For the first time in its history, the United States has openly confirmed that it has placed weapons in space — ending decades of deliberate official silence on a question that had long haunted arms control negotiations and international forums. The admission does not announce a new capability but rather names what had apparently existed in the unspoken margins of military reality. In choosing transparency over strategic ambiguity, American officials have altered not the physical landscape of orbit, but the diplomatic and moral terrain beneath it — raising anew the ancient question of whether