By Christopher Rice
As the 2025 National Security Strategy notes, commercial and military space capabilities are one of the United States’ greatest geopolitical advantages.1 The nation’s civil, commercial, and military sectors have profited immensely from unrivaled incorporation of space-based capabilities. However, competitors have identified weaknesses and shaped their strategic approaches to exploit them. Worse still, although the U.S. civil, commercial, and military space communities are interrelated, the distinctions between them present malign actors with seams through which to hazard American security. To compete successfully in space and retain its advantages in other domains the United States must establish a new, more integrated approach to securing its total space infrastructure—civil, commercial, and military alike—against attack in space or cyberspace.
This essay makes the case for more coherent efforts to actively secure the nation’s space infrastructure, including the commercial space sector, against hostile action. First, it will offer a discussion of the invaluable contributions of the U.S. commercial space sector. Next, it will summarize the threats competing nations, specifically China, may choose to bring to bear against it. In Part II, it will outline the current U.S. approach to space infrastructure security and identify risks built into that approach. Finally, it will propose and defend one potential approach for maximizing the aggregate security of America’s space sectors while minimizing cost: establishing a renewed system of letters of marque and reprisal to empower the civil sector to defend itself.
Space Cowboys—The U.S. Commercial Space Sector
The U.S. commercial space sector is an irreplaceable strategic asset to both the economy and national security broadly. The Space Force’s Commercial Space Strategy recognizes that America’s strategic space environment is “driven, in part, by national security and civil needs.”2 However, “hybrid architectures” integrating commercial space capabilities offer improved capabilities and defray the costs of government investments. 3 American policy defines the commercial space sector as goods, services, or activities provided by private sector enterprises that bear “a reasonable proportion of the investment risk,” that are available for purchase, and governed by free market incentives.4 This definition covers a wide spectrum of systems and effects. American commercial space firms offer world-leading capabilities across numerous sectors of space operations, including satellite manufacturing, satellite services, launch capacity, and ground equipment.5 The satellite services sector comprises the majority of the economic value of the space industry,6 providing products direct-to-home television, satellite communications, satellite radio, consumer broadband, and Earth observation.7 These services, along with satellite-based positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services, enable the network-connected experience of modern, American life.
The strength of U.S. companies in these fields has made the industry an invaluable part of American economic capacity, and its importance is likely only to grow further. The U.S. commercial space industry generated $158 billion in 2016.8 In addition, the commercial space sector contributed to over 2 million American jobs.9 The commercial launch industry alone has undergone blinding growth, from a single commercial launch in 201110 to 48 launches in 2021.11 The global space economy is expected to nearly triple in value by 2040 from $400 billion to $1.1 trillion with American companies leading the way.12 The promise of rapid growth has drawn significant investment from American entrepreneurs.
The nature of satellite services makes separating commercial and military capabilities nearly impossible, and U.S. policies have further blurred the lines separating the communities. Common commercial services like “[s]atellite communication, remote sensing, and global positioning services are extensively used during the conduct of normal military operations.”13 Further, the Space Force’s consideration of a proposed Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve—while a reasonable acknowledgement of the critical role of commercial space in national security—will, if adopted, further obscure the divisions between military and commercial space sectors and elevate the value of American commercial space firms as military targets.14 Indeed, Russian posturing against Starlink for providing internet services to support Ukrainian command and control offers evidence of the geopolitical impacts of U.S. commercial space firms and a foretaste of the threats they might come to face.15 For powers contemplating hostile action against U.S. interests, denying the United States access to space-based capabilities will require targeting both government and commercial systems.
Complicating matters yet more, the U.S. government is the largest global customer for commercial space services, consuming 23% of the global market.16 The Department of War purchases 80% of its satellite communication bandwidth from commercial providers.17 The U.S. government is also heavily reliant on the commercial sector for launch capacity. Government investment in heavy launch capacity began to flag after the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.18 While commercial launch expanded briefly in the late 1990s, the United States failed to generate “significant investment in heavy lift launch until SpaceX, aided by NASA investments in 2008, brought the Falcon 9 to market.”19 This period of decay in U.S. space investment has made the government space communities—both civil and security—heavily dependent on commercial capabilities. Such dependence on agents outside of the U.S. government’s direct control invites additional operational risk. The size and pace of growth within America’s commercial space industry magnifies the scope of potential vulnerabilities. America’s competitors have prepared to exploit any potential weaknesses to the greatest extent possible.
