 All right, everyone, welcome to the show. Welcome, welcome. Today is Friday, December 1st. My name is Chris Johnson. I'm the Space Law Advisor at the Secure World Foundation. And today we're gonna be looking at the results from our 2023 Space Sustainability Research Fellows. So the topics that they've investigated are verifying anti-ASET commitments and questions on customary international law formation on space security. As by way of introduction, the Secure World Foundation established these Space Sustainability Research Fellowship Programs in 2022 with the goal of having research fellows investigate fundamental questions and clarify fundamental concepts in space sustainability. We were finding that in the course of our work, in conversations and in dialogue, there remained unanswered questions and undiscussed assumptions which often prevented further actions to meaningfully advance space sustainability. Conversations which would just kind of peter out or reach some type of impasse. And we saw that there was a need for deeper research and discussion to clarify some of these concepts. So last year, our first cohort of fellows researched questions on space as a quote unquote global commons and the issue, the concept of polycentricity in space governance. So those reports from last year's fellows are honestly, they're great pieces of scholarship and they are also we believe quite useful pieces of reference and practical information for actual meaningful and practical discussions on space governance. So one by Daniel Patton, research spaces at global commons and then Claire Odo wrote on polycentricity in space and those reports have been published. We will provide links to them as well here on the stream and in the chat. As we move into the research fellows from this year, we saw that there was a greater emphasis and perhaps enthusiasm or at least dynamism for arms control or discussions on anti-ASAT testing and more effort and more discussion at the multilateral level at the UN as well as at the national level. So we wanted to focus on some of these security issues and we therefore have two fellows which we believe their research will inform those discussions and we hope, assist those discussions so that they are done towards productive ends and our goal, space sustainability. So with that, I'm going to give as much time as possible to our research fellows to present their work. The first speaker that we have is Dr. Olga Volenskaya. Olga Volenskaya is an assistant professor at the College of Law at Prince Sultan University in Saudi Arabia. Prior to joining Prince Sultan University, Olga was the chief international law advisor of the Russian space agency, second secretary of the legal department of the Russian ministry of foreign affairs and then associate professor at the space research department at Moscow State University. Olga has a specialist degree in international law, an LLM, a master of law, an LLM in European law and a PhD in international space law. She is an academician of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics and a member of the International Institute of Space Law. Olga's research focused on the nature and legal effect of non-legally binding political commitments, recent UNGA resolution on ASAT and national unilateral declarations to not test or conduct ASATs and related issues. So with that introduction, I'd now like to bring to the floor Olga and professor, the floor is yours. Thank you so much. For me, you're on mute. Oops. Now we can hear you. Now we can hear you. Please go ahead Olga. Hi Chris, hello everyone. Once again, thank you very much for your kind introduction. You've elevated me to a senior position of professor right now, I'm just assistant professor at my college of law at Princeton University. But still thank you for that. All right, colleagues and friends, without further ado, let me share with you what I have found or have discovered and some of my discoveries were really exciting. As regards to the so-called politically binding recommendatory international norms, we have recently witnessed in the area of space art control. So I was tasked with the legal research on these recommendatory norms, on politically binding norms and commitments of states of different levels of multilateral level, the series of United Nations General Assembly resolution then I was dealing with the documents of bilateral level, bilateral statements of states, namely not to be the first to place weapons in outer space and also unilateral declarations by states not to conduct destructive direct ascent missile tests and anti-satellite missile tests. So as a legal exercise, this research, this analysis, comparative analysis of all these various level documents, presenting various positions of states and groups of states led me to a number of interesting conclusions, as I already mentioned. But first of all, what was the objective of this research? The main objective was to determine whether these non-legally binding international commitments could have a potential legal effect, could lead to the emergence of legally binding compulsory mandatory norms, namely of international treaties or of customary international law. This exercise to me was particularly important because I also personally wondered whether these politically binding statements by states, by groups of states were aimed at some tangible results that states themselves were serious to be responsible actors in space and to abide by the commitments that they made openly at high level, whether they were really serious about