Newly translated documents discussed in these analyses include:

1. Starlink Militarization and Its Impact on Global Strategic Stability by Du Yanyun, associate professor at the National University of Defense Technology College of Basic Education in Military Politics; and Zhang Huang, associate professor at the National University of Defense Technology, with a research focus on military strategy and national security.
2. The U.S. Starlink Project and Its Implications from the Perspective of International and National Security by Yan Jiajie, PhD candidate at the Institute of International Relations and Regional Development at East China Normal University; and Yu Nanping, professor at the Institute of International Relations and Regional Development at East China Normal University.
3. Starlink Militarization: Challenges and Responses to Space Intelligence and Information Security by Wang Peiwen, master’s degree candidate at the National University of Defense Technology; Zhang Huang, associate professor at the National University of Defense Technology, with a research focus on military strategy and national security; and Zhang Kaiyue, master’s degree candidate at the National University of Defense Technology.

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Brian Weeden | Cassandra Steer | Fiona Cunningham

The translated articles on Starlink are a fascinating window into how at least some actors within China view U.S. commercial space activities. With the caveat that these are only a small sample of a much broader set of writing, the similarities between the articles suggest that the points they raise and conclusions they draw may be widespread. Moreover, that the articles are written in Mandarin suggests the articles are intended for a domestic audience, not a Western one, and thus could provide insight into the motivations and concerns of Chinese policymakers the authors are appealing to.

Looking across all three articles, what stands out the most are their errors and biases. The articles repeatedly overstate the technical capabilities of Starlink and the integration of Starlink into U.S. national security space architectures. The authors presume very close coordination between Starlink and U.S. defense leadership. They all conclude with a very stark assessment of the threat Starlink poses to China’s security interests. Yet the articles make almost no mention of China’s own large broadband satellite constellation efforts. Presumably, those efforts would bring about many of the same benefits to China and undermining of U.S. interests as Starlink, should they be successful, but that is left out of the analysis.

It’s important to note that all the same errors and biases denoted above in the Chinese articles are also present in a fair amount of the public writing and analysis here in the United States about China’s space capabilities. Many U.S. authors also overstate China’s technical capabilities in space and the impact of China’s programs on U.S. national security, while ignoring America’s own capabilities or activities that would undermine their arguments. 

Presuming that everyone involved is acting rationally, the prevalence of these errors and biases suggest that Chinese and American analysts are both producing these analyses under a similar combination of incentives and psychology. This leads to overestimating the threat posed by the other’s space program and amplifying the concerns in ways that can be used to justify changes to policy, bureaucratic structures, or budgets. The analysts may be creating arguments and scenarios that they feel will be most persuasive to the policymakers and institutions, which are then most likely to be picked up and amplified by the media, which puts more pressure on the policymakers to respond accordingly. These dynamics could very well exist throughout the overall Sino-American relationship, not just in regard to Starlink or the space domain.

That leads to the very worrisome scenario in which the United States and China could find themselves in a security dilemma, where each side’s efforts to increase their own security creates fear in the other. Such a positive feedback loop could spiral towards escalation and conflict, which is the exact result senior leadership here in the United States have stated they want to avoid because it would be extremely damaging for everyone and especially in the space domain. For example, what measures might China put in place to counter Starlink, should they believe the threat it poses as laid out in these articles? 

If that is the case, then the challenge for U.S. policymakers is how to break the cycle and make meaningful progress in reducing the likelihood of conflict. Doing so will be extremely difficult, as it runs counter many of the institutional and political incentives that exist on both sides and requires both sides to recognize the situation and be willing to act against those incentives. But if armed conflict in outer space is as terrible as stated, then this is a difficult effort worth pursuing.

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Being able to understand the thinking within China regarding the relationships between U.S. defense and commercial space is of critical importance. One of the greatest threats to stability and peace in space is a misunderstanding of threat perception, which differs greatly from country to country. As geopolitical tensions continue to rise, distrust infuses space security just as it does other domains of technological competition. If countries misunderstand each other’s threat perceptions or misinterpret each other’s intentions, there is a risk of escalation. Generating opportunities for better understanding is one way to reduce that risk.

