Say you're china, where part of your country is 3rd world, part industrialized. Say all your competitors are 1st world countries reliant on technology. You already censor the internet, if you could 'survive and thrive' without satellite/space tech, while other countries couldn't (or would have a hard time), wouldn't you be the winner if you could simply knock out space satellites by creating a Kessler effect? You move the countries tech back space-wise and communications wise, but you make it easier to win wars/battles on land potentially and expand your territory, or at the least cripple adversaries like the U.S. or Russia.

Not sure how this can be worse than straight up bombing cities as we do today.

I can see this being a big thing for China or N. Korea who already don't communicate much outside their country and are more protectionist and have parts of the country that are 3rd world. I mean, what do they have to lose? Not a whole lot, they already censor tons, and I'm sure they'd have redundancies in place on earth to replace tech they'd lose in a space war. While whoever they attack, will not be as prepared for those losses.

If a country could control space -- as in destroy all satellites that they don't sanction, or require 'taxes' for satellites, could be hugely profitable endeavor as well for the country. Space itself is a resource.