I had to read this a few times to make sure I understood properly, but the Trump admin wants to spend a metric fuckton of money on a group of IoT systems that will keep space missiles pointed at basically every country on earth (including the US). Aside being the stuff of cartoon villains, once this is begun in earnest why on earth wouldn’t every other nation do the same? And what’s stop stop hackers from penetrating any one of the “system of systems” used to make this thing work and launch a missile or two?
I agree 100%, I’m not arguing it’s a good idea, these are just other arguments than “in order for it to be useful it needs to be able to counter Russia and/or China, otherwise it would be strategically useless and economically infeasible”.
In the status quo, I still don’t think that’s true; India and Pakistan are both nuclear-equipped, but with moderate-to-low warhead counts that could potentially reach the US. Western European countries have nukes (France and UK), though they both tend to favor SLBMs over land-based ones. If you’re planning to make any of them enemies, it could absolutely be useful.
That has not been true so far. There are more countries with nukes than ones with anti-satellite missile systems. Only the US, Russia, China, India, and the UK have demonstrated anti-satellite capabilities.