Trump unveils his orbital weapon to come to the negotiating table with Xi Jinping in a position of strength

Two days ago, Troy E. Meink, the US Secretary of the Air Force, stated publicly for the first time that America has deployed a weapon in space, which will serve to defend the US Armed Forces “from hostile actions”. When asked what type of weapon it was, he declined to answer. The decision to publicise the deployment is the real news here: the Pentagon – and more specifically, Trump’s White House – wishes to make it clear that it has weapons in orbit at its disposal, after industry experts had repeatedly spoken for at least two years about investments in research to militarise space by actors such as Russia and China. Developments in the space sector are difficult to convey to the general public, as they are almost always top secret; therefore, to achieve any sort of deterrent effect, announcements must be made and details revealed.

Timing, however, in the case of Trump’s leadership, is never coincidental. Meink’s announcement of an unspecified ‘mega-weapon’ in space comes just a few days after the US President’s statement that the United States is ‘ahead of China’ in the field of artificial intelligence: ‘Whoever wins the AI challenge wins it all,’ said Trump. Such announcements are never followed by a show of force—which is what actually establishes a deterrent effect—and so today many analysts harbor a suspicion: in a week’s time, the US President will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping face-to-face once again, and the only way to command any credibility at the negotiating table with the second most powerful man in the world is to sit down from a position of strength. In space, Beijing seeks to gain a strategic and technological advantage over America, particularly from a military perspective, which is why it invests far more than Washington and takes far greater risks than the rest of the world. But in an era of strongmen who prefer announcements to results on the ground, trusting one another becomes the most difficult gamble of all.