The new great‑power competition isn’t only playing out at borders, ports, or undersea cables. It’s happening above your head—quietly, constantly, and increasingly against you. Space is no longer a neutral utility. It’s a lever. And the hand on that lever can be a state… or a company.

For business, that’s the uncomfortable headline: satellites are the backbone of modern commerce, yet access to satellite communications, navigation, and Earth‑observation data is becoming conditional—shaped by geopolitical rivalry, sanctions logic, cyber conflict, and the fast‑moving militarization of infrastructure that used to be sold as “purely commercial.”

3000 Estimated number of newly launched satellites in 2025 – compared to a total of approximately 1000 active satellites in 2010

Starlink showed what structural power looks like

If you still think “space” is a long‑term strategy topic for aerospace executives, consider the moment in early February 2026 when SpaceX tightened verification and Russian units using contraband Starlink terminals reportedly went dark, triggering immediate battlefield communications disruption. The lesson isn’t who you support—it’s that a single provider can flip the switch on connectivity in contested environments, and the effects are immediate. ‍

Now translate that to corporate reality: logistics routing, fleet tracking, remote operations, offshore assets, disaster response, and time synchronization in financial systems don’t just “use satellites.” They depend on them. When access becomes a policy instrument, the information your company assumes it “has” becomes something it must secure. ‍

The race is widening—fast

While the U.S. and China dominate the scale game, the wider market is surging. India’s space economy, for example, is projected to grow to $44B by 2033 (from ~$8.4B in 2022), propelled by reforms and private‑sector expansion—an explicit signal that space is becoming an industrial base, not just a national prestige project. ‍

Meanwhile, the orbital “traffic jam” is real: global launches and deployments have accelerated dramatically. Data compiled from UN registers shows the annual number of objects launched into space rising steeply through 2025. In plain terms: we’re putting thousands more things into orbit every year, and that changes both economics and risk. ‍

Europe, by contrast, is living the consequences of capability gaps. In 2024, Europe recorded three orbital launches, while the United States logged 145 and China 68—a disparity that translates into dependence, slower iteration cycles, and weaker negotiating power in supply chains built around launch access and constellation scale. ‍

Space is becoming a cyber theatre

The most underestimated shift is how quickly space infrastructure has moved into the cyber crosshairs. A major ETH Zürich CSS study catalogued 237 cyber operations targeting the space sector in the context of conflict dynamics, highlighting how ground infrastructure (companies, agencies, services) becomes the soft underbelly of “space power.” It’s not science fiction: it’s intrusion attempts, DDoS, data leaks, and targeting of enabling systems. ‍

For companies, this changes the definition of resilience. You don’t just harden a data center—you harden your space dependencies: terminals, user segments, identity verification, supply contracts, and the governance layer that decides who stays connected when the rules change. ‍

And yes, the Moon is already in your supply chain deck

Even the “frontier” story has turned commercial. In 2025, Bluefors—one of the quantum industry’s key cryogenic suppliers—signed an agreement with Interlune to purchase up to 10,000 liters of helium‑3 annually sourced via planned lunar harvesting missions, with deliveries scheduled 2028–2037. That’s not just a moonshot metaphor; it’s an attempt to lock down a future supply chain for near‑absolute‑zero cooling—critical for scaling quantum computing. ‍

Space is being monetized as raw material, compute, power, and control, not only as navigation and comms. The strategic question for executives is no longer “Should we use space?” It’s: Who controls our access—and what’s our Plan B? ‍

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