dealing with the problem of space arms control or not. So let me tell you what I have found. So I focused on two directions of how to assess these various level non-legally binding documents. I checked whether they could lead to the emergence of customary international law or international treaties, the norms of international treaties. How did I start? Well, as every lawyer, I started with the most exciting exercise for us lawyers with the terms and definitions and I did my best to specify what is meant by an international custom, by a treaty rule. Of course, I referred to the already existing doctrine to the practice of the international law commission and of course to the practice of the ICG International Court of Justice. Now I would like to ask our hosts to show us all the table, which will help me tell you a little bit what is an international custom, a rule of customary international law. So basically that's a practice of states, a general practice of states, widespread supported by a lot of states, which, and this is interesting, this is serious, which must be recognized by the states as law, as binding, which lawyers call as opinionaries. It should have this opinionaries, not just practice the states follow or maybe ignore to follow. No, this practice cannot be ignored. All states abide by this practice. This is law, for them, this is really law. But how do we know which exactly, which practice exactly, which forms of practice can there be, can we call those that could lead to the emergence of an international customary rule and which would be called as having opinionaries. Thanks to a wonderful research made by the International Law Commission, we already know the answer, at least some direction we're further to look for. So this table here presents basically the results of the research by the International Law Commission, which helped us lawyers how to deal with international practice of states and how to qualify this or that form of practice as legally binding upon states. How can we find out? Is this a customary rule or not? So what we can see here is pretty interesting and it has a direct relevance to my research in the sense that I made a research on UNGA resolutions, United Nations General Assembly Resolutions on NTA-SAT missile testing and on no first placement of weapons in outer space and also checked whether those resolutions can lead to the emergence of customary rules. And I checked and found out that sadly they cannot because according to the Finance of International Law Commission only conduct in connection with such resolutions, UNGA resolutions included can lead to the emergence of international customary rule, can constitute such a rule but not the resolutions themselves. However, this is interesting that these UNGA resolutions on NTA-SAT missile testing and on no first placement of weapons in outer space, they still play a hugely important role in the sense that they indicate the ongoing negotiations between states, they indicate the progress the states are making towards finding common solutions to the problem of non-proliferation of arms into outer space. So there are still very useful documents although in themselves, they do not constitute customary international rules. However, are very useful as regards to finding out what's going on, what is the practice of states, what states are thinking currently, what they agree upon at the current stage. What else can we see from this table? Also a very interesting thing. And now it comes to international treaties. So first of all, I checked whether international customary rules can be born out of politically binding UNGA declarations, resolutions or commitments, unilateral, bilateral commitments of states. So I also checked whether international treaties can be born out of those. Here's the thing with international treaties, especially if we compare them with customary rules. International treaties are documents or always in writing that states decide to establish, they decide to create the norms of these treaty rules and most importantly states need to expressly agree to be bound by these treaties, these international treaties. So there is a potential of those non-legally binding commitments to lead to international treaty rules but I'll come back to that later. But one thing I wanted to tell you about is one interesting legal trick. For instance, of course we'll know that we live not in an ideal world and various things can happen, especially our big mission to see a uniform multilateral, truly global international treaty on space arts control. It may not be the easiest thing to achieve but there is this legal trick that we might use. For instance, if a couple of states, say two states at least, maybe three, maybe five, maybe more, if they decide that they are ready to bind themselves with a rule imposing a prohibition, say express prohibition on the use of anti-satellite missile missiles, the satellites, et cetera, if they decide to establish such a treaty to sign it, they can do that, they are free to do that. Even two states are free to do that. If in time this treaty on condition that it's open to other participants, if it becomes sufficiently widespread, if it becomes sufficiently representative, if a lot of states supported and join this treaty and that this practice is consistent, interestingly, according to this table that you see, this treaty, which is really limited only to its participants, to those states that signed and ratified that treaty, it can lead to the emergence of an international custom. So just this treaty