A bipartisan group of lawmakers recently introduced the Space Infrastructure Act, which pursues a recommendation made by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0 to designate space as the 17th U.S. critical infrastructure sector. While it’s encouraging to see Congress considering this issue seriously, designating space as a critical infrastructure sector puts form over substance and would not actually address the risk posed by adversaries like China and Russia or from natural phenomena such as space weather.

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Brian Berger is editor in chief of SpaceNews.com and the SpaceNews magazine. He joined SpaceNews.com in 1998, spending his first decade with the publication covering NASA. He was named senior staff writer in 2004, a position he held until being named...