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US House Intel Chairman announces ‘serious national security threat,’ sources say it is related to Russia's nuclear capabilities in space
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- Authors
- Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis, Annie Grayer, Kevin Liptak
- Published
- Feb 14 2024
This sounds ominous. I wonder what it could be.
Perhaps the use of a hypersonic cruise missile in Ukraine?
Russia has helped Iran construct nuclear weapons?
Someone's made a serious move against Putin and there's a risk of Russian destabilisation?
Cybersecurity attacks have managed to breach DoD or military servers, gaining access to highly classified information?
Word is that it's anti-satellite nukes. So it's an international concern, but not like a doomsday weapon that will kill everyone.
I guess if it's ever used, aside from the immediate destruction of potentially tens or hundreds of satellites, a secondary issue is the possibility of a Kessler cascade.
The space debris created by the nuke and satellites being blown apart creates a domino effect of collisions with more satellites, repeat ad nauseum until the earth's orbit is littered with the debris of destroyed satellites.
This then creates a scenario where it then becomes very difficult to maintain any great number of satellites in space again or send shuttles up into space for decades and decades.
I think the US tested nukes out in orbit and said the EMP acted weird, hung around a lot longer than they anticapted and affected satellites for weeks afterwards so there's also a tertiary issue.
A cascade like that shouldn't be a huge concern because space is quite large, but destroying satellites certainly complicate tracking.
Well, yeah, but satellites have to go in relatively constrained parts of space and even small debris can be a big problem. It's a thing is the point I guess.
Can’t you take a satellite offline by just smashing any hunk of metal at it? What’s the utility of going nuclear?
The blast and resulting EMP would potentially take out a lot more satellites than a kinetic weapon could.
After the Starfish Prime nuclear detonation in space, the US discovered that high energy particles were trapped around radiation belts which caused numerous satellites to fail over a number of months (this was back in 1962 when the number of satellites in space was significantly less than today) and that some of these particles were still detectable 5 years after the weapon was detonated.
If the blast is placed correctly, ALL the damage will be done via EMP, thus preventing a runaway cascade of space junk that also would harm Russian satellites.
Jonathan McDowell says that it is most likely a nuclear-powered electronic warfare satellite, rather than nukes used for creating EMPs
Saw this after making my own post, which I deleted. I've edited this title to reflect the new information. Here is what I had said:
Gifted link to NYT article
This is related to the commotion on the Hill today after the GOP House Intel Chairman went public with some info ahead of a scheduled briefing tomorrow. Some other articles although information is sparse. Tangentially relevant is this piece in the NYT from yesterday about the doomsday clock and its continuing relevance.
Apparently these space nukes are meant to target satellites as opposed to ground strikes — a small solace perhaps?
Probably worse than you think. IIRC the US tested a nuke high in the atmosphere and the EMP kind of travelled along the earths magnetic field lines in a weird way. I'll maybe try to find a source later today.
The creepiest possibility with space nukes is that Russia decided to pursue high-altitude nuclear electromagnetic pulse technology. The U.S. experimented with this in the 1960's, and the apparent conclusion was that the effects were both too persistent (free electrons from the tests continued to damage satellites for years afterwards) and potentially destabilizing to pursue.
More information on modern modeling of the Starfish Prime experiment here.
It wouldn't be surprising if Putin is dusting off all the available Cold War evils to inhibit any attempt to deter Russia from further aggression. The U.S. Department of Defense operating strategic theory is that multiple nuclear-armed powers consider nuclear EMP an information blackout weapon, not a nuclear attack subject to existing treaties.
That's... Goldeneye, isn't it ?
It’s a developing story - I think it may be AI-related, but it’s just a hunch.
EDIT: It's about Russia's ambitions of putting a nuke in space...
That would be instantly one of the most valuable and focused hacking campaigns by the most number of people or organizations on a single target in history.
If they were to launch this, it would be the number one target for any person or organization. The amount of power, leverage, and opportunity for anyone to possess such capability from orbit would be monumental.
I can't take the threat too seriously just like I can't take the threat of globabl nuclear war seriously, both would completely destroy worldwide civilization so why worry about it outside of academic theory. A nuke in space won't be precise enough to target any one nation or group of nation's assets, it would destroy everything in a very wide radius - to include satelites that Russia relies on as well. It's like, good to know that this is a possiblity but I don't see how it's a serious national security threat that needs to be released to the public ASAP.
As long as it’s not hackable like weather satellites with a homemade satellite dish, we may be okay.
But everything that can communicate is in theory hackable. I hope the Russians thought of that and it’s not too easy to deorbit over NYC by the Houthis or something.
Kind of a weird thing to come out and say.
Of course I'm interested in what it is, but, the fact that it came out like this makes me utterly bewildered what could simultaneously be a threat important enough to be disclosed to the public immediately (while still classified), and also not a cause for alarm.
This is probably one of the least constructive things to do in a situation like this, isn't it?
Seems like from what I'm reading Turner jumped the gun and it's pissed off the White House who were planning a meeting about it tomorrow.
Perhaps there's some politicking going on here, Turner maybe trying to paint Biden and the White House as weak or perhaps he's trying to force the hand of Republicans holding out on Ukraine aid.
Turner's district contains a bunch of defence contractors and Wright Patterson AFB so money coming into the Military Industrial Complex is good for his area.
This is an interesting article from 2019 which might be relevant to this