China has begun to treat Elon Musk’s Starlink not simply as a commercial satellite service, but as a potential military menace. After observing how Ukrainian forces relied on Starlink during Russia’s full‑scale invasion in 2022 to maintain communication and command control, Beijing’s space and defense thinkers sounded alarm bells. A sweeping review of at least sixty‑four Chinese research papers, most published since that war began, revealed a strategic consensus: Starlink, with its 8,000‑plus satellites orbiting the Earth, is a dual‑use system capable of enabling U.S. military reach and surveillance nearly anywhere on the planet.
These studies have ranged from the technical grounds, simulating continuous Starlink coverage over sensitive Chinese regions like Beijing and Taiwan, to risk assessments of its sprawling global supply chain that involves over 140 first‑tier suppliers, many lacking robust cybersecurity oversight. Taken together, they paint Starlink as a strategic vulnerability rather than a convenience.
The proposals emerging from these papers are striking in scope and ambition. Among the most dramatic is a concept for stealth submarines armed with high‑power lasers that could fire upward into orbit, targeting Starlink satellites from periscope depth before submerging invisibly again. Chinese defense journals suggest mounting megawatt-class, solid-state directed-energy systems on submarines, a futuristic plan that critics say may require years to master, given the difficulty of stabilizing a laser from a moving naval platform.
Other researchers sketch microsatellite “chaser” craft equipped with sensors, ion thrusters, even materials to physically degrade Starlink units, corrosive sprays to damage solar panels or exhaust ion impulses to nudge satellites off their lanes. Some papers even explore tactics such as generating deep‑fake signals to trick Starlink systems, planting optical telescopes orbit‑wide to silently monitor its movements, jamming its signals, or using diplomatic channels to curb its global deployment.
All of this rests on the conviction that Starlink is deeply entangled with U.S. national security institutions. Researchers at China’s National University of Defense Technology warned in a 2023 journal article that as the United States integrates Starlink into its military space architecture, adversaries naturally see the constellation as a threat across cyber, space, and nuclear domains. The leadership in Beijing appears to consider the system a strategic extension of U.S. power rather than a neutral provider of connectivity.
Elsewhere, China is also pursuing its mega-constellations: the state-owned Guowang project, now with sixty satellites launched toward a planned 13,000, and the Shanghai-backed Qianfan constellation, which has deployed about ninety satellites out of a targeted 15,000. These platforms are aimed at achieving both domestic autonomy and market traction in regions where Starlink has gained footholds, such as Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and even Latin America.
In Europe, concern is growing over reliance on a private system that may operate beyond traditional state control. The EU’s IRIS² program emerged partly to reassert sovereign control over space‑based communication, with officials warning that surrendering infrastructure to a volatile private actor undermines strategic autonomy.
There are skeptics. Western analysts caution that the submarine‑laser idea may remain science fiction for now; underwater firing platforms are notoriously unstable and rugged to lock onto moving satellites. But inside China’s military and academic institutions, the thought experiment is serious. If a civilian satellite network can shift the balance in a war, then a state must be able to contest it.
These papers often have a raw tone: titles such as “Watch out for that Starlink” appear in internal publications. They reflect a broader logic: in the modern battlefield, whoever controls the network controls the fight. And in the vast expanse of space, Starlink is fast becoming the dominant network.
This growing cloud of theoretical countermeasures, from cyber sabotage of equipment suppliers to lasers, spy satellites, and corrosive sprays, reveals how rapidly space has shifted from a frontier of peaceful science to a contested domain of geostrategic rivalry. For China, neutralizing Starlink is less about turning off an array in orbit than about reclaiming its narrative in the global order.
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