on condition that it's widespread and supported by a lot of states, it can lead to the emergence of an international custom. As you can see, so this treaty could be qualified as general practice of states, as a form of practice, as you can see in the left-hand column conduct in connection with treaties can be classified as form of practice of states. And on the right-hand side, you can see that treaty provisions can also be a form of evidence of opinionaries, can also prove that states agreed to be bound by this emerging customary rule. What is so special about this legal treaty when just one international treaty becomes or might become a customary rule? The thing with international treaties is that they are binding only upon those states that signed them and ratified them. So expressly, directly agree to be bound by them. But international customary rules are special in the sense that they bind all states, every single state, even those that may not be happy about that treaty, they may not be happy about the total prohibition of anti-ASAD testing, even those would become, would be bound by this international custom. So there's a curious discovery I made. Now let me tell you very briefly about the particular instruments I checked and the lesson compare. So first of all, you enjoy resolutions, resolutions by the United Nations General Assembly on anti-ASAD tests and on non-first placement of weapons in outer space. As I already told you, those resolutions as such, as documents cannot be called customer rules, cannot be called treaty rules, of course, because they're non-legally binding. But they can be very useful as regards to the reflection of states practice. And they can truly indicate that states are coming close to the conclusion of this or that international treaty or the area that we're discussing or that even an international customer rule is being worn in this very area. Now, what is so peculiar about the other documents I checked in addition to UNGA resolutions? I also checked the list of unilateral and bilateral commitments states made in the area of space arms control. Let me start with the commitments, unilateral commitments made by a lot of states. As of now, at the time of my research, it was a list of 35 states, including 27 UN member states. Now, from what I've heard from my colleagues, it's already 37 states. So those states made unilateral commitments by which they agreed or they declared they intend not to conduct destructive direct ascent and the satellite missile tests. Now, what about those declarations themselves? They are, of course, considered to be a recommendatory, non-legally binding, as we know, but the curious thing, the curious discovery I made, thanks once again to the International Law Commission, is that sometimes even assumedly politically binding or non-legally binding declarations may have a potential of bringing about legal consequences of having some legal effect. When can it happen? The International Law Commission, once again, very much helped us lawyers and gave a list of the criteria which these assumedly non-legally binding documents or commitments by states should have in order to possibly qualify as having some legal effect, binding legal effect. For instance, this list includes the following criteria. This declaration must be made by duly authorized state representative. And from what we saw, from what I discovered, all the unilateral declarations on anti-ASF tests were made indeed by duly authorized state representatives by prime ministers, deputy prime ministers, ministers of foreign affairs or duly authorized representatives of the space industry, so the countries. Next, there must be the intention by the declaring state to commit itself. Now, this is interesting. Here we have a problem with terms and definitions. What does it mean to commit itself? It's a tricky question. And unfortunately, I'm not ready to answer that one because every single state should know what it meant when making this commitment, not to conduct ASF tests. Unfortunately, we do not know. We need to check in every single case what the state actually meant by that. Did the state meant to be bound by this commitment? Did the state want to be serious about that commitment? Or maybe there were some other implications. As regards this list of the 30, 37 already, unilateral anti-ASF commitments, only one state, only Germany expressly stated that this commitment is voluntary, is non-legally binding, is politically binding. All the others were silent regarding this potential legally binding effect of their commitment. Now, the declaration must be made in good faith. Well, we, I think, can assume that all states did make such declarations in good faith indeed. Clear and specific terminology, yes, definitely. No reservations, no opt-out clauses. None of these unilateral commitments or anti-ASF tests contained any reservations whatsoever. And by the way, this is what is different, what differs, this is the main difference between these unilateral commitments regarding anti-ASF tests and bilateral statements made by Russian foreign partners on no first placement of weapons in outer space. The letter do indeed contain opt-out clauses. It means that if, for instance, some other state uses weapons, places, weapons in outer space, then these commitments by Russian foreign partners will no longer apply, because they're about no first placement of weapons in outer space. So reservations are there. Now, what about other criteria? Any further modifications? We don't know whether any of these unilateral