The Race for Strategic Advantage in Space: A Hybrid Competition
By Dr. Maurizio Geri and Tural Akhundov
Introduction
The contemporary space race is primarily about securing strategic, military, technological, and economic advantages over rivals, more than scientific discovery or symbolic status. Although space has often been portrayed as a domain of international cooperation – embodied most visibly by the International Space Station – competition has always remained central to humanity’s expansion into orbit. The announcement by the United States on July 29, 1955, of its intention to launch artificial satellites marked the formal beginning of a geopolitical contest whose implications now extend far beyond exploration itself, reflecting the emergence of space as the next decisive arena of geopolitical competition and hybrid warfare, where economic strength, military capability, technological supremacy, and strategic resilience are increasingly intertwined.
Today, that competition has evolved into a multidimensional struggle over industrial dominance, military positioning, communications sovereignty, data infrastructure, lunar resource access, and control of the next generation of orbital markets. Unlike the Cold War era, when space competition largely revolved around prestige and military signaling, the current race is fundamentally economic and systemic. States and corporations are no longer competing merely to reach space; they are competing to control the infrastructures upon which future terrestrial and extraterrestrial power, influence, and strategic advantage will depend.
The decisive advantage in the emerging space order will belong not simply to the actors with the most advanced launch capabilities, but to those capable of building comprehensive innovation ecosystems. Increasingly described in recent scholarship as “ecosystemic space power,” this model integrates launch systems, advanced manufacturing, finance, digital analytics, artificial intelligence, defense contracting, legal influence, standards-setting, green energy development, and dual-use technologies into a single strategic framework, designed to secure long-term economic, military, and geopolitical advantage in space and on Earth. In this sense, space power is becoming inseparable from broader national industrial and technological capacity.
At the same time, the new space race is generating significant strategic risks. Orbital congestion, debris accumulation, uncertain property rights, and the accelerating militarization of space threaten to destabilize the domain itself. Dependence on a limited number of private launch providers may also create strategic vulnerabilities for states whose national access to orbit relies excessively on a single commercial actor. Consequently, long-term competitive advantage will depend not only on dominance, but also on resilience, redundancy, and diversification across both public and private sectors.
Historically, military power evolved through successive domains from land to sea to air, with each new “high ground” reshaping the character of warfare and geopolitical influence. Space increasingly represents the next stage in that progression. States capable of controlling orbital infrastructure may gain decisive leverage not only in space itself, but also across terrestrial military, economic, and information systems. Russia, for example, has continued to refine electronic warfare capabilities designed to disrupt adversary satellite operations and degrade communications networks on the ground. Furthermore, recent literature increasingly treats space as a strategic economic domain rather than scientific or military only frontier and as the new battlefield of hybrid warfare. This process has already begun, as demonstrated by Russia’s interception and disruption of European satellites and China’s expanding use of space technologies to enhance its intelligence-gathering capabilities.
That said, conflict in orbit often unfolds within the “gray zone,” where competition is exercised less through direct force and more through precision, infrastructure control, cyber capabilities, electronic warfare, and strategic positioning. The actors that dominate this invisible battlespace may ultimately shape the future architecture of the global economy. The geopolitical importance of space is also expanding because of its growing relationship to future energy, technological, and military transitions on Earth. By 2050, both China and Europe aim to complete major renewable energy transitions, while the United States and China compete for leadership in artificial intelligence and advanced technologies at the same time. In the second half of the century, however, space will likely become the primary arena for resource extraction, energy generation, and technological superiority. The global space economy, already estimated at approximately $660 billion in 2024 and projected to exceed $1.5 trillion by 2035, is becoming one of the fastest-growing strategic sectors in the world. In this context, the central question of the new space race is no longer who can return to space, but who will control the platforms, infrastructure, and ecosystems that future global power will depend upon.
Furthermore, as we saw with the recent Iran war that blocked the oil and gas flow, weaponizing the extraction of critical raw materials and development of technologies related to the space development (for example restricting access or blocking the flow in future ‘chokepoints’) could become a new form of hybrid warfare among great powers.
The New Competitors: States + Private Firms + Hybrid Ecosystems
Unlike the US – USSR bipolar race, today’s competition has three interacting layers:
A – State Powers
Here the main geopolitical competitors are the U.S., Russia, China, the EU, and emerging states like Japan, and India. These powers are investing in sovereign launch capabilities, cislunar (Earth’s and Moon’s orbits) logistics, defense satellites, anti-satellite resilience, and lunar governance influence. China for instance, accelerated its launches to more than 80 in 2025, as well as expanded reusable rocket testing, and advanced dual-use mega-constellation programs, signaling that launch cadence itself has become a strategic metric.
B – Private Corporate Champions
Private companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Amazon Kuiper, and Planet Labs, today possess capabilities once reserved only for states. This is critical because competitive advantage for states is increasingly being generated through private industrial ecosystems backed by public procurement. A central finding in recent political economy literature on U.S. space governance indicates that modern governments no longer build everything themselves; they orchestrate ecosystems in which private corporations develop and operate critical technologies, while states seek to direct, regulate, and strategically leverage those capabilities to advance national interests.
C – Hybrid National-Security Commercialization
Defense agencies increasingly view commercial firms as force multipliers. Military advantage now depends on commercial satellite fleets, while intelligence superiority relies heavily on commercial Earth imagery. Recent wars and the active usage of Starlink terminals of SpaceX clearly shows how crucial the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) broadband can be for maintaining communications on the battlefield. This leads us to a simple doctrine:
“Commercial space = strategic redundancy + rapid innovation + lower cost deployment.”
