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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2084 thread views

Transnational Thursday for February 22, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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The weirdest thing that happened was surely the mysterious Russian nuclear space device that may or may not be launched. The US has apparently been trying to get China and India to influence Russia against launching - why China would want to advance US foreign policy goals is unclear to me. The US is the most satellite-dependant power, they have the most to lose.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-officials-have-warned-russia-not-to-deploy-nuclear-armed-space-weapon-dc3480b4 (paywalled)

Nuclear weapons in space are banned per treaty, they have extremely powerful effects on unshielded satellites (which is the vast majority of them). I imagine this would be an obvious counter to Starlink that's been causing so much trouble for Russia.

There's also been speculation that the Russians are thinking of a nuclear powered energy weapon, electronic warfare or laser attacks with a bit more grunt than solar. Alternately, it could serve in an anti-ICBM role - nuclear pumped lasers are a good way of shooting down missiles. They've also been experimenting with nuclear powered cruise missiles and nuclear powered torpedoes, there's an atompunk theme going on.

Have fun shooting down our constellation of Starlink satellites that let Ukraine get through your jamming and launch drone attacks on your facilities. SpaceX can outlaunch your ASAT for pennies on the dollar

Let's see how you handle our nuclear-powered electronic warfare, good luck drowning that out. You can, of course, fire a missile at our flying nuclear facility - do you want to take that risk?

By "nuclear-pumped," does this mean like literally focusing the neutron radiation of a nuclear explosion into a directed-energy beam, a la GENESIS?

basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur

which that might be based off.

why China would want to advance US foreign policy goals is unclear to me

My best guess: the US believe China has more to lose than gain if Russia were to use destructive satellite weaponry and that their Chinese counterparts will reach the same conclusion. Russia and China may have a 'special relationship', that doesn't meant they're on the same page.

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