> The official expressed concern that sensitive information — notably command data for European satellites — is unencrypted, because many were launched years ago without advanced onboard computers or encryption capabilities.

Makes sense, but that's inconvenient.

I hate the graphics provided by ft. You can clearly see they have no clue about orbital maneuvers.

About the sats.... Well, I guess we have to go on with unencrypted commands. But we could still add an encryption layer on ground base level. So the worst thing is that an Actor starts firing thrusters to make the thing crash into another sat an orbit or two later. But how would you even block correcting commands against the manipulation? So maybe they had to spinthrust the thing out of juice to get some dead sats in geostat, while not accidentally ending up in the graveyard.

Those poor Russians. They supposedly (first sentence in the article: "European security officials believe") must go to the space to intercept EU communications.

US does that much better (and easier) on the ground (e.g. by compromising software and hardware) and in the air (e.g. radio communications). And that is not in the category of belief. It is proven.

And, the EU does. not. care. (e.g. no sanctions, no economic or any other breakup). To the contrary: it happily crawls before its master (some would say "ally", ahahaha...).