We have a crisis. It was leaked by a conservative Congressman that the United States is under threat from Russia—not today and not immediately, but a threat nonetheless. The Russians, he leaked, and we later confirmed, are working on a nuclear satellite killer and are developing the means of knocking out our satellites. This would, of course, stop us from tracking their compliance with other treaties or monitoring their troop movements, as well as cutting off our ability to communicate around the world.

Were all of these losses not bad enough, we couldn’t fly our planes without the FAA, and worse still, there’d be no satellite TV, Google, or Siri, and even Waze couldn’t get us to the supermarket and back home.

Ever since Sputnik in 1957 and Telstar in 1962, we’ve sensed the apocalypse of no satellite communications. This newest threat is, in truth, not news. Nor is there much actual secrecy.

I’m fully supportive of the vital need to arm the Ukrainians. Russia is a threat to Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the United States. However, I get pretty upset when my side resorts to tactics that I condemn the other side for employing. This leak, this manufactured semi-crisis, is in service of turning our disgraceful Congress towards aiding Ukraine.

The first reference I found to the race to build satellite killers was on November 10, 1960, and the second was in 1964. I was looking at the subject when I was working and doing research at the United Nations Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, where I was a student in 1965. I kept up with the subject while doing my MA in Sino-Soviet Nuclear Strategy. It was this research that drove me to the Peace Corps and later to the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. But that’s seemingly another subject connected only by the Apocalypse!

Way back in 1960, Viktor Chelomey, the leading Soviet authority on missile technology, proposed a satellite-killing program called Istrebitel Sputnikov. The Soviet debate was about whether to kill foreign satellites from ground-fired missiles, air-launched missiles, or other satellites. There was further debate concerning whether to make the satellites explode or simply run into them in order to break them up.

We shot down our own satellites for practice in 1985 from a jet-launched rocket and, using a different system, Mini Homing Device, in 2007. We, the Russians and the Chinese are always working on systems to cripple the military abilities, communications, and infrastructure of our various opponents. We have, since the first Sputnik on October 4, 1957, been concerned about carrying our conflicts, wars and weapons into outer space. We have treaties restricting such deployments. In 1982, we signed a treaty banning the weaponization of space. But still, as we must, we prepare, and in preparing, there is an implied threat.

In the depths of the Cold War, all feared that if one side were able to cripple the early warning systems of the other, it would allow for a secret (for about 20 minutes!) launch of nuclear missiles. This induced the reasonable fear that if only one side could blind the other by knocking out their early warning satellites, then the other side had to launch first.

We concluded that we had to share technology. To have an imbalance, whether in aggressive or defensive weapons, could provoke preemption. The chess game of thinking 5 moves ahead completed my reasons for leaving strategic weapons theory and turning to the study of what I thought would be the kinder and gentler world of religion. I was quickly disabused of my naiveté.

Last week, in order to fuel the fires of panic and concern, we added the buzzword of “nuclear.” It is not clear if this implies that Russia is going to park a low-orbiting nuclear weapon above the earth like a Sword of Damocles or merely have a nuclear-powered satellite. That wouldn’t be much of a real threat—except upon reentry. The need for a geosynchronous satellite/bomb hovering over Kansas is unclear, given the thousands of nukes in silos, on aircraft carriers, and on submarines that we already have aimed at each other.

This leaked story by well-meaning conservatives and from Biden is directed at Congress to get it to focus on Russia. Yes, there is plenty that threatens us, and nuclear weapons in space, on the ground, and under the sea are not good for any living creatures. But a new crisis? Not at all. It’s the politics of panic. Yes, be afraid of nuclear war, but this story has little, if anything, to do with the real threats hanging over us.