutual, but I do think it comes down to more perceptions than a divergence of interests and of what both governments want to see in the future of space.

Do you think the fact that neither the U.S. nor China would be willing to join an initiative started by the opposing party poses a threat to the peaceful use of outer space?

Yes, and not only peaceful use of outer space but use altogether. If the goal is to create a real framework for international space relations, the two most important seats at the table are the United States and China. Geopolitics have evolved, but we should not ignore the historical similarities, mainly in that a nation-state is a collection of people whose feathers can get ruffled, which means sometimes you have to put aside some interests to prioritize building trust. It's hard to see one side being comfortable with the other side setting the tone or unilaterally offering anything forward that really has sticking power. But the funny thing is, even if both sides remain on their own, we'll probably come up with similar ideas that make sense. Certainly we'll both want our own countries to dominate or have supremacy or superiority. I certainly want U.S. businesses to thrive in a lunar or space economy, and China probably has the same goal. That's fine. We can still compete on that plane and still have shared rules that make sense. I don't think capitalism or commerce work without those rules, but at the moment it is really difficult to see one side accepting a set of rules that comes entirely from the other.

How significant is the fact that China is integrating their satellite networks with advanced missile systems, which makes space a part of its kill process? Does this make space assets legitimate targets in a Taiwan contingency, and does that change the normal escalation logic?

There are a lot of guesses circulating on the escalation piece. Satellites are a target. They are more reachable and potentially more vulnerable in space because it's an area outside of a national jurisdiction, similar to international waters. The main question is, if one nation does something against another nation's satellite(s), what's the response? Many people think a satellite attack would be highly escalatory. I'm not sure if it is. The more escalatory situation would be something that is struck in national territory, or if there are people involved. The most escalatory satellite situation would be an attack on something related to a country's nuclear forces. But lower than that, it’s unclear. When it comes to China and how they're using their satellites, I'm concerned that they are replicating U.S. constellations of large satellites like Starlink and Amazon LEO, incorporating other types of payloads into constellations like remote sensing, intelligence, and reconnaissance. We don’t have a full picture of what the capabilities on those satellites are, but what matters is not necessarily observing operational readiness but rather total activity. If you're prospecting for gold, the more places you go and prospect for, the better chance you're going to find gold. I worry they're going to find gold somewhere we haven’t looked. 

The integration piece mainly applies to the idea of an information and communication technology ecosystem in space. Starlink is a great blueprint: radio communications to and from Earth, satellites connected in a mesh network of optical links, lasers connecting the satellites, and now computing power with AI and orbital data centers. The ability to make sense of data that you're collecting in space is the most critical, and that’s the area where I’d expect concentrated activity in China. The idea of fusing sensor data in a way that makes algorithmic processing as near real-time as possible will likely be pursued not for China to copy the U.S. or vice versa, but because it makes logical sense. A lot of companies are going to have to think about this if there's ever some type of flare-up or increase in tension between Taiwan and the mainland. Where does that place U.S. companies that are providing data and services to the government? These questions are the most pressing right now.