commitments have been modified or not yet at least. They're pretty clear, they're pretty strong, I should say. The context and factual circumstances in which the statements were made. Yeah, the context and factual circumstances, especially the ongoing negotiations at the UN level, at the level of the open-ended working group on the space threats, prove that this is a serious topic, that a lot of states are truly concerned about that and are interested in solving this problem of seriously controlling space arms, the proliferation of space arms. And the reaction of other states, namely whether any other states were against these unilateral commitments of this or that state, not to conduct anti-satellite missile testing. So far, they have been none. They have been no opposition to such unilateral commitments. Well, this is interesting. So there is at least some potential for us lawyers to call at least some of those unilateral commitments anti-acid commitments as having potentially legally bind in effect. The last thing I should say, which I also found out as a result of my research, is the interesting convergence between the various initiatives, the various commitments, which are called non-legally binding commitments, unilateral, bilateral, multilateral, the UN level, they really complement each other. If we set aside political tensions, geopolitical tensions, we'll see that these commitments, all of them, they share the three common features. First of all, their goal is the same, to prevent arms race in outer space. Second, all of them, as we just saw, well, except maybe UNGA resolutions, they could potentially qualify as both general practice of states in opinionaries, the decision of states to be bound to consider this practice as law. So they could potentially to the emergence of international customer rules. And third, all these unilateral commitments highlight the necessity to develop an international agreement or agreements to prevent an arms race in outer space. So we can see that there is a huge potential for combining these efforts. Well, ideal, of course, combining them. So I have to admit that I'm cautiously positive that there is a solution to the ongoing tensions that we are seeing at various levels, with these various initiatives put forward with a variety of documents of multilateral level, bilateral, unilateral level. However, we should truly focus on what really matters, what should be the main goal of all these initiatives, of all these efforts. And to my mind, this is truly common and we see it already. It is prevention of an arms race in outer space. So thank you very much, colleagues. I think my time is up. Thank you very much, Chris. All right, Olga, that was excellent. It's obvious why you are teaching classes on this. We have a few questions, but my initial question is, this is my reaction is, maybe a laborious way to create an international norm is by having each state make unilateral declarations, then you put them all together and analyze them and say, if you look across all of these declarations, isn't an international norm somehow created? But that is so fascinating that there's further elements of those unilateral declarations that you only see the caveat from Germany say, we're making this declaration, but it is explicitly not a legally binding declaration. It's important to say that, yeah, you don't see that caveat anywhere else. So my first question is, 36, 37 states have said that they would not conduct such an activity, but only a handful of states actually have the capability of conducting that activity. So is there any distinction between, when you analyze those statements, what's the utility of somebody saying something, they're not going to do something when they had no capability of doing it whatsoever. Is there any distinction between capable and non-capable states? No, that's truly a good question. And that's not an easy one for us lawyers to ponder on. Well, we don't really know what states really want to do, whether they have had any intention, so maybe some plans to develop such capabilities. Because as we all know, having access to space and hopefully independent access to space, being able to defend itself, its own territory is, where is one of the top priorities, one of the strategic objectives of most states, space-faring states, the Nassan space-faring states. So to my mind, these declarations that the states that, at least we do not know whether they did have such plans to develop such weapons, for instance, to be used against the satellites, these declarations are an excellent indication of the fact that there are a lot of states already that are truly serious about outer space, that they understand that otherwise they will not survive, that they need outer space, they need space technologies, space capabilities in order to survive. They are just so dependent on that, not only them, of course, all of our planets, hugely dependent on space capabilities, on space technologies. But those declarations to my mind, proof already, regardless are they legally mining, maybe at the moment they're not legally mining, they prove how serious states are. Well, we use the term like responsible space actors. To my mind, this is a solid proof that they are responsible, they are on the way of doing something tangible about the serious problem, just once weapons are used as we already saw from the four cases of testing, anti-satellite weapons, how serious the consequences are, how grave may be the results of such testing, not just for the state that did such testing, but