> only thing I can think about is that to build that structure in space you have to be sure to suppress any missile from Earth and to win the war that your enemies will fight against you down here.
Absolutely. There are many technologies where if your enemy manages to create it you are already in an un-winnable situation. For example nuclear warheads pre-positioned in orbit with solid reentry boosters. If you have that you can nuke anyone with seconds of warning. The correct counter to this strategy from your enemy is to kill you before you can implement this plan.
Because of that you will want to sneak it by your enemy. But with this… even that is hard. Surely they will see when you light up this much energy generation no matter how sneaky you built it up? Unless you provide some plausible explanation, like hide it in an active carbon capture scheme or something.
Or you might build it in such a way as to avoid attribution. For example make a very stealthy von-neumann probe launched at the asteroid belt designed to reconfigure matter there for solar power harvesting and build this particle accelerator in-situ. You can disguise the initual launch as a failed interplanetary mission perhaps. And when it lights up pretend you didn’t know who did it?
It's going to take quite a while before humanity will start to routinely build those kind of structures in space, and disguise them among the others as we could do with satellites now.
The preparations and the launch of something that has to build a 1000 km wide structure won't go unnoticed. Add to it all the time it will take to build the accelerator in relatively plain sight for anybody that has a strategic interest to monitor space for weapons.
Absolutely. There are many technologies where if your enemy manages to create it you are already in an un-winnable situation. For example nuclear warheads pre-positioned in orbit with solid reentry boosters. If you have that you can nuke anyone with seconds of warning. The correct counter to this strategy from your enemy is to kill you before you can implement this plan.
Because of that you will want to sneak it by your enemy. But with this… even that is hard. Surely they will see when you light up this much energy generation no matter how sneaky you built it up? Unless you provide some plausible explanation, like hide it in an active carbon capture scheme or something.
Or you might build it in such a way as to avoid attribution. For example make a very stealthy von-neumann probe launched at the asteroid belt designed to reconfigure matter there for solar power harvesting and build this particle accelerator in-situ. You can disguise the initual launch as a failed interplanetary mission perhaps. And when it lights up pretend you didn’t know who did it?