Nongovernment satellites are vulnerable to attack, and calling them critical infrastructure would...
Weeks later, the Biden administration made clear it would not tolerate such attacks, giving Russia a list of 16 critical U.S. infrastructure sectors that the administration declared off-limits, including the energy sector.
It is easy to understand why energy infrastructure deserves protection, not to mention health care, food, chemical manufacturing and the rest of the list of 16, but in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the prospect of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a new sector needs to be on the list of critical infrastructure: civilian satellites.
Whether facilitating services like weather forecasting and GPS navigation or supplying imagery that informs stock trades, civilian satellites are a vital resource in the 21st century.
Worse still, an attack on a civilian satellite that disrupts its navigation capabilities, or ability to send and receive data, stands to turn it into space debris that can disable other critical space objects.
Calling civilian satellites critical infrastructure communicates to other countries that these objects would be exempt from the standard espionage operations, the hacking, and some cases, the attacks that other countries conduct against the U.S. as part of normal foreign affairs.
China is likely to target satellites in any attempted invasion for the purposes of causing panic among civilians or disrupting and degrading Taiwanese and U.S. military command-and-control.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies' timeline of attacks on U.S. and other satellites by China notes eight separate attacks, most of which were against NASA satellites.
A possible Taiwan crisis illustrates what's at stake: civilian satellites may well end up in the crosshairs.
It is imperative that civilian satellites not become casualties of war and conflict.
Other nations have already attacked civilian satellites in the U.S. and around the world.