"Late capitalism remains parasitic, converting matter and time into abstract value by embedding technics everywhere. The twenty-first century scales this logic to a planetary project. Infrastructure now means orbital constellations, lunar logistics, asteroid prototypes. The Digital Assemblage is no longer confined to Earth. It orients toward a Solar Economy.
The Western bloc treats this expansion as innovation doctrine. Private aerospace firms, swollen with public subsidy yet operating as monopolists, build rockets and constellations that double as nodes for communication, surveillance, logistics, and finance. Control of orbital architectures secures timing, sensing, and global flows. The United States frames this as economic opportunity and strategic necessity, pulling space into industrial and military doctrine alike.
China pursues the same horizon with different tactics. Lunar base blueprints, Mars timelines, dense satellite programs aim at resource security and algorithmic sovereignty. As Brandon Weichert and Brian Harvey note, Beijing casts orbital and lunar infrastructure as direct extensions of terrestrial development, feeding an authoritarian assemblage with new vantage and resources. The Belt and Road Initiative mutates into its extraterrestrial twin, a Galaxy Empire in John Keane and Baogang He’s phrase, where satellites, ground stations, and lunar depots cohere into a planetary–solar nervous system.
Russia, diminished in capital, inserts itself by hybrid means: military leverage over orbital assets, selective partnerships with China, exploitation of Western vulnerability. Its relative strength lies in weaponizing fragility, from jamming to cyber operations that unsettle nascent space governance.
Together these blocs sketch the outline of a Solar Economy. The agendas are extractive, not utopian. Rare-earth and helium-3 schemes, monopolization of orbital lanes..."
https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2025/09/23/the-solar-economy-infrastructure-and-capitalist-agenda/
