A transformative era of interstellar infrastructure has begun following SpaceX's recent filing with the Federal Communications Commission.

On January 8, the company submitted a massive request for authority to launch and operate a next-generation constellation that targets a scale of 1 million satellites. This move signals a pivot from providing simple internet access with Starlink to establishing a global network of orbital data centers.

By placing high-performance servers in space, SpaceX owner Elon Musk aims to solve the terrestrial bottlenecks of the AI revolution. Orbiting clusters can capture solar energy nearly 24 hours a day and utilize the natural vacuum of space to radiate the immense heat generated by AI chips, bypassing the power grid and water cooling crises currently facing data centers on Earth.

This expansion in the US is meeting immediate competition from China. Just weeks after the SpaceX filing, China vowed to develop its own gigawatt-class space digital-intelligence infrastructure.

The Chinese government plans to integrate computing, storage and transmission into a unified space cloud while simultaneously expanding into suborbital tourism and deep-space exploration.

China's aerospace experts have warned that SpaceX's "land grab" in low Earth orbit poses a national security risk, prompting a state-backed surge to deploy thousands of domestic satellites.

As SpaceX prepares for a potential trillion-dollar IPO to fund this hardware, the global landscape has shifted into a high-stakes competition to build the computational backbone above the atmosphere.