Orbital data centers become new frontier in global AI race

The race to build artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in space could change the global tech race at a foundational level as the computational demands of AI models continue to expand, turning the already heated competition into a geopolitical power struggle over digital sovereignty, experts say.

The US-China rivalry in the AI scene gained a whole new frontier with the emergence of space-based computing infrastructure, which sparked debate over which country will control what will ultimately become the foundation of the global internet.

Attorney Joao Lupi, a space law specialist, told Anadolu that the commercial race had already kicked off, with American tech giants like SpaceX, Google and Nvidia advancing their off-planet capabilities, while Beijing designated space-based data centers as one of the priorities in its 2026-2030 development plan, having approved a 2,800-satellite “Three-Body Computing Constellation,” 12 of which are already in orbit.

“More than a commercial race, the real contest is on the control dimension: who will own the next layer of global digital infrastructure — whoever operates the dominant orbital compute infrastructure could selectively provide or withhold processing services,” he said.

Lupi stated that modern satellites already make up the backbone of “communications, intelligence, and power generation command-and-control,” while commercial space data centers are expected to be “eventually caught up in strategic calculations and geopolitical tensions” on our planet, and data centers will become “a node of the data economy” in orbit.

He noted that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty requires the peaceful use of orbit and bans weapons of mass destruction, warning that there are currently no binding global agreements prohibiting the use of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons and that the US, Russia, China and India conducted over 20 ASAT tests over the past 20 years.

“When serving both civilian and military users, which virtually all constellations may, the lines of distinction between civilian objects and military objects, when directing attacks as international humanitarian law requires, turn blurred,” he added.

He warned that moving computing networks into orbit also exacerbates the growing physical hazards of orbital congestion and space debris, alongside the potential for such orbital data centers to be targeted by kinetic ASATs, co-orbital systems, directed energy and other electronic warfare methods.

While the relocation of data centers into space led to a wave of applications for national and international legal rules over jurisdiction, data protection, cybersecurity and AI regulations, significant gaps in the current legal framework remain.

Slava G. Turyshev, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), told Anadolu that a single large piece of debris striking a data satellite could result in the “Kessler effect,” which creates a catastrophic chain reaction of high-speed collisions, damaging multiple satellites.

He stated that private firms and governments are preparing to launch tens of thousands of new spacecraft into low and medium Earth orbits, requiring strong global information-sharing mechanisms to prevent accidental disasters.

Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Anadolu that only a handful of countries have clear legal frameworks to govern spacecraft or mandate liability insurance for orbital operations, revealing an unprecedented legal vacuum in relocating massive data reserves into space.

Swope warned that the international community must decide how privacy and intellectual property (IP) protections will be enforced when data is processed and stored in the largely unregulated and legally ambiguous expanse of space.