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Topic: Space Blog Brand: The Buzz Region: Asia Tags: China, CSIS, NASA, Satellites, and United States China Could Knock Out America in Space, CSIS Warns December 9, 2025 By: Brandon J. Weichert
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Experts warned in a congressional hearing last week that China was trying to build a “vertically integrated space ecosystem” to displace America’s prime position in orbit.
On December 4, a meeting of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, which is part of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, was held. That meeting involved experts, such as Clayton Swope, the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
In that ignored meeting, Swope outlined how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was rapidly advancing toward a significant space program—with a comprehensive grand strategy for space dominance.
According to Swope, the PRC is building a “vertically integrated space ecosystem” that is meant to both rival the capabilities of the United States and outpace the Americans with a whole-of-society approach to space in China.
Understanding China’s Play for Space Dominance
The CSIS expert believes that China’s space program is not just for scientific exploration and discovery in the cosmos. It is aligned closely with the PRC’s wider geopolitical goals, including reducing the United States’ global power relative to that of China’s.
As China’s space capabilities rapidly advance, there are many developments that will lend themselves to China’s overall military might. Among those are greater surveillance satellites, satellite-tracking capabilities, counterspace weapons, space-based navigation, data networks, and other related communications infrastructure. Over time, as China’s capabilities in these domains expand—notably over the Indo-Pacific region—it will necessarily weaken America’s role.
In turn, this will have the cumulative effect of drastically reducing America’s overall military power globally, due to the fact that so much of America’s military strategy is predicated upon having a significant presence in the Indo-Pacific.
Consider this: space is the Holy Grail of modern military dominance. The advent of satellites, for example, has given the United States unprecedented global situational awareness. These jewels in orbit allow for massive surveillance of potential enemies, gives the US military nearly instantaneous communications capabilities, and provides critical detection for any potential attacks coming from abroad. Without space, the modern American military, which is primarily an expeditionary force, would simply crumble without ever having a chance to defend itself against an enemy attack.
China wants to both develop a similar capability to what the Americans enjoy in space. More importantly, though, China wants to knock the Americans from their perch in orbit.
Kinetically, China has become the mothership for counterspace weapons. These are weapons that can be fired at American satellites in orbit, either from the ground, from the air, or even from space (co-orbital satellites). With the exception of the United States and Russia, no other country possesses the kind of counterspace weapons and doctrine that China does.
It isn’t only in direct military realms where the Chinese could rapidly reduce America’s space dominance (and, therefore, weaken America’s global dominance). Even in space-based navigation, such as GPS networks, China is on track to push the Americans out of the Indo-Pacific—which will have profound economic consequences as well as strategic military impacts.
How Space-Based Navigation Can Determine the Future
For instance, China’s Beidou navigational system is rapidly becoming the most used satellite navigational system in the Indo-Pacific. This has, in turn, given China’s Huawei telecommunications firm significant advantages over American companies—like Apple—in the realm of smartphones.
Because Huawei is a Chinese firm, its smartphones exclusively use Beidou rather than America’s Global Positioning System (GPS). In essence, one of America’s premiere company’s, Apple, which has long enjoyed a dominant position in the massive Indo-Pacific region market, is losing out to Chinese products.
As a result, Huawei and Beidou are elevated whereas Apple and the US-controlled Global Positioning System (GPS) are weakened. And with Beidou, China’s military no longer must rely upon American-controlled GPS satellites. They have their own systems now—meaning Uncle Sam can’t just cut the Chinese off from accessing satellite navigation during military operations. The Americans would have to outright destroy Beidou constellations…which would be problematic, given how many civilians in the populated region rely upon those Chinese satellite navigation systems.
It’s just one example of how China is incrementally shifting the balance of power in space away from the United States and toward itself. Once that balance of power shifts decisively toward Beijing’s favor, the game is up for Uncle Sam, and the Chinese Century has truly begun.
China’s Pattern of Denial, Displacement, and Dominance
And we haven’t even spoken here about China’s grand ambitions for lunar mining and militarization of the moon. But this is all part of the same pattern. China’s space ambitions are comprehensive and designed to defeat the United States in orbit so that they don’t have to fire shots on the Earth below. They can just displace and replace the Americans as the dominant power in space and on Earth.
Time is not on America’s side.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert is a senior national security editor at The National Interest. Recently, Weichert became the host of The National Security Hour on America Outloud News and iHeartRadio, where he discusses national security policy every Wednesday at 8pm Eastern. Weichert hosts a companion book talk series on Rumble entitled “National Security Talk.” He is also a contributor at Popular Mechanics and has consulted regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including The Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, and the Asia Times. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
Image: Shutterstock / Viacheslav Lopatin.
The post China Could Knock Out America in Space, CSIS Warns appeared first on The National Interest.
Источник: nationalinterest.org