The arms race was always happening. Russia put a weapon on a space asset decades ago, basically for shits and giggles, but was recently practicing a space asset

The arms race was always happening. Russia put a weapon on a space asset decades ago, basically for shits and giggles, but was recently practicing a space asset maneuvering and deploying a smaller asset, and there's very little justification for such a system other than "Attack another satellite", especially since no public cover has been offered. Both Russia and China have demonstrated anti-satellite weapons. Ages ago. Space being not militarized was always a fiction. Space was militarized first and foremost, and everything NASA ever did was to encourage and help that goal. This has only gotten dramatically less symbolic and more actually meaningful since recent massive advances in space sensor platforms and scale. This is only a change in public messaging unfortunately. This was always the inevitable outcome, because there's no "Bigger fish" to make independent nations follow any rule other than the rule of the jungle, and space is the highest ground.