Biden is ‘sleepwalking’ into dangerous nuclear arms race in SPACE…here’s how the president can avoid it according to Intel Chair Mike Turner

The US is ‘sleepwalking’ towards the next ‘Cuban missile crisis’, top Republican Mike Turner warned as he renewed calls for the Biden administration to release Russia’s anti-satellite capabilities.

Turner set off alarms across the country months ago when he issued an ominous and seemingly unexpected statement calling on Biden to release information related to a “serious threat to national security” — but he would not go into details.

It was later reported that it was linked to Moscow’s plan to deploy a nuclear weapon in space to target and destroy satellites on which the world depends.

“I believe the Biden administration is sleepwalking itself into an irreversible catastrophic situation with Russia,” Turner told DailyMail.com after a conversation in which he revived the dire warning at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“This is the Cuban missile crisis in space. And President Biden is not taking this accusation the way President Kennedy did, influencing the outcome and changing history for the better.”

Turner warned that the world could remain dark for up to a year. Cell phone towers, the Internet, GPS, banking systems, electrical grids, first responders and military operations can all be affected.

“This threat would bring our economic, international security and social systems to a standstill,” Turner warned. “This would be a catastrophic and devastating attack on Western economic and democratic systems. Vladimir Putin knows this: checkmate.”

He called the day when Putin would use his anti-satellite capabilities “day zero,” after which “humanity would be unable to repopulate low Earth orbit and space exploration would be deadly for humans.”

The US currently has no defenses against such a threat, and if satellite-based communications were destroyed, getting them back online would require maneuvering the remaining satellites into place and launching new ones with rockets – both taking days or weeks.

Turner emphasized that public pressure would lead to more international sanctions that could force Russia to refrain from placing a nuclear weapon in space.

The conversation came as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un signed a mutual defense pact between the two nuclear-armed superpowers this week.

“Putin’s plans and weapons programs must be fully disclosed by the administration and understood by the world,” Turner said on the call, accusing Biden of being “incredibly reluctant to take any action that would appear escalatory.” ‘

“This shouldn’t be in orbit, period. and the administration doesn’t even have it on their to-do list.”

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said it was “plainly wrong” to say the Biden administration was not taking the threat seriously.

“We have absolutely taken it very seriously, we have tackled this particular problem from every possible angle, including through intensive diplomacy with countries around the world,” Kirby said.

“We said at the time in February: when this was announced, publishing this highly sensitive intelligence was extremely irresponsible,” he continued. “Nevertheless, I can say that we will continue our efforts to prevent Russia from putting a nuclear weapon into orbit.”

The warning signs of such an attack are already there. In 2021, Russia demonstrated its ability to shoot down satellites with missiles launched from Earth, destroying one of its own decommissioned satellites.

And in 2020, Russia fired a projectile into space from a satellite — although Russian officials insisted the projectile was not a weapon.

The move to place a nuclear device in space would also violate the Outer Space Treaty, a 1967 agreement to which the then-Soviet Union was a party. One provision of the treaty is a ban on the circling of nuclear weapons.

In recent years, Russia may have violated another part of this treaty when it shot down its own 1980s Cosmos 1408 satellite in 2021.

And earlier this year, Moscow rejected Washington’s attempts to negotiate a New START agreement before the current one expires in 2026.

Turner, meanwhile, emphasized that the US has not sufficiently prioritized missile defense capabilities over the past 15 years.

“I do believe that the American public will think that we have a missile defense system that is operational and would defend us against China and Russia,” he said. Over the past few administrations, “you have pursued a policy of anti-missile defense.”

“This view that it is escalatory, that it destabilizes your opponent, would think that we need more nuclear weapons because you have missile defense, that it would work and that it was too expensive. But what we’ve seen is that it’s actually escalating.”