From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is the Daily.

Today, U.S. officials now acknowledge a growing fear that Russia may be trying to put a nuclear

weapon into Earth's orbit.

But as my colleague Eric Lipton explains,

their real worry is that America could lose the battle

for military supremacy in space.

It's Wednesday, February 28th. Eric, this story began in a pretty unusual way. I actually watched it unfold on

social media in real time and it started with a very cryptic message from a member of Congress.

So just tell us about that.

Sure, well Representative Mike Turner, who's chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, put out a message saying,

Today the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has made available to all members of Congress

information.

He had information concerning a serious national security threat.

And it was an unusual kind of a statement from the chairman of the House Intelligence

Committee.

I'm requesting that President Biden

declassify all information relating to this threat

so that Congress, the administration,

and so he didn't really tell us what this was about, but he...

He just told us to be very scared.

Yes, and it immediately set off a scramble of national security reporters

to try to figure out what that message meant.

...