WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden said to journalists that there were no signs of the Right to Use emerging anti-satellite weapons to date. While Washington was pretty surprised by the information this week, this is not the case so far.
US Intelligence Reveals Russia’s Anti-Satellite Capability
The White House disclosed on Thursday that US Intelligence has received information about the fact that Russia has developed this capability, though this type of weapon is currently not able to be used. On Friday, Biden commented that “there’s no evidence that they have made a decision to go forward with doing anything in space,” as he reiterated his remarks about the absence of imminent danger of any harm to human beings, as reported by The Associated Press.
“There is no nuclear threat to the people of America or anywhere else in the world with what Russia’s doing at the moment,” Biden told reporters at the White House during remarks on the reported death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Hopes for Diplomacy as Biden Addresses the Issue
According to the president’s confirmation, Russia possesses capabilities that are “related to satellites and space and damaging those satellites potentially,” These capabilities could have “theoretically do something that was damaging.”
However, Biden noted that Russia hasn’t yet advanced with its intentions and that “My hope is, it will not.”
Several days prior, the revelation of that capability was made public when House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner, R-Ohio, who is a Republican, issued a secretive warning to Biden, urging him to the declassification of documents that he said posed a grave threat to national security, as reported by The Associated Press.
That declassification procedure had already begun before the revelation by Turner, the white house affirms.
Blinken Discusses Concerns with Foreign Ministers in Munich
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Munich for the security conference in Germany, has raised the topic with the Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, “emphasized that the pursuit of this capability should be a matter of concern,” according to a US official traveling with Blinken.
The unnamed spokesperson agreed to talk in the background and hinted that this is among the issues that Blinken is likely to be addressing during his visits to the security forum, as reported by The Associated Press.