Cyber Pirates and Other Threats to U.S. Space Security
The tremendous value of the U.S. commercial space sector is not without risk. As the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis’s Space and US Security: A Net Assessment notes, space-based capabilities like “early warning and strike capabilities . . . [as well as] critical communications and navigation support,” are invaluable for successful military operations.20 In the event of large-scale conflict, commercial space infrastructure will be a target. These capabilities are also “intertwine[d] with the civilian sector[,]” meaning that “any effect on U.S. space-based capabilities carries national security implications and commercial consequences.”21 U.S. rivals have taken note of the importance of space capabilities in enabling its global military preeminence and have shaped their forces and doctrine to offset those capabilities. While China is certainly not the only competitor to have shaped its capabilities to contest American dominance in space, its efforts offer a valuable example of broader trends.
As a rising power, China has benefited from years of observation of the American-maintained global order and formulated methods to target its vulnerabilities. The first of these insights is that “[i]nformation technology, including computers and telecommunications systems, has permeated all aspects of society and economies and become an integral part of a nation’s infrastructure.”22 Managing the course of this expanding informationization was identified by the 16th Party Congress “as essential for growing ‘comprehensive national power.’”23 The value of information systems extends beyond economic leadership or cultural soft power. Information dominance is seen as a prerequisite for military dominance. Chinese analysts noted the critical role that information technology played in enabling lopsided coalition success in Operation Desert Storm and in later operations in Bosnia.24 According to Chinese policy, networks and information technology are not only critical to national development, they allow China to “[outflank] traditional military forces” like those of the United States.25 Finally, Chinese observers noted the central role of space systems in delivering U.S. information dominance. As Dean Cheng notes in his book, Cyber Dragon: Inside China’s Information Warfare and Cyber Operations, Chinese estimates suggest that satellites transmitted 70% of all coalition data during Desert Storm and between 70% and 100% of multiple sectors of critical battlefield information during operations in Bosnia.26 From these estimates, Chinese thinkers concluded that “without space dominance, one cannot obtain information dominance and aerial dominance, and therefore one cannot achieve land or maritime dominance.”27 In the future, victory will likely go to whatever nation can establish and maintain superiority in the space domain.
To seize superiority in the space or information environments, however, China must be able to contest American operations in space. Chinese analysts believe that control of the space domain is a prerequisite for effective information warfare, as so many information networks interact with space-based systems. States without the ability to operate in space are functionally “’deaf and blind.’”28 Chinese experts have developed five operational concepts to confound opposing space operations and ensure that such sensory deprivation is reserved only for China’s opponents. These operational categories are closely interconnected and mutually supporting, consisting of space deterrence, space blockades, space strike operations, space defense operations, provision of space information support.29 In Chinese doctrine, space deterrence consists of efforts to shape an opponent’s perceptions—and thereby its actions—to conform with Chinese intentions through the use of space-based technologies.30 Space blockades involve the use of forces in any domain, including direct action against launch sites, physical obstruction of orbits or launch windows, or cyber-attacks, to deny an opponent’s access to space.31 Space strike operations involve offensive use of space- or Earth-based, physical or cyber-attacks against “the range of enemy space-related targets, including those in orbit, on land, sea, and air,” to better enable space deterrence or blockade.32 Chinese space defense efforts center on protection of space infrastructure, as well as shielding key national targets from space-based or ballistic missile attack.33 Space information support involves many aspects of the satellite services sector, including imaging and surveillance, communications, and PNT, in addition to missile early warning.34 These space-centric but cross-domain efforts will be employed simultaneously to help China gain the advantage in space. Further, because Chinese thinking on informationized warfare holds “peace and war, military and civilian [as] increasingly indistinguishable[,]” they will likely be employed before the apparent outbreak of conflict and against the broadest possible range of space targets, commercial, civil, and security alike.35
China has developed world class counter-space capabilities in support of their space and information warfare concepts. One area of critical development is kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons and operations. China has repeatedly tested direct ascent, ASAT weapons systems demonstrating its ability to hazard U.S. satellites in orbit.36 In addition, recent Chinese satellite operations have included up-close inspections of other satellites, a form of rendezvous and proximity operation (RPO).37 While not overtly threatening, such operations may indicate rehearsal for on-orbit ASAT capabilities. The development of a new robotic arm by Tianjin University—ostensibly for orbital debris removal, but likely too short to safely grapple with tumbling objects—further suggests on-orbit ASAT development.38 China’s counter-space capabilities are not limited to kinetic action. There are indications that the Chinese military has constructed five fixed and two mobile laser systems capable of counter-space operations.39 In addition, there are some unconfirmed reports of China deploying mobile satellite jamming systems near the contested portion of Kashmir.40 Finally, China maintains an active cyber warfare capability, which it has directed against a variety of space, defense, and financial sector targets, indicating the capacity to attack U.S. systems in the future.41 These non-kinetic counter-space methods offer varying degrees of reversibility in their effects, allowing China to temporarily degrade an opponent’s systems at a potentially lower escalatory cost.
