Bad Astronomy‘s Phil Plait is one of those with some questions. In a piece from Thursday, Plait discussed some of his reasons for concern, not all of which has to do with this particular accomplishment on the part of China. He sees two major advantages China has over the U.S. at the moment – cash and the political will to make great strides in space:

[T]here is something else China’s space program has: political will. The money flows from that. NASA doesn’t have the money because there is little and certainly not effective enough political will in the White House or Congress for it. And what NASA gets is a dwindling budget, and then internal fighting over shrinking funding.

Plait also notes that we still don’t fully grasp China’s motives in space, and that there is the potential for an adversarial relationship with them as space exploitation advances:

I want there to be peaceful cooperation in space. But I also know there are bad guys out there. We are on peaceful, but perhaps not entirely friendly, terms with China. And to me, their motives are somewhat suspect. Scientist and lunar exploration advocate Paul Spudis wrote an interesting article about this for Air and Space. His concerns seem more pointed than mine, but he correctly says that China must have an eye for controlling or at least protecting their access to the volume of space between the Earth and Moon.

Plait concludes that our “increasingly reactionary and jingoistic” Congress may spur the U.S. to action, and that our leaders might be  unwilling to all but hand over the ultimate high ground to a rival. In this election cycle, space has not been on high (or even present) on the list of U.S. policy priorities. Though as a recent Wired article concludes, maybe that’s best for the future of America’s progress in space exploration.

Karger’s point on the national security aspect of this:

The loss of our space capabilities is not just a matter of pride, nor is it hysteria. It’s a matter of national security. Our nation cannot depend on critical information and technology from other countries, especially when we know that the data are not as good as that from our sensors. And this is only if we can get the data from our international colleagues at all – a well-known bone of contention for US scientists.

His solution echoes what the report suggests: inter-agency cooperation and public private partnerships, aimed at driving down costs and evaluating which scientific objectives are of paramount concern to the country.

Thoughts? What role will private space play in this area?

From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.

A massive, highly sophisticated piece of malware has been newly found infecting systems in Iran and elsewhere and is believed to be part of a well-coordinated, ongoing, state-run cyberespionage operation.

The malware, discovered by Russia-based antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab, is an espionage toolkit that has been infecting targeted systems in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, the Israeli Occupied Territories and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa for at least two years.

Dubbed “Flame” by Kaspersky, the malicious code dwarfs Stuxnet in size — the groundbreaking infrastructure-sabotaging malware that is believed to have wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear program in 2009 and 2010. Although Flame has both a different purpose and composition than Stuxnet, and appears to have been written by different programmers, its complexity, the geographic scope of its infections and its behavior indicate strongly that a nation-state is behind Flame, rather than common cyber-criminals — marking it as yet another tool in the growing arsenal of cyberweaponry.

As they say in the Marvel Universe…”flame on.”

This development has in part led Kazakhstan to evaluate its plans regarding space programs and the country’s future efforts. From the article:

In 2008, Talgat Musabaev, head of Kazcosmos, predicted that Russia would end manned space flights from Baikonur over the next decade. He added that Kazakhstan and Russia would move to “a new strategic stage of space partnership” (Interfax-Kazakhstan, February 2008). Nonetheless, the uncertainty of this space partnership has prompted Kazcosmos to begin shifting its focus away from Russian space projects and more towards domestic projects such as enhancing the country’s communications capabilities and developing Baikonur into a center for developing high-technology products.

Bloomberg’s Stepan Kravchenko highlights how these plans may revitalize Russia’s space industry.

Military leaders know that adherence to the law is a pragmatic essential to prevailing in 21st century conflicts. It might be attractive to some to capitalize on the unpopularity of lawyers, to demonize them and even the law itself, but military commanders understand that war today has changed. They know that law has permeated war much as it has every other human activity, and they realize the perils of ignoring its power and influence. Whether anyone likes it or not, war has become, as Gen. James Jones, then the commander of NATO forces, observed in 2003, “very legalist and very complex.”

Cyber war, though only incipient at this stage, is the most dramatic of the potential threats. Major states with elaborate technical and human resources could, in principle, create massive disruption and physical destruction through cyber attacks on military and civilian targets. Responses to cyber war include a form of interstate deterrence through denial and entanglement, offensive capabilities, and designs for rapid network and infrastructure recovery if deterrence fails. At some point, it may be possible to reinforce these steps with certain rudimentary norms and arms control, but the world is at an early stage in this process.

Defying weeks of international warnings of more censure and further sanctions, North Korea launched a rocket on Friday, a belligerent act that the United States called a cover for developing an intercontinental ballistic missile that one day might be able to carry a nuclear warhead. But the three-stage rocket appeared to break up and collapse moments after the launch. Officials from the United States, South Korea and Japan called the launch a failure, and the Japanese government said the rocket had disintegrated into several pieces while still in North Korean territory or over South Korean waters.