Beijing and Moscow plot to dismantle Starlink’s dominance in space

The joint campaign, detailed in investigations by The Insider, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde, stems from high-level meetings in Guangzhou. Chinese experts, acknowledging the system’s lack of a central hub, have struggled to find a single point of failure in the decentralized network. To counter this, they proposed a roadmap that begins with legal maneuvers to restrict SpaceX, moves toward aggressive frequency jamming, and culminates in the use of specialized anti-satellite weaponry to dismantle the constellation.

While these plans underscore how space has evolved into a primary theater of modern conflict, experts remain skeptical about the immediate viability of such attacks. Yevhen Pronin, a Ukrainian drone and law analyst, notes that while the intent is clear, the current capability of the Russian-Chinese coalition to fully blind the network remains unproven. Despite this, the Kremlin is accelerating its own domestic satellite projects, though it continues to trail behind the deployment scale and operational maturity of the Starlink infrastructure currently sustaining Ukrainian forces.