To the extent that the US government believes something like that will happen, I expect it will develop sufficient capability to eradicate the thruster (and the people controlling it). If it has to have a militarized orbital platform, it will. I guess in some ways that super-capable ballistic missiles would be more politically palatable than a militarized platform. Such a thing could just be launched at any object that showed a suspicious early trajectory.<p>Anyway, I meant economic dependence; if you have investors that are on Earth, they will expect you to do what it takes to get them their returns. That means complying with governments. So in that scenario, dependence is simply needing that investment.