also for the state that is mining political consequences. But most importantly, the consequences for everybody, for every single satellite, governmental, commercial satellite, that is there. So everybody will ultimately suffer. Everybody will feel that kind of it, but we are so dependent on states, otherwise we cannot survive without outer space. That is exactly why we need to keep it peaceful, to keep weapons away from space. Or maybe at the time being, normally legally binding commitments, politically binding commitments, they are already at least binding politically. So this is a very good sign to me that states are serious about what they are declaring, what they are really having in mind. Thank you so much, Olga. We have a few questions, Robin has asked about the relative weight or status, both of ICJ decisions, but also really about that. I'm interested in the time you have answering what is the value of that ILC work? They've restated the law correctly? Is that what ILC does? Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Robin, for a question. Well, by the way, I wanted to specifically thank Robin for her help. She was one of the people who made a huge contribution to my research. She took her precious time to read through my report and she introduced a lot of comments. And I'm really grateful and I'm lucky to have Robin as friend of mine, as a person truly interested in this topic. She really helped me a lot refine the research as to the substances to the form. And I was truly honored to offer her help with my work, especially that she is another woman, I saw the tiny little things in the text that in her opinion, should have been clarified a bit, should have been made simpler in order for the audience, which includes, of course, not only us lawyers, for the audience to be able to read it and understand it. So I'm really grateful to Robin for all her help, for all the enormous effort that she put into this work and really made it so much better. Thank you so much Robin for that. So as regards to your question, what are the relative status or weight given to the International Court of Justice decisions? And I'll see what as to the International Court of Justice. Well, of course, we know that the International Court of Justice produces decisions which are binding only upon the states, which are parties to the subject dispute, but the judges of the International Court of Justice help us a lot in the sense that dealing on one case on one particular topic, they express their opinions, they interpret the law, which helps us lawyers with other topics, with other issues. And I have found quite some interesting examples in decisions by the International Court of Justice, which have direct relevance to our topic. And by the way, not only in the decisions on cases by the ICJ, but also in advisory opinions by the ICJ, which also have huge importance. The judges, top of the top lawyers all over the world, provide their opinions, sometimes dissenting opinions from the majority of the judges, but still they're truly interesting. How law truly works, how international treaties should be read, how they should be interpreted. As to the International Law Commission, I found it, first of all, extremely exciting for me as a lawyer to read the results of their research, both on international customary law and on unilateral commitments of states that are assumedly politically binding, non-legally binding, but could have legally binding effect if they meet some criteria, the ones that we discussed earlier. So to my mind, it was both these pieces of research by the International Law Commission also have a huge importance because first of all, of the people who did this research, they are truly the top of the top lawyers once again, and they help us solve the brainstorm a lot on these topics and they checked a lot of documents and they checked a huge amount of previous practice. And I also use some of the examples from previous practice of states, what unilateral commitments by states in time were recognized as legally binding even though they were made in the form of unilateral declarations, which areas of international law saw the emergence of international customary rules, which of those rules had direct relevance with the UNJ resolutions, which of those emerged from national legislations of how these processes looked like in other areas of law, for instance, international humanitarian law, economic law, environmental law, and some others. So both these sources proved to be of huge importance for my research and I'm really grateful to all the people that did this tremendous work and it was a solid foundation for me to work on and to do my research. Great, thank you so much for that. I will not have time to move on to the other questions. I see that Merva from Luxembourg has asked a very, or from Switzerland has asked a very difficult question, really asking for, you know, contrasting, why don't we argue for Erga-Omnis obligations versus going this customary international law route? If we have time, hopefully we can discuss some of that in the comments to Merva and then the other questions that I see, but I do wanna make sure that we have enough time for our next researcher. So Olga, thank you so much for this so far and we'll continue the conversations also in the chat. I wanna move on to our next research fellow, which is Benjamin Silverstein, who is formerly a research analyst for the space project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research investigated prospects for multilateral