It is a reflex most Canadians perform daily without a second thought: tapping a smartphone screen to summon a ride, use GPS to navigate, or track a meal delivery. But for Brigadier-General Christopher Horner, that simple convenience represents a critical vulnerability.
Now imagine a sudden, silent flash high above the Earth’s atmosphere. Within seconds, the mapping app on your phone freezes. Global financial transactions halt. First responders lose their navigation feeds, and military outpost comms go dark.
This is the reality of an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) unleashed by a nuclear detonation in space—a scenario that Brig. Gen. Christopher Horner, Commander of 3 Canadian Space Division, calls “cataclysmic.” Speaking recently on the CBC podcast The House, Canada’s top space commander sounded the alarm on how heavily our modern society relies on a fragile orbital infrastructure, and what the military is doing to brace for the ultimate blackout.
While the public often pictures “space wars” as laser battles from science fiction, the real threat is invisible. A nuclear device detonated in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) wouldn’t blow up terrestrial targets; instead, the resulting EMP would send a massive wave of energy frying the delicate circuits of satellites for thousands of kilometres.
Furthermore, the blast would trap radiation in the Earth’s magnetic field, creating a radioactive minefield that would degrade surviving satellites over time. Acknowledging open-source reporting from 2024 about Russia considering putting a nuclear weapon in space, Horner outlined the terrifying scope of the threat. “Everything that we have come to rely on from a communications platform level or from a GPS level… would be wiped out,” Horner warned.
Even without a nuclear detonation, Horner confirms that space is already an active battleground. He notes that the heavy electronic warfare utilized by Russia in Ukraine isn’t staying on the ground. “There’s so much saturation of jamming… that it’s extending hundreds of kilometers into space,” Horner explained. Commercial satellite constellations like Starlink and Viasat have already been targeted by deliberate interference. If conventional jamming is already bleeding into the LEO, the escalation to a nuclear EMP represents a threshold that no one wants to contemplate, but must.
Faced with a weapon that could indiscriminately wipe out the space economy, Canada’s strategy relies heavily on global alliances and self-reliance. Horner makes it clear that Canada is not going to develop a counter-weapon to shoot down Russian nuclear satellites, but will instead rely on diplomatic pressure.
But diplomacy is only half the battle. To weather an increasingly hostile space domain, the Canadian government recently allocated roughly $183 million to develop sovereign space launch capabilities. For Horner, true resilience means having the autonomy to launch Canadian-made satellites on our own terms, rather than waiting in line for American commercial rockets if the grid ever goes down.
“I want Canadians to live in a world where I can push buttons on my phone and I know where I’m going or I know where my kids are. My kids might not want that. But it’s a part of our society now that we have to, from a military perspective and a national security and sovereignty perspective, look at the capabilities we require to harden the infrastructure we rely on and to be resilient in the face of threats.”
When asked by The House what Canada could do in the face of such a threat, Horner was clear:
“Stick towards… where we are good as a middle power in working with others to ensure the responsible use of space continues to be a thing,” he said. “The fundamental principles of the rules-based international order… would be compromised if a country put a nuclear weapon in space. And so we have to think about that. Canada is not going to develop a weapon system that does that.”