Space War = Space Money? Are commercial actors the new frontier for war

The increasing involvement of commercial actors in space activities raises questions about the extent to which commercial actors might participate, and become targets, in war in space. This was one of the issues of concern raised during the Preventing Space War Forum, which brought together experts from government, industry, and academia in an open dialogue about the threats posed by war in space. This has also recently been highlighted in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Elon Musk refusing to activate the Starlink satellite network in Crimea on the basis that this would have made Starlink complicit ‘in a “major” act of war’.