Other nations also maintain credible counter-space capabilities. Russia has long maintained robust kinetic ASAT programs, in addition to highly developed electronic warfare and cyber operations capabilities.42 Russia, like China, has demonstrated both the means and the intent to disrupt American military and commercial infrastructure, as well as the capacity to carry such efforts into space.43 India, too, has conducted successful direct-ascent ASAT testing and operates electronic jamming systems capable of targeting space systems; although, it enjoys notably better relations with the United States.44
While any of these varied counter-space systems may be at least potentially threatening to a space-faring nation, cyber weapons may prove most attractive to revisionist powers seeking to contest American space capabilities. Unlike kinetic ASAT weapons, cyber weapons offer more scalable effects. Cyber weapons may degrade an opponent’s space systems or infrastructure for a limited period of time before returning them to normal operations. Such reversibility suggests cyber weapons may be less inherently escalatory than more overt means. Investments in cyber-capabilities offer the potential for lopsided effects, without the level of expenditure that the development of major weapon systems usually requires. Further, cyber weapons are generally less attributable than other counter space systems.45 States may be less likely to respond forcefully to attacks that are both limited in effect and difficult to trace to a definite point of origin. In fact, in a well-executed attack, the target may not even recognize hostile action has even taken place. Generally, successful cyber-attacks benefit from an advanced level of knowledge about the workings of the targeted system; however, they need not be especially resource intensive to conduct.46 The relative affordability of cyber action puts it within the reach of a growing number of state and non-state actors. In fact, recent advances in artificial intelligence have produced autonomous cyber agents able to conduct a variety of attacks even without apparent human guidance intent. 47 Cyber weapons’ combination of scalability in effects, deniability, and affordability is a powerful incentive for their use, and American space infrastructure will remain an attractive target.
Given America’s uniquely broad space ecosystem, its potential vulnerabilities are equally unrivaled. While cybersecurity is an increasingly active concern of policymakers, resources are limited. The current national policy around space cybersecurity admits significant risk. However, tools exist to harden the space sectors’ cyber perimeter at minimal cost. Part II of this essay will show that a better approach could include removing the restrictions preventing American firms from actively defending their own cyber systems and replacing them with an oversight model drawn from America’s early days as a maritime power. Empowered by modernized letters of marque and reprisal, U.S space cowboys and cyber operators can shift the balance of cyber risk in America’s favor.
Chris Rice is a U.S. Army veteran. A graduate of the United States Military Academy and Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program, he has overseas experience in both South Korea and Afghanistan. He works as a consultant in Northern Virginia, assisting in the delivery of critical technologies to the warfighter. When not at work, Chris is typically cooking various meals for his wife and two children, carrying around a large bag full of sand, or (p)reenacting future battles with small, plastic robots.
References
1. Executive Office of the President, 2025 National Defense Strategy, November 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf, 21.
2. U.S Space Force, Commercial Space Strategy, April 2024, https://www.spaceforce.mil/Portals/2/Documents/Space%20Policy/USSF_Commercial_Space_Strategy.pdf.
3. Executive Office of the President, National Space Policy, December 9, 2020, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/National-Space-Policy.pdf, 20.
4. Ibid. 8
5. John J. Klein, Understanding Space Strategy: The Art of War In Space (Kindle Edition), (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2019), 7.
6. Tina Highfill, Patrick Georgi, and Dominique Dubria, “Measuring the Value of the U.S. Space Economy,” Bureau of Economic Analysis, December 2019, https://apps.bea.gov/scb/2019/12-december/1219-commercial-space.html.
