Putin’s Space Nuke Is So Crazy, It’s an Opportunity
The US should use Russia’s plans to place a nuclear weapon in Earth’s orbit to turn Beijing against Moscow.
Lost in space.
Photographer: Alexander Kazakov/AFP via Getty Images
Flanked by his toadying defense minister, Vladimir Putin put on his best KGB poker face this week and did what he’s wont to do before committing his next outrage: He denied any intention of it. “We have always been categorically against, and are now against, the deployment of nuclear weapons in space,” the Russian president deadpanned. It made me think of February 2022, when Putin insisted he had no plans to attack Ukraine. He invaded a week later.
America’s spies once again have different information. Confirming what had already leaked out of Congress, they told allies that Putin plans to launch, perhaps this year, a nuclear device into one of the orbits where some 7,800 satellites whir around the Earth in a fast-growing cloud of space junk that is itself mainly the debris of older satellites.