Comment by bouncycastle 3 days ago
Recently the USA blew out some some boats in international waters and came back to finish off the survivors, despite thin evidence and no due process, while maintaining that it was legal. If those data centers on ships ever become declared as a 'threat to national security' then they might get the same treatment.
Antisatellite weapons are expensive and rare, and also woefully inadequate for dealing with megaconstellations.
If there's one large orbital datacenter, then sure, ASAT is a threat to it. But if it's a dispersed swarm like the Starlink system?
Good luck making a dent in that. You'd run out of ASAT long before Musk runs out of Starlink.
Swarms of satellites need to maneuver, which includes maneuvering directly toward the atmosphere.
It would take zero anti-satellite weapons to take down Starlink. Just point a good old fashioned gun at the SpaceX engineer who can issue maneuvering commands to the satellites.
If those ships chose to not fly a flag, they'd even have justification to do so. And if they did choose to fly a flag, then that country would have the responsibility to police them, and is the US complained to that country, that country might just withdraw protection anyway. Data center ships just want to loiter where convenient, they're not cigarette boats flying along at 100mph... no way to evade a navy that wants to blow them out of the water.
I think GP's point is that an advanced nation-state could just as easily shoot down an orbiting data center as an oceanic data center and that "international space" offers an equally flimsy defense as "international waters" but a much larger price.