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In a 2022 speech, Emmanuel Macron declared space the “sovereignty of sovereignties”, essential for autonomy within cyberspace, military engagement, and environmental monitoring. This elevation of space to a central place within geopolitical thinking reflects a widespread consensus: the United States and China are currently investing heavily in orbital infrastructure; both have recently created autonomous space forces within their militaries. However, this pursuit of sovereignty through space creates a paradox with respect to inherited conceptions of sovereignty. Sovereignty traditionally implies control over a bounded territory. Technological sovereignty has often been considered in terms of the limits of the technologically relevant resources available within that territory. Yet defending sovereignty via space technologies implies operations which take place in orbital space – a domain which some consider a global common and all accept is currently devoid of active territorial claims. Moreover, as space plays a greater role in terrestrial politics, the fragilities associated with the development of the extraterrestrial domain are becoming more evident, leading to calls for future-facing forms of space governance. These developments have in turn fueled calls for a greater privatization of space that is supposed to help avoid an oncoming tragedy of the orbital commons. This talk will explore the tensions, both political and conceptual, associated with how technical innovations driven by the new space economy are reshaping the role and the place of the sovereign state.