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Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink declared this week that the United States has weapons orbiting in outer space. It was the first time a U.S. official has publicly acknowledged this fact. The questions, which went unaddressed, are what sorts of weapons they are, why he’s announcing this now, and—most important—what it all means for the broader issues of war and peace.

Chinese and Russian spokespeople denounced Meink’s speech as a step toward “war in outer space.” This was not only predictable but also a sick joke. Both of those countries have been launching, orbiting, and testing weapons in space—devices designed to disable or destroy U.S. satellites—for more than a decade, to a degree and with a tactical sophistication that far outpaces anything we have done. And they have been doing this without publicly declaring anything.

Retired Lt. Gen. John Shaw, who was deputy commander of U.S. Space Command until 2023 and is still active on boards and companies dealing with space security, told me in a phone conversation Wednesday that Meink’s remarks marked “not an escalation but a measured response” to what China and Russia have long been doing.

That can’t be said of many of America’s arms races with other nations over the past 80 years, but it seems to be the case with this one. And an arms race in space, of some sort, now appears almost inevitable.

For many years, and to an extent far greater than any other country, the U.S. military has depended on assets in space. Photoreconnaissance satellites spy on what adversaries are doing. Early-warning satellites detect attacks. GPS satellites transmit signals that guide “smart bombs” to their targets, connect communications networks, even tell troops on the ground and ships at sea exactly where they are.

If some of these satellites get hacked, damaged, derailed, or destroyed, America’s ability to fight a war would be seriously degraded. That seems to be the intention of Russian and Chinese “space control” programs. It is widely thought that if the U.S. ever goes to war with Russia or China, the first shots would be anti-satellite attacks, complemented by cyberattacks against a wide range of computer and communications targets.

In a cyberwar, the United States has much bigger stones but much glassier houses. In other words, we have a larger, more destructive array of cyberattack tools. However, our military forces, as well as our economy and social structures, are far more........

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