Seems like an unimaginative SDI copypasta. The space element is just extrapolating the US’ recent bout of LEO satellite spamming through Starlink as some success that lends a permanent perceived advantage in space that they just flatly assume China could not reciprocate. The plain thinking is that space is the new paradigm shift that elevates the US military above its adversaries—like gunboats shelling junks or drones bombing foot soldiers. To maintain this desperation for asymmetry, the Trump admin in particular, since his first term with the branding of the “Space Force,” has been diving headfirst into the pandora’s box of near space weaponization. The idea that space can be maintained as an exclusively US domain is not sustainable in reality and the US will inevitably regret giving its designated adversaries the permission, in international eyes, to match its near space ambitions.

From a technical perspective, it’s the latest cope against Russian and Chinese hypersonic glide vehicle technologies. The US strategic doctrine is fettered, just like Israel, to the psychological chains that adversaries “aren’t allowed” to touch the sacred land of CONUS. Everything else seems to be crafted to work backwards from that teleological endpoint.

During the 80s, the success of the ultimately non-existent SDI was the demoralizing psychological effect it had on the Soviet nuclear doctrine. The 70s saw the USSR’s nuclear stockpile surpass the US and this had been a major source of pride for the Soviets. Reagan coming along and insinuating “Nuh-uh-uh, actually your payload advantage is useless because we swerved in a new direction that makes that arsenal obsolete” provoked the Soviets into the panic of an exhaustive arms race which they could not industrially and economically sustain vis-a-vis the US from a budgetary standpoint. This budgetary black hole caused by the Soviet SDI psychological panic was what allowed Gorbachev the political room to militarily capitulate to the US through signing the USSR onto unequal nuclear arms agreements.

The issue for the US in trying to reuse this psychological bluff, because that’s what it’s really about, is that that it is now in a inverse position to its adversaries industrially and economically. The more important thing that this might effect is that any move by the US in this domain legitimates the PLARF to finally green light an expansion of the paltry Chinese nuclear arsenal to a level actually commensurate of comprehensive second strike potential. Additionally, it allows China the justification to continue to reject any of the recent “trilateral” US-Russia-China nuclear arms agreements that the US has been trying to bind it to, which would place it at a distinct disadvantage as the newcomer party still catching up.