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Sen. Ben Sasse warns of cyber war with China

GOP Sen. Ben Sasse warned of a doomsday scenario in which China wipes out US satellites to cripple the military’s GPS and communications systems in a cyber war that takes place in outer space.

“​​China has envisioned a lot of game theory that has them sort of blowing up everything in the near-space early in a conflict, which would take away lots of things like GPS​,” the Nebraska lawmaker told ​John Catsimatidis ​on his AM ​970 ​radio show in an interview that aired Sunday. “It would be absolutely disastrous​.”​​

S​asse, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the newly created Cyber Commission, said the country isn’t doing “nearly enough” to protect Americans from “emerging cyber threats from Russia, from North Korea, from Iran, but especially from China.”​

​”I’ve been pushing Washington to get serious about these threats and to draft a badly needed cyber playbook. Because we don’t have either offensive or defensive doctrine​,” he said. ​

​Sasse said China and Russia have been thinking about asymmetric warfare while the US hasn’t done enough to plan for battling in such a high-tech realm.

​”W​hile we still lead China and Russia, our qualitative military edge is shrinking. And the amount of money China is investing in particular should keep all American policymakers up at night​,” he said. ​