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The White House on Thursday said it had received “troubling” intelligence that Russia is developing an advanced “anti-satellite capability”, confirming reports that had raised alarm bells among defence hawks on Capitol Hill.
John Kirby, US National Security Council spokesperson, said that while he was limited in disclosing “the specific nature of the threat”, the Kremlin’s advances posed “no immediate threat to anyone’s safety”.
US officials briefed on the intelligence have told the Financial Times it detailed efforts by Russia to deploy a space-based nuclear weapon that could be used to disable American satellites. Kirby declined to say whether the capability was “nuclear”, however.
He acknowledged the advances involved “space-based” capabilities and would be in direct violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that more than 100 countries have signed on to, including the US, UK and Russia. The treaty bars signatories from deploying nuclear weapons into space.
Kirby cautioned that the intelligence showed Russia was “developing” the new anti-satellite system, and it was “not an active capability that has been deployed”.
“We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on Earth,” he added, noting that President Joe Biden had been kept “fully informed” about the situation and would continue to take the matter “very seriously”.
Kirby said the Biden administration had begun “direct diplomatic engagement with Russia”, but did not provide specifics about contacts with the Kremlin.
Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, briefed senior leaders in the House of Representatives on Thursday afternoon and would address members of the US Senate when they returned from a recess later this month, Kirby added.
The White House’s disclosures of the intelligence coup were forced into the public sphere by Mike Turner, the Republican chair of the House intelligence committee. Turner on Wednesday publicly called on the White House to declassify information about a “serious national threat” that he did not detail, sending Washington into a frenzy.
Kirby criticised Turner’s move on Thursday and noted that the US intelligence agencies had “serious concerns about a broad declassification of this intelligence”. In general, the US intelligence community is reluctant to disclose sensitive discoveries out of fear it would allow adversaries to uncover American sources and methods of intelligence-gathering.
“We were eventually going to get to a point where we were going to be able to share it with the American people, and we still will, as appropriate,” Kirby said.
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