In early April, panic spread through the corridors of the Pentagon. Ten years after the revelations about spying by the NSA on several European countries, including France, hundreds of confidential documents classified as defense secret have been revealed by the American media. The leak is said to come from a young man with a passion for firearms, who shared these “Top Secret” documents on various social networks. His revelations turn out to be the most important in more than a decade in the eyes of many observers.
From the first articles published in the columns of the national daily newspapers, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense, Chris Meagher, was moved by “a very serious risk to national security” which “can potentially fuel disinformation”. Among the documents that the United States would have liked to keep confidential, one of them caught the attention of the FinancialTimes. According to this information, China would build sophisticated cyber-weapons in order to “take control” of enemy satellites in the event of war, to jam data signals or to alter surveillance.
With such technology, Beijing would aim to limit the signals received by enemy operators via satellites in orbit. Which would lead to network malfunctions in crucial moments of combat. If the country led by Xi Jinping were to set up such a cyber weapon, all communication networks, weapons and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems would be in danger. The prospect is taken very seriously by many US military and political leaders.
space war
Invited to react, during a television show, to the revelations of the Financial Timeformer national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, John Hannah, expressed concern: “The future of warfare, one of the most contested areas, will be in space. […] The country that controls space and the next battlefield will, I believe, have the best chance of winning the war. If China is able to neutralize our ability to see what the enemy is doing, our ability to exercise command and control communications between our own forces, that is virtually game over for us on the field of battle, here on Earth.”
General B. Chance Saltzman, commander of the US Space Force, went even further in describing this threat. During a congressional hearing, he assured that Beijing was pursuing its “space dream” of becoming the leading power beyond Earth’s atmosphere by 2045. “China continues to invest aggressively in technology to disrupt, degrade and destroy our space,” he said.
According to the military, the Chinese military has deployed 347 satellites, including 35 launched in the past six months, aimed at monitoring, tracking, targeting and attacking US forces in the future. The United States has never revealed whether it is working on similar capabilities.