The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies recently upended the space policy community with a stark warning: the U.S. Space Force must prepare for an “in-person” lunar conflict with China. The report released in May, authored by retired U.S. Space Force Col. Kyle Pumroy, advocates for active-duty Title 10 military personnel to establish a permanent presence on the Moon to counter Beijing’s aggressive lunar expansion and secure vital resources like water ice.
Yet, as Washington and Beijing sharpen their focus on state-on-state deterrence, their rigid planning ignores a terrifying reality. In focusing entirely on each other, they leave their flank exposed to irregular threats, such as those posed by transnational criminal cartels (TCCs). TCCs and criminal entities like them comprise a different kind of adversary.
It’s tempting to dismiss such threats based on the assumption that space is too complex and expensive for these groups. This is an error in judgement driven by a lack of imagination and poor understanding of the nature of global crime and the scale of criminal earnings at stake.
Driven by the trillion-dollar potential of lunar Helium-3, rare earth elements, and volatile water resources, a multi-billion-dollar syndication of Earth’s most sophisticated criminal enterprises could establish a permanent, disruptive “outlaw presence” on the Moon. Here is the one operational blueprint of how they could achieve it, systematically impairing the Space Force, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and the commercial ambitions of American space corporations.
The Proxy Bridge: Establishing the Initial Outpost
A criminal cartel will never openly construct a launchpad under its own flag. Instead, TCCs will weaponize the hyper-commercialization of Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) and cislunar space.
Using vast reserves of laundered capital, a consortium of cartels could acquire failing or grey-market commercial space firms registered in non-signatory nations of the Artemis Accords — such as certain states in the Global South seeking fast capital. Operating under these “flags of convenience,” the cartels would legally buy payload capacity on heavy-lift commercial rockets from unwitting or indifferent private launch providers.
Their initial permanent presence wouldn’t look like a military base; it would be a modular, automated “robotic mining outpost” or a civil research module dropped into a minor, overlooked crater near the lunar south pole. By masking their funding through layers of front companies and sovereign wealth funds, the cartels could place boots on the ground under the guise of contracted commercial engineers and technicians.
Thwarting U.S. and Chinese State Operations
Once a physical footprint is established, a cartel’s primary objective is to keep state actors bogged down in bureaucratic, technical, and tactical paralysis.
Under Section 11 of the Artemis Accords, signatories agree to establish “safety zones” to prevent harmful interference. Cartel front companies could deliberately land their assets directly adjacent to prime, water-ice-rich craters claimed by NASA or commercial American companies like Intuitive Machines or Axiom Space.
If the Space Force attempts to interfere, the cartel’s proxy state will launch a massive legal and diplomatic offensive at the United Nations, accusing the U.S. of violating space law and militarizing the Moon. If China’s PLA takes a more aggressive, kinetic approach, the cartel can leak sensitive Chinese military telemetry to Western media, sparking international crises that tie Beijing’s hands.
If either superpower attempts to physically evict the cartel from the lunar surface, the syndicate can use ejecta from rocket plumes or explosives to damage facilities. Ejecta can travel hundreds of kilometers around the Moon; in fact, they can even achieve escape velocity.
Disabling American Commercial Space Enterprises
American commercial companies are highly vulnerable because they operate on thin margins and answer to shareholders. TCCs would systematically dismantle their economic viability.
While American companies spend billions adhering to NASA standards, EPA regulations on Earth, and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launch licensing, cartel-backed operations can operate completely outside the law. Using automated, low-standard mining rigs, the cartel can harvest lunar volatiles and sell them directly on the black market to rogue states or desperate commercial actors at a fraction of the price. By driving down the market value of lunar water and fuel, they would bankrupt legitimate American space startups before they can turn a profit.
On the lunar surface, communication is life. Cartel outposts equipped with high-powered, military-grade electronic warfare suites — purchased from corrupt defense officials on Earth — could deploy localized, directional radio-frequency jamming.
Without breaking the Outer Space Treaty in a way that proves state culpability, the cartel can quietly blind the automated rovers and landers of American companies, causing them to crash into crater walls or drift off course. When a commercial mission fails, insurance premiums skyrocket, driving private investors out of the space economy entirely.
The Earth-Side Leverage: Supply Chain Sabotage
The cartels understand that a permanent presence on the Moon requires a constant tether to Earth. Therefore, their most devastating attacks against the Space Force and commercial space companies will occur terrestrially.
Through intimidation, cyber extortion, and massive bribery, TCCs can infiltrate the third- and fourth-tier subcontractors providing specialized parts to the aerospace industry. A cartel could force a sub-component manufacturer to introduce a microscopic flaw into a batch of valves destined for the Space Force’s next-gen lunar transport. The resulting launchpad explosion would delay state operations by 18 months — giving the cartel an unhindered window to expand its lunar mining monopoly.
Furthermore, by funding terrestrial gang wars or manipulating the supply chains of critical rare earth elements in South America and Africa, cartels can force Congress to redirect Title 10 space funding toward immediate homeland security crises, ensuring the Space Force remains underfunded and earthbound.
The New Security Paradigm
The Mitchell Institute’s call for a national defense mindset in human spaceflight is a vital first step, but it looks at the Moon through a 20th-century geopolitical lens. The threat to the future lunar economy is not merely a red flag flying over the Shackleton Crater.
If the Space Force prepares only to fight the PLA, it will find itself entirely outmaneuvered by an agile, stateless adversary that doesn’t play by the rules of war. The future of lunar security requires an integration of military deterrence with aggressive, international counter-transnational organized crime strategies. If Washington fails to realize this, the first permanent, profitable empire on the Moon will not be American or Chinese — it would be criminal.
Marc Feldman and Hugh Taylor are co-authors of the book Space Piracy: Preparing for a Criminal Crisis and Founders of the Center for the Study of Space Crime, Piracy, and Governance.
