Laura Grego, a physicist and research director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has spent years thinking about the intersection of space and security. In a wide-ranging interview with The Guardian, she delivered a stark warning: the systems we have built in space have created a doomsday machine that most people do not know exists.
“People have to be aware of what is happening in space. Public knowledge has to catch up,” she said.
Space: the unseen battlefield
Grego’s central message is that space has always been a military domain, even if the public does not perceive it that way. The first satellite, Sputnik 1, was fundamentally a geopolitical assertion, demonstrating intercontinental ballistic missile capability. A rocket launcher is not so different from an ICBM, and the dual-use nature of space technology has only intensified since 1957.
“Once you have a working ICBM, you could put a nuclear weapon on top of it and send it from the Soviet Union to the United States in half an hour,” she noted.
The entire ICBM trajectory takes roughly 30 minutes, and satellites are the early warning system that compresses decision-making to nearly impossible timelines. A president would have less than 10 minutes to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike or wait to see if an incoming missile is real.
“If the president decided to launch a counterattack, even if the initial attack was launched by accident, certainly the adversary is going to retaliate,” Grego said. “That’s a civilization-ending day, or an afternoon.”
“Most people don’t know we’ve set up a system that is essentially a doomsday system. And we can dismantle it. We just have not.”
The new arms race
Grego described an accelerating spiral of threats. Nuclear-armed countries are all modernizing or expanding their arsenals. China tested an ICBM in early July. The U.S. is accusing Russia of developing a space-based nuclear weapon targeting satellites, which would violate the Outer Space Treaty. Arms control treaties have expired. And the current U.S. administration’s proposed $1.2 trillion Golden Dome missile defense system is, in Grego’s assessment, “a fool’s errand, expensive, strategically unwise, and technically just unachievable.”
Meanwhile, anti-satellite weapons testing continues. Countries are developing capabilities to sidle up to adversary satellites and disable them without creating debris, by spinning them, spray-painting them, or blasting them with radiation. No country has yet intentionally destroyed another country’s satellite, Grego said, but “that’s been a line we haven’t crossed.”
The commercial dimension
The conversation took an urgent turn when discussing the commercial space sector, particularly Elon Musk’s SpaceX. With the recent SpaceX IPO making Musk temporarily the world’s first trillionaire, the scale of his space ambitions is unprecedented.
SpaceX has applied for permission to launch up to 1 million satellites. It currently operates 9,532 Starlink satellites out of approximately 17,600 active satellites total. Grego warned that this concentration of orbital power raises uncomfortable questions about appropriation and governance.
“I don’t think we’re talking enough about it in the right places,” she said. “We’re racing ahead with technical capabilities beyond our legal and normative structures and where the conversation is on Earth.”
She pointed to a detail in Starlink’s user agreement: for services on Mars, it claims “no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.” Disputes would be settled through “self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”
“This is not inclusive. It does not value human life in the same way that I do. It does not prioritize future generations,” Grego said.
A better narrative
Grego argued for reframing humanity’s relationship with space. The dominant story is “the final frontier”, about singular male heroes, long pointy rockets, and dominance. But “we have a chance to do this better as we move into space. We should not cede that power to the first most powerful company that is able to do it.”
She emphasized that the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which requires space be used for peaceful purposes and prohibits national appropriation of celestial bodies, still applies, and the launch country is responsible for all subsequent activities by private actors.
“If we think humanity is something worth saving,” she said, “then we actually have a lot we need to do to make sure that happens.”
Clark – 1ban.news