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“Imagine a satellite that needs help or is out of gas, literally out of gas. So I'm gonna put up a space tow truck and go get it and put new gas into it or add a solar panel—that all sounds great,” says Robert Cardillo, former head of National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

“Until you realize, well, wait a minute: If we can do that to a friendly satellite, couldn’t you use a tow truck against the satellite that you didn't like and tow it away?  This sounds a little star wars-y, but I have to tell you, I think it's coming, these capabilities are coming to the fore.”

Cardillo, who ran the NGA from 2014 to 2019, told  SpyTalk podcast co-host Jeanne Meserve this week that keeping peace in space is a very fragile proposition.  

“There's some generalities at the U.N level about, you know, good space behavior ... and being good space citizens,” he told Meserve. “And that we have agreed that no one owns anythingin space, that it's all of ours. But beyond that, it's been very difficult to get an…