The next world war won’t start with a missile, but with a click. Or perhaps it has already begun, except there are no corpses yet. At least not in the conventional sense. Because in the new orbital war, the dead aren’t buried: they disintegrate, crash into the atmosphere, or remain spinning like space debris. Harmless, until they aren’t.
At the heights where meteorological satellites, GPS systems, banking networks, and streaming platforms operate, devices whose function is military are also increasingly and less secretly maneuvering. And if they aren’t military by origin, they may be de facto. The line between civilian and offensive technology has never been so blurred.
While the powers insist on maintaining diplomatic rhetoric, their space agencies and armed forces do exactly the opposite. “Routine” maneuvers, “fortuitous” approaches, “accidental” failures… It’s all part of an encrypted language that no longer fools anyone.
From “Common Space” to Conquered Space
In 1967, when the Outer Space Treaty was signed, humanity still believed in multilateral agreements. That document prohibits the installation of nuclear weapons in space and declares the Moon “the common heritage of humanity.” Pure legal poetry.
Today, almost 60 years later, the treaty remains in force. And it continues to be ignored. The United States has already declared space a “domain of military operations,” created its own Space Force, and has repositioned satellites to avoid “Russian interference.” Russia, for its part, recently launched a device that, according to the Pentagon, has “anti-satellite capability.” China is not far behind: it is testing robotic arms capable of capturing and deflecting enemy satellites. All without firing a shot. But with the same intention.
And Europe? It observes, denounces, and rearms. France already has its own Space Command, the United Kingdom is investing in orbital technology, and Germany—always Germany—is seeking technological autonomy. Space is no longer a place of exploration: it’s now a war game.
Satellites that kill satellites
Space weapons aren’t lasers like in Star Wars. They’re more efficient. Some emit electromagnetic pulses that disable systems. Others blind optical sensors. The most sophisticated simply place themselves in a precise orbit and wait. The wait can last weeks or years. But when the order comes, they execute.
The Pentagon knows this. That’s why it moves its pieces silently. The logic is no longer to conquer orbit, but to dominate its silence. To make the enemy doubt whether they are being watched, tracked, or targeted. Uncertainty is the new form of deterrence.
And here comes the key concept: technological duality. Because a communications satellite can also be a spy satellite. An agricultural observation satellite can, with different software, monitor military installations. The problem isn’t what is launched into space. It’s what it’s used for. And that can’t be seen from below.
What began as a space race between nations now also involves private companies. The case of Starlink is paradigmatic: designed to provide global internet, it has already been used by Ukraine in its defense against Russia. What if tomorrow an American company shuts down the network of an enemy country? Who is responsible: the CEO or the president?
The answer is obvious. And that’s why space is today the most asymmetrical terrain of all. Those who can afford the trip rule. And the rest, as in all wars, become the stage.
Latin America, of course, isn’t playing this game. It merely rents communications satellites and observes the dispute from a comfortable irrelevance. No one attacks what doesn’t matter. That, perhaps, is our only strategic advantage.
The question isn’t whether there will be war in space. The question is whether we’ll notice it when it happens. Because a downed satellite can be explained as a technical failure. A global GPS outage, like a computer error. A network blackout, like a problem in the cloud. Everything has an alibi.
The greatest danger of this war is not that it starts, but that it’s already underway and we don’t know how to interpret it.
War in space will be like climate change: progressive, silent, and autoimmune. No one will stop it because everyone benefits. But everyone, too, is at risk.
For now, we continue to look to the sky with romanticism. Meanwhile, up there, the real power of the 21st century is being defined.
Satellites in the crosshairs, clandestine maneuvers, and signals that are not of this world. The militarization of space is no longer a science fiction hypothesis, but a concrete policy of the powers. And the rest of the world, as always, looks down.
The war has already begun. But this time there are no trenches on the ground, nor tanks advancing in the desert. The new battlefront hovers between 300 and 36,000 kilometers above our heads. There, where thousands of satellites orbit, making everything from our video calls to the global banking system possible, a silent, strategic, and highly technological struggle is being waged. The objective? Control of space. Not the poetic one, but the real one.
For decades, the space race was a decorous excuse to cover up the real dispute: military hegemony. What began with rockets and flags on the Moon today translates into ships that intercept enemy satellites, devices capable of blocking global positioning systems, and technologies that border on the dystopian.
The United States, Russia, and China—the usual suspects—already operate with a warlike logic in space. And while they avoid bellicose language in public, their maneuvers speak for themselves.
“Routine” maneuvers… that aren’t routine.
In recent months, Russia has been moving pieces that smack of provocation. The launch of a satellite capable of destroying other spacecraft was confirmed even by the Pentagon, which rarely flinches at Moscow’s moves. “It’s a real and growing threat,” US Vice President Kamala Harris suggested in a recent statement.
Washington’s response was swift. The US Space Command announced repositioning maneuvers for several military satellites. In other words, they moved them because they feel they are in danger. In other words, space is no longer neutral.
China, for its part, maintains its traditionally tight-lipped silence. But its constant launches and suspicions that some of its satellites have offensive capabilities are not exactly reassuring. Like a good millennia-old chess player, Beijing doesn’t reveal all its pieces, but it makes sure everyone senses them.
Europe watches with a raised eyebrow. France, which already has its own space command, has publicly denounced the approach of Russian satellites to its own, in what would be a form of orbital espionage. Germany and the United Kingdom are investing increasingly in aerospace defense. Japan and Australia are doing the same under the (military and diplomatic) umbrella of the United States.
And Latin America… well, thank you. With leased commercial satellites, dwindling budgets, and priorities more terrestrial than orbital, the region is watching from the sidelines a project in which it has no part, but which directly affects it.
The most serious thing about this new war is that its weapons are invisible to ordinary people. There are no columns of smoke or televised explosions. But the effects would be devastating. A destroyed communications satellite could leave millions of people without internet, telephone, or GPS signals. A meteorological satellite could generate logistical chaos in the event of natural disasters. And if a spy satellite is attacked, a military retaliation could ensue without anyone quite understanding who fired first.
It’s not science fiction: satellites with robotic arms, laser interference technologies, electronic jamming devices, and even prototype microexplosives already exist. All of this is already out there.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the use of nuclear weapons in space, was signed with a hippie spirit and pacifist aspirations. Today, it’s a yellowed piece of paper that even the powers themselves don’t respect. What’s more, legal ambiguity is precisely what allows this silent arms race.
When Elon Musk announced his Starlink satellite network, he sold it as a digital revolution. But its real impact was different: it showed that private companies can also play on this geopolitical board. Today, Starlink is used in conflicts like the one in Ukraine, confirming that space is not only commercial, but also a military arena.
And in that logic, anything goes: technological sabotage, cyberattacks, orbital interference, trajectory concealment, and the old reliable: deny everything.
And humanity? Fine, thank you. We keep downloading memes while the next global crisis brews up above. Because if the 20th century fought over oil and the 21st over data, the late 21st century is already fighting over satellites.
And the worst thing isn’t that we find out too late. The worst thing is that we never find out.
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