Elon Musk's space company SpaceX recently
secured a classified contract to build an extensive network of "spy satellites" for an undisclosed U.S. intelligence agency, with one source
telling Reuters that
"no one can hide" under the prospective network's reach.While the deal suggests the space company,
which currently operates over half the active satellites orbiting Earth, has warmed to U.S. national security agencies, it's not the first Washington investment in conflict-forward space machinery. Rather, the U.S. is funding or otherwise supporting a range of defense contractors and startups working to create a new generation of space-bound weapons, surveillance systems, and adjacent technologies.
In other words, America is hell-bent on a new arms race — in space.
Space arms, then and nowAttempts to regulate weapons' presence and use in space span decades. Responding to an intense, Cold War-era arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty established that space, while free for all countries to explore and use, was limited to peaceful endeavors. Almost 60 years later, the Outer Space Treaty's vague language regarding military limitations in space, as space policy experts Michelle L.D. Hanlon and Greg Autry
highlight, "leave more than enough room for interpretation to result in conflict."
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