A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from the launch pad at Launch Complex 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fl. in April 2022.
Maybe Russia should’ve been invited to Munich after all … News dropped on Thursday that Moscow is developing new space-based nuclear weapons.
Could these new nukes hit American cities? No, according to the White House. But they could hit satellites, wreaking havoc on terrestrial communications, transportation systems, and even financial transactions. In other words, Russia could take cyberattacks to a higher level, literally.
While China and the US also have the ability to attack satellites, neither has gone nuclear with it. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 explicitly bans the use of nuclear weapons in space. Russia seems not to be paying much heed to that old scrap of paper.
But more dangerous still, the rupture between Moscow and Washington over Ukraine has left the world’s two leading nuclear superpowers with almost no dialogue or treaty limitations on nuclear weapons at all.
That vacuum is now about to extend into space itself.