michael: russell boyce believes it's essential for australia's security to be self-reliant in space. reign control of satellites. it's important, well, from national security reasons, we need to be in control of the technologies that provide us the information that we need to keep australia secure, but in a commercial sense as well. michael: in july, the us space command announced that it had evidence russia had tested a space-based anti-satellite weapon. malcolm: it was clearly a weapons test. it was an anti-satellite weapon designed to hit and destroy a target satellite, one of ours. it wasn't tested against one of ours, but nevertheless, the message was sent that russia is developing that capability. china has similar capabilities. and i think that we have to recognize that in a future war, either prior to a conflict or during a conflict, our satellites will be attacked. [cheering] michael: the potential for war in space is a real possibility. both china and russia have arms of their military dedicated to space. michael: last year, donald trump established the newest branch of the