Be careful, because the ways around the law would be possible for your opponents as well. This plan in particular sounds like an excellent way to get murdered by sniper bullet with a simultaneous full spectrum EW attack to prevent a killswitch signal getting out. Possibly accompanied by simultaneous SM-3 attacks on whatever you have in orbit.

And this is just one of the many many ideas. You would also need near perfect infosec to make sure your orbital weaponry doesn't get stolen away from you and you are the biggest, shiniest target imaginable.

> All it takes is one unregulated launch to put up a 'cold' ICBM in orbit, which would be effective insurance against any and all regulatory action. It's a vicious sort of realpolitik, but it would likely work.

An ICBM with what payload exactly? With a nuke? Getting your hands on a nuke is hard. But, if by some miracle, you managed to launch one into space, then no later than you'd start threatening regulators with it, your nuke would eat a satellite interceptor.

> Just wait until someone surreptitiously puts up a whole network of sleeper nukes into orbit. One weird trick to become world emperor, eh?

Near-impossible to pull off at this point, as it would require absurd world-wide levels of incompetency in tracking nuclear material and space launches. That, or new technology for doing damage (this was a side plot in an excellent hard sci-fi book, A Sword Into Darkness, where a fictional propulsion system created by a private company could also work as a sort-of fusion bomb, without radioactive material).

You don't need nukes for space weapons, kinetic bombardment will do just fine.

Still, there's no stealth in space, and neither the US nor Russia nor China will let you just assemble a kinetic bombardment vehicle in orbit.

Things might get easier if humanity expands meaningfully beyond GEO.

No assembly involved. You launch a 20 ton tungsten rod with minimal atmospheric steering ability to LEO. Deorbiting the rod to a target will result in a 0.1 kiloton impact, which due to the directional nature of the strike will be far more locally destructive than a nuclear weapon.

That's the reason you won't be able to launch it in the first place. A rocket with 20 ton to orbit capacity will attract scrutiny of other space-capable powers, and they will be within their right (moral as well as legal) to shoot it down if you insist on not cooperating and disclosing its payload.

Also, even if you put a single "rod of God" in orbit, the moment you've threatened anybody with it, an attempt to shoot it down will be made. If you manage to drop it on someone, it'll only add extra mass murder charges onto your life sentence or execution.