China's plot to hijack US satellites in wartime

The scale of China’s ability to target, disrupt and even capture America’s network of orbiting surveillance and communications satellites in time of war has been revealed in a leaked classified intelligence document. The development of Chinese anti-satellite technology has been aired by the Pentagon and the US intelligence services in the past. But the latest leaked report, with CIA markings, has underscored growing concerns about China’s focus on space war capabilities. The document is one of at least 100 allegedly leaked by Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old member of the US Air National Guard in Massachusetts. He was arrested by the FBI last week and charged under the Espionage Act with the unauthorised removal, retention and transmission of classified national defence information. The CIA-stamped document dated this year refers to China’s ability to “deny, exploit or hijack” an adversary’s satellites, the Financial Times reported. The latest leak underlines fears in the Pentagon that there are still classified files yet to appear in the public domain which could damage national security by exposing US intelligence assessments of rival power’s war-fighting capabilities. One cyber weapon highlighted in the document involves an elaborate jamming system to confuse and ultimately neuter satellites by mimicking signals they are receiving from ground-station operators and causing a malfunction. This would enable China “to seize control of a satellite, rendering it ineffective to support communications, weapons or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems". Although the leaked document does not contain classified information about how the US plans to counter China’s anti-satellite systems, it is no secret that the Pentagon, with its Cyber Command and Space Command, has been spending millions of dollars on confronting this threat, both from China and Russia. The US also has an advanced programme to develop sophisticated offensive cyber weapons and to improve defensive measures to protect satellites from attack by hardening the materials used in their construction. Like China and Russia, the US has the capability to hit an adversary’s satellite systems with missiles as well as electronic jamming technology. The UK also has advanced cyber weapon capabilities. However, last year the US was the first country to adopt a voluntary moratorium on the destructive testing of anti-satellite missile systems. Anti-satellite tests cause a massive cloud of debris in space. Russia was condemned when it carried out a test to destroy a defunct satellite in low orbit in December 2021. The US intelligence community’s annual threat assessment published last month said China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was fielding “new destructive and non-destructive [jamming] ground and space-based anti-satellite weapons”. The ground-based weapons included “electronic warfare systems, directed energy weapons [lasers] and Asat [anti-satellite] missiles intended to disrupt, damage and destroy target satellites”. The PLA had also conducted orbital technology demonstrations which “prove China’s ability to operate future spaced-based counter-space weapons”. The US has the most comprehensive satellite capability in the world. Hundreds of military and intelligence satellites are used to communicate on encrypted channels, to hit enemy targets with precision strikes, to provide early warning of a nuclear attack, to spy on other nations’ communications and to help warships and fighter aircraft navigate. This is why China and Russia, and particularly the former, are investing so much in developing counter-space weapons to make US satellites vulnerable to attack.