The United States and China are Competing in Techno-Security Space Innovation

Space, the monopoly of large state agencies during the Cold War, is now a locus of private sector innovation—and that has far-reaching national security implications. Blue Origin and SpaceX partner with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for rocket launches. The latter company also operates the Starlink network of satellites, whose internet services have featured prominently during the war in Ukraine. Space is becoming an important theater for future warfighting capabilities, and is at the center of a technology, security, and innovation nexus.

As a high-stakes, zero-sum competition for global leadership between the United States and China intensifies, space innovation is becoming a major battlefield.

Meanwhile, China is progressively blurring the line between the private sector and its military, under its “military-civil fusion” strategy. China has surpassed Russia in the number of satellites it operates, cementing its status as the United States’ primary competitor in space. China is also inviting private actors into the space sector to boost competition and innovation, albeit in a more limited manner. Both nations believe civil-military integration is crucial for gaining a competitive edge. As a high-stakes, zero-sum competition for global leadership between the United States and China intensifies, space innovation is becoming a major battlefield.

Both nations view techno-security innovation as crucial to upgrading their national security space capabilities. The DoD undertook a far-reaching organizational revamp to its space sector in 2019 by establishing a Space Development Agency, U.S. Space Command, and Space Force. The Space Force aims to improve the acquisition process of military space capabilities. It launched an official innovation platform, SpaceWERX, in 2021 and holds Space Force Pitch Days to connect with private sector innovators.

U.S. techno-security space innovation seeks to maintain American military superiority by modernizing the space infrastructure of the DoD and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operates the country’s fleet of intelligence satellites. These efforts look to ensure the resilience of U.S. space capabilities in a more uncertain global security environment. Notably, policymakers are concerned with the growth of Chinese and Russian counterspace capabilities which could threaten U.S. space assets.

These agencies have sought to enlist private sector innovation to boost resilience. The NRO’s director noted in 2022 that the agency’s motto had become “buy what we can, build what we must,” an indication that NRO seeks to leverage private sector technologies and services.

Ultimately, DoD and NRO-led efforts since the mid-2010s to enhance the resilience of U.S. national security space infrastructure remain incomplete. Many of the systems the Space Force currently owns were not designed to operate under threat from peer adversaries. Transitioning to a more resilient space architecture will be a primary focus for the next decade.

Across the Pacific, China’s pursuit of techno-security space innovation is highly ambitious, committed not only to rapidly catching up with the United States but surpassing it to become the world leader in the space domain. Doing so requires China to forego its traditional absorption-based technological model in favor of boosting domestic innovation.

Xi [Jinping] sees innovation as central to his efforts to transform China’s military into a world-class force capable of competing with the United States, and highlights military and civil space development as part of this ultimate goal of Chinese national rejuvenation.

China’s paramount leader Xi Jinping has wielded significant influence over the country’s space sector development. Xi sees innovation as central to his efforts to transform China’s military into a world-class force capable of competing with the United States, and highlights military and civil space development as part of this ultimate goal of Chinese national rejuvenation. Likewise, China’s dire assessment of the global geopolitical landscape has made developing advanced space capabilities a national security priority.

China’s space innovation ecosystem is a state-led, top-down affair dominated by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation. These two powerfully connected firms, established in the 1990s, have a stranglehold over the space research, development, and acquisition system.

However, China’s space sector has the potential to introduce market-driven competition to aid its long-term development. Already, the government’s military-civil fusion strategy has produced modest results in the space domain. State media in 2015 attributed the successes of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System and Gaofen-2 earth observation satellite to this strategy.

China plans to launch many more satellites in the coming years and is beginning to demonstrate its ability to deploy novel space technologies in both the civil and military domains. As China’s capabilities expand, improving their resilience is a crucial development priority, just as it is in the United States.

U.S.-China competition in techno-security space innovation is heating up, and the long-term result is uncertain. The United States remains the undisputed leader in space innovation, but its continued dominance is not assured. As the U.S. national security space sector steps up transformative efforts toward enhancing space capabilities, some top U.S. strategists are concerned that China is improving its capabilities much faster. Just as the United States seeks to leverage private sector know-how, China’s military-civil fusion strategy could robustly accelerate the growth of China’s private space companies and provide a much-needed resource for the People’s Liberation Army. Time will tell which innovation model will prove more successful.

Tai Ming Cheung is the director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) and a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. Yasuhito Fukushima is a senior research fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies, Japan, and a previous visiting scholar at IGCC. This post was prepared with assistance from IGCC writer Paddy Ryan and was derived from Cheung and Fukushima’s chapter, Techno-Security Space Innovation, in the Oxford Handbook of Space Security (2024).

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