In this sense, the translation of these articles written by Chinese scholars about the threats posed by Starlink can provide useful insights, and potentially provide opportunities to engage with Chinese diplomats to create better mutual understanding. For example, there is no doubt that the authors of these articles overstate the capabilities of Starlink, however, the concerns for entanglement between the single most influential commercial space player and the U.S. military are not entirely misplaced. 

Where the authors go astray is that they assume Starlink was a U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) invention, or that it was funded by the DOD for military purposes. Importantly, there appears to be a cultural misunderstanding that commercial entities like SpaceX fall under state control, which may be the case in China but is far from the reality in the United States. At the same time, the fact that the U.S. government remains a key client to SpaceX, or any other large commercial space actors, whether for civil or military needs, should not be underestimated. Commercial space providers rely on large government contracts, using tax-payer dollars, to build their businesses. This is true for traditional primes like Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, and others, and it is certainly true for the history of SpaceX. However, the authors have mistakenly leaped to the conclusion that all things Starlink are DOD related, and that this is the core threat of the mega-constellation system.

Since these articles were published, there has been more information in mainstream media regarding DOD contracts with SpaceX for bespoke intelligence satellites, under the so-called Starshield program. Two of these articles appear to conflate Starlink with Starshield, whereas the former is a civil telecommunications system, and the latter a contracted Defence system. At the same time, that SpaceX is the sole company behind these behemoth systems, and that they are likely to be built on similar platforms (which are able to be integrated over time), can’t be ignored. 

The authors also make broad sweeping statements, most of which are entirely inaccurate, regarding the link between Starlink telecommunications and missile defense, early warning capabilities, nuclear submarine communications (which by definition cannot depend on satellite communications when submerged), the use of Starlink for state-driven disinformation, and targeting. The Starlink system was indeed “hacked” by Ukrainian forces in 2023, such that they were able to utilize this telecommunications system for navigational purposes for their drones, but this is an anomaly for an internet and communications satellite system. Starlink is not designed to be part of a kill chain. Indeed, it was the very reason Elon Musk decided to switch the service off temporarily, before being contracted by the U.S. government to continue to provide the service in the Ukraine region.

Despite these inaccuracies, there are some concerns raised in the articles which are on point, and which should not be dismissed. As of 2024, the Starlink mega-constellation consists of over 6,000 satellites dominating low Earth orbit (LEO) and the limited radio frequencies available for satellite communications. Being a U.S. company, this means U.S. interests effectively dominate LEO, at a time when LEO is becoming more contested. There are impacts on astronomy and on the ability of other nations to access LEO. Moreover, because of commercialization in space globally, “space as a service” has become the norm, whereby militaries may prefer to procure services from commercial space providers rather than procure an entire satellite system. This means commercial players are increasingly influential politically, and the fact that SpaceX is so dominant cannot be ignored: Starlink will reach 40,000 satellites before the end of the decade and is undeniably the preeminent internet and satellite communications service globally. 

Even if there is no state control of commercial entities in the United States the way there is in China, SpaceX is a commercial hegemony, and its biggest client is the U.S. government, increasingly for DOD needs. Moreover, the close relationship between president-elect Trump and Elon Musk became even more stark after the announcement that Musk will head up a new “Department of Government Efficiency,” together with venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy. The extent to which Musk can influence government decisions will become more unpredictable, and this is certain to make various countries more nervous.

Add to this existing concerns in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region regarding the predominance of Starlink services. Access to the internet and reliable communications are critical and no longer a luxury and Starlink potentially closes a digital divide in many regions of the world. However, some island nations such as Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Samoa, and Vanuatu have been either banning Starlink or denying permits for its use as they consider how to move forward. Similarly, India and most countries in Africa have denied permits for the service. Often this has been to do with caution: the potential politicization of a critical infrastructure, given that Starlink has been switched off in Ukraine and denied in Taiwan. The risk is too high of becoming dependent on a system that might be switched off in the face of geopolitical events in the region, with Taiwan as a central piece in the chess game.

Overall, because commercial space providers generally now form lynchpins in global critical infrastructure, we cannot ignore some of the concerns raised by these Chinese scholars. However, it is possible to assuage misconceptions and work towards common understandings of the facts, as a step towards more stable relations at a time of otherwise great unpredictability.

