In Washington’s policy circles, warnings about America’s declining space dominance have become a familiar refrain. Yet these concerns are not mere bureaucratic hand-wringing — they reflect a reality that experts believe demands immediate attention.
Nearly seven decades after the Soviet Union’s Sputnik launch jolted America into the space age, the United States finds itself at another critical juncture. This time, however, the wake-up call isn’t a single blinking satellite but a series of escalating challenges that threaten the nation’s long-held supremacy in space.
Recent reports from think tanks paint a sobering picture. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) warns that the United States is “in danger of losing its privileged position in space,” while the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies highlights critical weaknesses in U.S. military space strategy.
Meanwhile, China’s rapid advancement in space technology and Russia’s increasingly aggressive actions — including testing anti-satellite weapons that created dangerous debris fields — signal a new era of space competition. These nations have developed sophisticated capabilities to disable or destroy U.S. space assets through various means, from cyberattacks to direct-ascent missiles.
Esther Brimmer, a CFR senior fellow who led the space study project, emphasized the urgency of a coordinated national effort. “We can’t stay in our professional silos; we need to be part of a larger national effort,” Brimmer told SpaceNews. The report serves as a call to action for both the national security and space communities to collaborate in a more meaningful way.
Among CFR’s key recommendations: designate space systems as “critical infrastructure” to secure funding and prioritization, and establish a direct space “hotline” with China to prevent dangerous miscalculations. But the underlying message is that without a fundamental shift in how the U.S. approaches space, its strategic and economic edge is at risk.
The Mitchell Institute echoed these concerns in another recent report, warning that without major reforms, America will fall behind in a domain that has already been militarized by its adversaries. Charles Galbreath, a senior fellow at the institute, argues that the problem isn’t just technological — it’s cultural. “We lack a unifying ‘space race’ narrative to galvanize action,” he noted, despite mounting threats that should be impossible to ignore.
The original Sputnik moment in 1957 shocked the American public, spurring the creation of NASA and a generational push for scientific and technological advancement. But in today’s complex geopolitical environment, space has become so intertwined with daily life that its critical role is paradoxically easier to overlook.
The real danger is that this time, there will be no single defining event to jolt the nation into action. China’s methodical advances, including its successful robotic sample return missions from the moon and its growing fleet of military satellites, are incremental but steady. Russia, despite its economic troubles, continues to develop anti-satellite weapons, as demonstrated by its destructive missile test in 2021 that generated thousands of pieces of orbital debris and more recent reports that it has developed a nuclear-armed satellite.
Galbreath argues that a Sputnik-scale wake-up call has already happened — several times. “China blew up a satellite in 2007. Russia did the same in 2021. Both created massive debris clouds. The International Space Station had to dodge Russian debris. These should have been Sputnik moments,” he said. “The problem is, we never embraced them as such.”
What would it take to snap the U.S. out of its complacency? A catastrophic event — perhaps a Russian nuclear detonation in space, frying thousands of satellites, cutting off global internet access and crippling financial markets — would undoubtedly force the issue to the forefront, Galbreath said. But by then, the damage would already be done.
The danger is not just that the U.S. could fall behind technologically. The deeper risk is that, in a moment of crisis, America may lack the operational flexibility to defend its space assets, deter aggression or even maintain access to the systems that fuel modern life.
Nor is the problem a lack of warning signs — it’s political inertia, Galbreath argued, as leaders are focused on immediate domestic concerns, and preserving America’s advantage in space power is unlikely to make a priority list.
The stakes couldn’t be higher, these experts warn. Space isn’t just about national pride or scientific achievement anymore. It’s the invisible infrastructure that powers our modern world that we’ve come to take for granted.
This article first appeared in the March 2025 issue of SpaceNews Magazine.
