Če se je prva (VELIKA) vesoljska bitka dogajala na državni ravni, na podlagi dveh državnih političnih veleprojektov, med ZDA in nekdanjo Sovjetsko zvezo, se druga vesoljska tekma dogaja na ravni zasebnih podjetij. Zanimiva pa je ironija usoda: tekma se dogaja med podjetjem ameriškega, državno sponzoriranega oligarha Elona Muska in kopico zasebnih kitajskih podjetij, ki tekmujejo v ubijalski darwinistični tekmi med seboj. Slednja je podobna tisti pri solarnih panelih, ali e-avtih, ali — v vseh panogah. Gre za tekmo med državno sponzoriranim monopolistom iz najbolj kapitalistične države na svetu in kopico zasebnih podjetij iz kvazi največje socialistične države, ki tekmujejo med seboj v učbeniški konkurenci. Arnaud Bertrand je spet pripravil odličen komentar na to temo.

Make no mistake: there is a new space race going on, but a very different one in nature from that between the US and the Soviet Union.

This time around it involves, on one side, a colossal state-backed monopoly built on government money, welded to its country’s military-industrial complex and run by a politically connected and highly ideological oligarch.

On the other side: dozens of hungry startups trying to out-innovate each other in a ruthless, Darwinian competition.

The oligarch is Elon Musk. The Darwinian competition is China.

There is something funny about it, not only because of the role reversal versus the Cold War era, but also because it sounds like a repeat of the Tesla story: it increasingly looks like the Gods cursed Musk into serving as chief trailblazer of China’s industrial ecosystem.

This time around though, a strong argument can be made that the space industry is even more strategic, and potentially far more consequential, than the car industry.

Stripped of Musk’s PR spin about saving humanity, what the SpaceX project is concretely about is:

• Building a new global communication infrastructure via Starlink
• Enabling the US security establishment to see and hear everything on Earth, all the time (via Starshield, its military division)
• Dominating access to space itself, from launch to orbital real estate

Each of these is very, very real.

Do the test one day and download the app “Stellarium” on your phone that allows you to identify stars, planets and… the satellites orbiting above you. I guarantee you that the sheer number of Starlink satellites right on top of your head at any given moment will genuinely shock you. There are currently over 10,000 of them up there – almost as many as there are planes in the sky at any given moment (https://travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/number-of-planes-in-air). Starlink satellites constitute roughly two-thirds of all active satellites orbiting Earth, all belonging to a single private American company.

So it’s not conspiracy theories: the SpaceX satellites are up there, right above your head, right now. Starlink already has over 12 million subscribers across 160 countries. Starshield – the military division of SpaceX – already has multi-billion dollar contracts with the US defense establishment to “enable the U.S. government to quickly capture continuous imagery of activities on the ground nearly anywhere on the globe” (https://reuters.com/technology/space/musks-spacex-is-building-spy-satellite-network-us-intelligence-agency-sources-2024-03-16/). And SpaceX already controls the majority of global launch capacity.

In other words, every single one of my three points above is already well underway.

And, more worryingly, the roadmap for these satellites doesn’t stop at surveillance: the US Congressional Research Service has documented plans for space-based directed energy weapons within the same SDA program that SpaceX Starshield is part of (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11623), with Congress having already granted the legal authority and budget to develop them.

So we’re talking about a single private company, one deeply embedded in the US military-defense establishment, building the infrastructure to control global communications, conduct continuous planetary surveillance, and potentially project military force from orbit. And that company already has more hardware up in space than every other country and company on Earth, combined.

From the standpoint of China, or that of any country that cares about sovereignty, letting that go unchallenged would be an act of strategic suicide.

The question, therefore, isn’t whether China should develop its own sovereign capacities to challenge SpaceX, but whether it can.

That’s the topic of my latest article: a systematic analysis of whether China can break SpaceX’s grip on the sky. Spoiler: if you bought SpaceX shares at a $2 trillion-plus market cap, you may want to rethink that one.

This is the link to my article titled “Musk built a monopoly on space. Can China break it?”