January 29, 2004: Atomic Energy Commission Manager Says There Will Be Space Arms Race

In Stockholm, during the first meeting of a new Swedish-funded international commission on weapons of mass destruction, Therese Delpech, the director for strategic affairs at the Atomic Energy Commission in Paris, tells the Agence-France Presse that the 21st century will see an arms race in space and the further development of biological weapons. “Up until now, space has been militarized in the sense that military operations have made a lot of use of satellites… either for communications, for navigation, for eavesdropping or for surveillance,” she says. “What is completely new is… the weaponization of space, which is much more serious, and concerns the possibility in the (near) future of having weapons in space, or developing weapons that can destroy satellites in space. This would add another dimension to warfare. I truly believe that the 20th century was the age of physics, while the 21st century will be the age of information technology and life sciences. And that holds the potential for horrifying military applications. There are much greater possibilities of dissimulating biological activities than nuclear activities. That’s a real problem.… The military applications are absolutely devastating.” [Agence France-Presse, 1/29/2004]