US Pres. Trump officially launches Space Command in counter to Russia, China threats – WaPo

Washington Post (WaPo) runs a news report mentioning the launch of the United States (US) space command on Thursday while saying that the US President Trump on Thursday took a key step toward reorganizing the nation’s armed forces to focus more on the threats posed in space.

However, the White House is still working toward persuading Congress to create a Space Force, which would become the sixth branch of the military and the first new one since the Air Force was created in 1947. Both the House and Senate have provisions for a Space Force in their Pentagon spending bills, but they differ on some key details, such as how the force would be organized, the news mentions.

The news report quotes John Raymond, the commander of Space Command while saying that he cited advances by Russia and China that have rendered space a contested domain where the United States faces threats that it didn’t before, from the jamming of GPS and communications satellites to the possibility those satellites could be shot down. He cited a 2007 test in which China used a missile fired from Earth to destroy one of its own weather satellites.

FX implication

While such news reports have less direct impacts, it gradually increases the geopolitical tension between the mentioned economies, like China in this case, and can spoil the diplomatic relations with them, which in turn increases the importance of safe havens like Gold and Japanese Yen (JPY).