No surprise the global governmental spending on space hit record heights in 2024–2025 largely due to defense integration. In addition to that, cost-efficiency is always a priority; thus, whoever owns the cheapest, fastest, most reliable launch system controls the toll gate to all downstream orbital industries.
Core Dimensions of Competitive Advantage in Space
Space domination starts on the ground. It starts with reusable launching capacity, for which recent studies consistently identify SpaceX as the benchmark because it combines all five critical components: vertical integration, rapid iteration, risk tolerance, launch frequency and internal demand via Starlink, an important part of its ecosystem. Together, this creates barriers that competitors struggle to break.
Perhaps even more important than launch cost advantage is orbital infrastructure ownership. Satellite broadband constellations, remote sensing grids, navigation systems, debris monitoring networks, and orbital servicing nodes all matter because such infrastructure produces recurring rents and it creates platform dependency. Countries without sovereign or allied orbital networks become dependent on foreign providers for numerous capabilities, be it battlefield communications, weather data, agricultural analytics or secure timing systems.
Another dimension of strategic competition in space is the Moon. Lunar and cislunar positioning matters because they serve as a space gate to future economic, technological, military, and geopolitical dominance. The Moon is no longer a symbolic destination as it was during the first stage of the space race between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Its south pole is strategically attractive since it holds water ice, it receives near-continuous solar illumination, and it could serve as a staging base for future deeper missions, such as to Mars. As such, the U.S.-led Artemis program and China-led lunar initiatives are racing to establish governance precedents there. This race introduces a classic first-mover logic – whoever establishes transport routes, extraction norms, and communication infrastructure first will shape the institutional rules for everyone else. Whoever will be able to mine and refine critical minerals in space, get the solar energy in quickly and efficiently, and in the process develop dual-use emerging technologies, like AI, Quantum, or autonomous systems, that can be applied both in space and on Earth, will achieve a comparative advantage that is difficult for rivals to match.
Artificial intelligence and data dominance have become central dimensions of strategic competition in space, as modern space capabilities increasingly depend on the ability to collect, process, control, and exploit planetary-scale data streams. Climate monitoring, logistics surveillance, military ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance), and telecom traffic is all a part of these expanding space-based data and intelligence systems. Therefore, advantage is no longer only in hardware but in proprietary AI-enhanced geospatial analytics.
Theaters of war in Ukraine and the Middle East demonstrate that technology becomes outdated on a monthly basis, followed by new, more sophisticated pieces. This underlines the growing importance of defense and strategic resilience in space, meaning the ability of states and corporations to protect, sustain, adapt, and rapidly regenerate critical space-based infrastructure and technological capabilities during periods of conflict, disruption, or strategic competition. Whether looking at missile warning systems, GPS denial mitigation, drone warfare coordination, or encrypted communications, space increasingly underpins the critical infrastructure upon which modern military and strategic operations depend. As such, it is crucial to pursue distributed commercial constellations because they are harder to disable than a few exquisite government satellites. Competitive advantage here means survivability through multiplicity.
Conclusion
The contemporary space race represents far more than a scientific or technological contest or a renewed era of exploration. It marks the emergence of space as the next decisive domain of geopolitical competition, where economic power, military advantage, technological leadership, and strategic resilience increasingly converge.
As this paper has argued, success in the emerging space economy will not depend solely on possessing the most advanced rockets or the greatest number of satellites. The decisive advantage will belong to those actors capable of building integrated “ecosystemic space power,” combining launch capabilities, AI-driven analytics, communications systems, advanced manufacturing, energy innovation, dual-use technologies, legal influence, and resilient public-private industrial ecosystems into a unified strategic architecture. In this environment, space dominance increasingly begins on Earth, in industrial policy, innovation ecosystems, financial capacity, and strategic coordination between governments and private firms.
At the same time, the militarization and commercialization of orbit are transforming space into a critical arena of hybrid warfare. Modern conflicts already demonstrate how satellite communications, commercial imagery, electronic warfare, cyber operations, and resilient orbital networks can shape battlefield outcomes and national security calculations. The growing reliance on space-based infrastructure also creates new vulnerabilities.
The strategic importance of space will intensify further as the global economy undergoes simultaneous energy and technological transformations. Access to extraterrestrial resources, lunar infrastructure, space-based energy systems, and AI-enhanced data dominance may eventually determine comparative advantages not only in orbit but also across terrestrial economic and military systems, as well as new possibilities for hybrid warfare tactics and strategies. In this sense, future geopolitical competition may increasingly revolve around who controls the critical supply chains, communications platforms, and strategic chokepoints emerging beyond Earth itself. Ultimately, the struggle for influence in space is not only about the future of orbit; it is about the future distribution of power on Earth.
(Disclaimer: Dr. Maurizio Geri’s research received funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101105349. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the EU or the Research Executive Agency. Neither the EU nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.)
Dr. Maurizio Geri – Former NATO analyst, an Italian Navy Lieutenant POLAD reservist and EU Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow specializing in EU-NATO tech cooperation and Russian-Chinese hybrid warfare in the energy-resources-technology security nexus.
Tural Akhundov – Research fellow at CRESCENT Research Center, Master of Political Science from European Humanities University (Vilnius, Lithuania) and Irregular Warfare Center’s courses 101, 102, 105, and 110 graduate.
