When the British East India Company (EIC) established its corporate strongholds across the Indian subcontinent, it did so under the banner of trade, commercial efficiency, and modern expansion. It operated with its own army, established its own de facto legal systems, and eventually outgrew the regulatory oversight of the British Crown that birthed it.
Today, a parallel corporate phenomenon is unfolding not on land, but in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
As recently argued by economists Alessio Terzi and Stefano Marcuzzi in a Project Syndicate commentary, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is rapidly evolving into a modern-day East India Company. By controlling the infrastructure of the final frontier, private tech monopolies are positioning themselves to escape sovereign state control entirely. For the global Global South—and nations like India with deep historical scars of corporate colonialism—this shift demands urgent attention.
The Anatomy of Space Monopoly
The scale of SpaceX’s dominance is unprecedented. The company does not merely launch satellites; it owns the entire vertical supply chain of modern space access:
- Launch Hegemony: SpaceX rockets now carry the vast majority of the world’s payloads into space, rendering both NASA and European agencies deeply reliant on a single private citizen.
- Infrastructure Capture: The Starlink constellation controls over half of all active satellites orbiting Earth, dictating global satellite internet access.
- Geopolitical Leverage: From Ukraine to Taiwan, we have already witnessed a private individual single-handedly altering geopolitical conflict zones by turning Starlink access on or off based on personal whim.
Terzi and Marcuzzi point out that when a single entity controls critical infrastructure across international domains, it ceases to be just a business—it becomes a geopolitical actor operating beyond the reach of any single sovereign nation.
The Indian Subcontinent’s Echoes: Public vs. Private Space
For India, the rise of the sovereign tech mogul strikes a deeply familiar historical chord. The subcontinent knows exactly what happens when a commercial entity is allowed to govern public commons.
However, India’s own space trajectory offers a powerful, alternative blueprint. Unlike the hyper-privatized, billionaire-led model of the United States, India’s space program, driven by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has historically been a public-good mission.
- Democratic Accountability: ISRO’s milestones—from the Chandrayaan moon missions to the Mangalyaan Mars orbiter—were built on frugal engineering designed to uplift national infrastructure, resource mapping, and disaster management.
- The Impending Shift: While India is now cautiously opening its private space sector to local startups via IN-SPACe, it faces a structural crossroads: Can public oversight be maintained, or will global monopolies like Starlink inevitably crush local sovereign capabilities?
The Regulatory Void: Who Governs the Commons?
The core danger of the new corporate space race is the complete obsolescence of international law. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 was drafted for an era when only nation-states could afford to reach the stars. It asserts that space belongs to all of humanity and cannot be claimed by national sovereignty.
It did not, however, anticipate a private corporation launching tens of thousands of satellites to effectively colonise orbital pathways through sheer physical occupation.
If a corporate entity can dictate global internet connectivity, bypass national telecom regulations via direct-to-cell satellite technology, and control the orbital corridors of international commerce, it achieves what the East India Company did at its peak: absolute immunity from domestic laws.
A Call for New Non-Aligned Digital Alliances
To prevent the total corporate capture of the orbital commons, the international community—particularly the Global South—must treat space infrastructure as a strictly regulated global public utility.
Relying on the goodwill of Silicon Valley billionaires to maintain global communication lines is a critical vulnerability. Just as nations once had to dismantle the monopolies of chartered colonial companies to reclaim their sovereignty, modern democracies must now build multinational regulatory frameworks to rein in orbital monopolies.
Space must remain a shared horizon for human progress, not the personal fiefdom of the world’s wealthiest individuals.