7. Author redacted, “The Commercial Space Industry and Launch Market,” Congressional Research Service, April 20, 2012, https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20120420_R42492_63f6f0770a711eb5094b9871844ae5fe28e34a4e.pdf, 1.
8. Tina Highfill, Patrick Georgi, and Dominique Dubria, “Measuring the Value of the U.S. Space Economy.”
9. US Space Industry “Deep Dive,” https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/technology-evaluation/769-final-dataset-overview/file, 29.
10. Federal Aviation Administration, “New Era of U.S. Commercial Space Transportation Begins,” March 22, 2021, https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/new-era-us-commercial-space-transportation-begins.
11. Federal Aviation Administration, “Commercial Space Data,” Accessed November 24, 2021, https://www.faa.gov/data_research/commercial_space_data/.
12. Federal Aviation Administration, “New Era of U.S. Commercial Space Transportation Begins.”
13. John J. Klein, Understanding Space Strategy: The Art of War In Space (Kindle Edition), (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2019), 203.
14. Courtney Albon, “Space Force may seek civil reserve fleet of spaceships for emergencies,” Federal Times, October 19, 2022, https://www.federaltimes.com/govcon/2022/10/19/space-force-may-seek-civil-reserve-fleet-of-spaceships-for-emergencies/.
15. Jeffery Kluger, “Ukraine Has Been Using Elon Musk’s Satellites And Russia Is Not Happy About It,” Time, October 28, 2022, https://time.com/6226133/russia-ukraine-spacex-satellites-elon-musk/.
16. Redacted, “The Commercial Space Industry and Launch Market,” 1.
17. Redacted, “The Commercial Space Industry and Launch Market,” 20.
18. Bonnie L. Triezenberg, “Protecting the U.S. Supply on Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles,” The RAND Blog, May 6, 2020, https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/05/protecting-the-us-supply-on-heavy-lift-launch-vehicles.html.
19. Triezenberg, “Protecting the U.S. Supply on Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles.”
20. Robert Pfaltzgraf, Space and U.S. Security: A Net Assessment, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, January, 2009, http://www.ifpa.org/pdf/Space_and_U_S_Security_Net_Assessment_Final_Dec15_08.pdf, 12.
21. Pfaltzgraf, Space and U.S. Security: A Net Assessment, 13.
22. Dean Cheng, Cyber Dragon: Inside China’s Information Warfare and Cyber Operations (Kindle Edition), (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International), 1.
23. Ibid., 1, 5.
24. Ibid.,, 155, 156.
25. Ibid., 1, 3.
26. Ibid., 155, 156.
27. Ibid., 164.
28. Ibid., 163, 164.
29. Ibid., 165.
30. Ibid., 165.
31. Ibid., 167.
32. Ibid., 168.
33. Ibid., 169.
34. Ibid., 171.
35. Ibid., 15.
36. Todd Harrison, Kaitlyn Johnson, and Makena Young, March 31, 2021, “Space Threat Assessment 2021,” Center For Strategic and International Studies, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/210331_Harrison_SpaceThreatAssessment2021.pdf, 13.
37. Harrison, Johnson, and Young, “Space Threat Assessment,” 13.
38. Ibid.
39. Brian G. Chow and Henry Sokolski, “U.S. satellites increasingly vulnerable to China’s ground-based lasers,” Space News, July 10, 2020, https://spacenews.com/op-ed-u-s-satellites-increasingly-vulnerable-to-chinas-ground-based-lasers/.
40. Harrison, Johnson, and Young, “Space Threat Assessment,” 14.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., 16-20.
43. U.S. Department of Defense, 2022 National Defense Strategy, 5.
44. Harrison, Johnson, and Young, “Space Threat Assessment,” 28.
45. Ibid., 5
46. Ibid., 5.
47. Sam Schechner and Robert McMillan, “A User’s Guide to the Universe of Rogue AI Bots,” Wall Street Journal, 6 August 2026, https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/a-users-guide-to-the-universe-of-rogue-ai-bots-ef9d9d43?mod=Searchresults&pos=5&page=1
Featured image: NASA astronaut Nicholas Patrick, STS-130 mission specialist, doing extravehicular activity (EVA) on the International Space Station. (Wikimedia Commons)
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