The multiday White House extravaganza welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington featured an opulent state dinner, a private tea meeting, and fighter jet flyovers. Watching the diplomatic pageantry, one could easily forget that the United States and China are locked in a tense, existential cold war over the ultimate military high ground: Earth’s orbit.

The cordiality displayed on the South Lawn is a dangerous illusion that masks a jarring, self-inflicted American contradiction. President Donald Trump dines with Xi while the Pentagon actively starves the commercial space technology sector needed to maintain military dominance in space. Behind the friendly diplomatic smiles, our political leaders are playing nice with our primary adversary on the world stage while our own military is actively choking out the one weapon — the American free market — that can actually defeat them in orbit.