Re: A fight to protect ‘the most valuable real estate in space’

[John Bailey]

I've long been confused by the US (and Australian) media's obsession
with painting China as aggressively expansionist - in thousands and
thousands of years it just hasn't been anything like this. Disputes
over Taiwan and other neighbours, yes, but it's not an empire the way
Britain or the Dutch or anyone was. Fears of "invasion" by the Chinese
are more likely cultural and go back to (non-military) migration fears
of the last few centuries. That discourse has become so buried that
we're seriously (!) talking about wars in space?

This 2012 article makes some of these points well:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2012-08-16/how-china-sees-america

On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 6:14 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> You may be correct.
>
> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 2:59 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> "opening up the possibility that outer space would become a new front in
>> modern warfare"... ?!?!?
>>
>> That's been a possibility -- and from time to time an expensively (if
>> unproductively) pursued capability -- for 50+ years. Over that span the US
>> has very likely spent more on it than anyone, and I wouldn't be surprised if
>> we're spending more on it right now than the "threatening" Russians and
>> Chinese. NB deep in the article that we had done in ***1985*** what the
>> Chinese did in 2007 --- i.e. sent up a missile to blow up one of our own
>> dead satellites as a proof-of-principle test.
>>
>> I think what we have here, in the fine old tradition of the "missile gap"
>> in 1957-60 and of the early-1980s stories of Soviet anti-satellite or
>> anti-missile super-lasers that helped pave the way for SDI ("Star Wars"), is
>> the DoD saying "they're ahead of us!" (in pursuit of increased funding from
>> Congress) when it's more likely that they're catching up.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 3:08 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/a-fight-to-protect-the-most-valuable-real-estate-in-space/2016/05/09/df590af2-1144-11e6-8967-7ac733c56f12_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_spacewars6p%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
>>>
>>>
>>> The first salvo was a missile launch by the Chinese in 2007 that blew up
>>> a dead satellite and littered space with thousands of pieces of debris. But
>>> it was another Chinese launch three years ago that made the Pentagon really
>>> snap to attention, opening up the possibility that outer space would become
>>> a new front in modern warfare.
>>>
>>
>
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