Rep. John Garamendi cosigned Dana Goward yesterday on the war in space. I recall other articles bumping around, but that's the most-interesting link, because we in the West seem to be screwed.
China has a landline Internet and GPS. The US does not, to that extent. Apparently the Trump Administration was supposed to get this done but it didn't. The Biden Administration hasn't got it done either. So some bad actor could fire missiles at our sats and we'd be hosed.
It wouldn't even have to be one of our satellites, either. LEO has a lot of junk flying around at bullet speeds. Suppose some Russian satellite OOPSIE crashes into some junk, together with an orbit crossing an important sat of ours. It's "an accident" so not a casus belli. But we're just as boned.
To get unscrewed/-hosed/-boned, we need a much heavier space-presence. Junk-salvage tugs, which don't need be manned. China is working on a Starship of its own, to cheapen their cargo-to-orbit pipeline. I'll bet some of their interest is in cleaning up space junk... for Chinese sats. We're on our own. So let's do what Apple is doing with microchips and look to our orbits.
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