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Some of the most important lessons that China has learned about contemporary conflict from the Ukraine war concern the role of space technologies. As indicated by the two articles authored by academics from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after the Ukraine war began, Starlink, a proliferated satellite communications constellation operated by the U.S. commercial firm SpaceX, emerged as a game changer in the conflict. Starlink has enabled connectivity among Ukraine’s armed forces despite extensive Russian efforts to disrupt its opponent’s military communications. 

Since the late 1990s, China has been developing a counterspace force posture that would enable it to heavily degrade U.S. forces’ connectivity in any future high-intensity war. This counterspace force posture both enhances China’s conventional operations and provides it with coercive leverage as a substitute for nuclear threats, as the Zhang and Du article indicates (for more on this “strategic substitution” role, see my book). Watching Starlink in action therefore confronted China with a new reality that complicated its plans to disrupt U.S. space-based information support. Two of the articles identify this specific implication of Starlink, while all three articles offer a window into broader PRC thinking about the space security environment in three respects.

First, they reveal how misperceptions and ambiguities about U.S. space technologies can magnify PRC threat assessments. While the United States tends to obfuscate where it is weak in space, the authors of these articles tend to fill in those blanks by ascribing functions, scale, and operational status to U.S. space capabilities that likely far exceed reality. 

For example, the Zhang et al. article claims that the U.S. “space-based strategic early warning system is built on Starlink.” It also suggests that Starlink has “optical observation payloads” and can link up with Hypersonic and Ballistic Missile Tracking Space Sensor satellites to move missile tracking data. The authors appear to be conflating Starlink and Starshield, a dedicated military proliferated satellite constellation that performs missile warning and reconnaissance functions, which SpaceX is developing for the U.S. Department of Defense. Further, Starlink is not used to transmit missile early warning and tracking data. The Pentagon’s Proliferated Space Warfighter Architecture will use a “transport” layer of data-transfer satellites to link together missile warning and tracking space systems. 

Zhang and Du’s analysis of Starlink also makes the erroneous claim that Starlink could provide the United States with the capabilities to pursue space-based interceptors for missile defense. While these technological misperceptions are likely to be milder among authors from the People’s Liberation Army of China or in internal analysis of U.S. space-based capabilities, other PRC open-source analysis has also put forward this claim.

Second, these three articles identify some of China’s specific concerns about U.S. intentions to take full advantage of space for military operations while denying its adversaries access to space. For example, both the Zhang et al. and Zhang and Du articles suggest that any type of satellite constellation with persistent coverage—even if it has no sensing function—increases China’s concerns about the survivability of its mobile missiles. These anxieties are also reflected in the writings of PRC nuclear experts who worry that U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance improvements reduce the survivability of China’s nuclear deterrent, which relies heavily on road-mobile missiles. 

Another clear PRC concern that emerges from these articles is that China’s counterspace capabilities will be less effective against a U.S. satellite constellation composed of a mix of proliferated constellations and a few large, exquisite capabilities (for functions that cannot be easily proliferated). None of the articles acknowledge China’s own counterspace capabilities, consistent with China’s official policy of acknowledging only its space support capabilities (instead they refer to Russian or “adversary” counterspace capabilities). But Zhang and Du argue that Starlink “disrupt[s] the structural characteristics that achieve crisis stability in space” in which rivals’ space assets are vulnerable to the other’s attacks. Starlink, they argue, alters the willingness of adversaries to attack U.S. space assets because it “ensures the survival of its [U.S.] strategic forces while weakening the strike capabilities and deterrent forces of strategic adversaries.” 

Finally, the three articles reveal a significant degree of mirror imaging by overlooking the fact that SpaceX is a private company whose interests can and do sometimes diverge from the interests of the U.S. government. Although these PRC authors describe SpaceX as a private company, they do not acknowledge the potential for diverging interests and the challenges that ensue, which is likely due to mirror imaging PRC state ownership and control of space firms. This assumption, which could lead China to conflate commercial space actors’ actions with those of the U.S. government, would be a worthwhile topic to clarify through U.S.-China space dialogues at the official and unofficial levels.

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