cooperation on issues of space situational awareness and orbital debris remediation. His other interests include arms racing dynamics, space capabilities management, and evolution of national space policy. Before joining Carnegie, Ben worked on space policy issues at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, UNIDIR. His analysis has appeared in outlets such as foreign policy economist in War on the Rocks and Ben completed his MA in international affairs at Syracuse University, received a BA in international affairs from George Washington University. Ben's focus, his research this year for us on what types of behaviors and threats can space situational awareness or SSA verify and the types of verification that are possible in the context of ASET test prohibitions. So Ben, with that introduction, the floor is yours. Thank you, Chris, and of course, thank you to Secure World for the opportunity to dig into this topic and for your support throughout the research process. It's been a pleasure to be in this cohort of research fellows. And to expand a little bit more on the introduction of this research topic, the prompt for this paper was founded on an assumption that I think most everybody will agree on, that verifying potential behavioral restrictions will require us states to monitor space activities. And that improved space situational awareness or SSA will have to improve that practice. And this is a topic that I've been interested in for some time now. So I'm very glad to be able to present the findings here. And when I put this research together, I focused on putting the current context of space arms control and disarmament and security agreements in relation to the historical context of international agreements and verification as part of those international agreements, which is a pretty complex topic for several reasons. And because verification is so complicated, it makes it very difficult for negotiating partners and discussants to really start at the same point, to start at square zero or square one when they're having these negotiations. And so my aim was to provide a pretty foundational overview of what verification is, what verification can and can't do and how that might apply to what we're trying to accomplish in the space domain. A lot of the friction and the tension in verification stems from the fact that verification is both a technical practice and a political exercise, and it flexes between those two. Sometimes it's more technical, sometimes it's more political depending on which stage of the process you're in. But from the very genesis of the process, it's political, right? States negotiate the terms of verification, which is a political exercise. States being political entities, it's really baked in from the start. The negotiations focus on even what types of tools you can use to monitor and verify others' practices and to judge their compliance. On the technical side, you use these tools to monitor and collect data, which analysts then examine and package into findings that they deliver to political entities who make judgments and decisions about the report in a political context. So you can see that it's this political sandwich on both ends, you have this political negotiation, political use of data and tools, but there is that technical aspect in the middle. From a conceptual standpoint, verification and specifically treaty verification is broadly intended to affect a would-be-cheaters decision calculus and it accomplishes this via two routes. On the one hand, and this is probably the most obvious aspect, verification detects treaty violations or instances of non-compliance. On the other hand, it's secondary and secondary not in a pejorative sense, but its second effect is to deter cheating by raising the likelihood that a defector would be caught. So states can use verification as a tool not just to figure out who is cheating, but to make cheating more difficult and therefore intentionally lower the likelihood that a treaty partner would cheat or do something non-compliant. And a lot of times when we're talking about treaty verification, people assume we're discussing absolute truths that are defined by some very precise scientific processes. Treaty party A violated or did a thing rather which violated article N of some agreement. Therefore they are out of compliance and thus should be punished or some enforcement action should be taken, but it doesn't really work like that. Again, the political side of things at the end, there might be an instance in which the technical monitoring practice detects an instance that is out of compliance with the terms of a treaty, but that doesn't mean that the political entity is going to enforce that agreement. The state gets to weigh the value of enforcing the treaty versus all of the other variety of interests at play here. And so over the course of my research, I looked at dozens of multi-state agreements and arrangements that span several decades to see how verification was constructed, to see in some cases how it was left out of an agreement and to see how in some cases it was left out in practice, even though there are verification steps included in a treaty, they may not be widely used. The analysis draws a lot on humanitarian conventions, disarmament treaties, arms control agreements, environmental protocols, to really get the most comprehensive picture of verification as possible. And I think that this is really important as we discuss space security, because even though we're talking about security of space objects and satellites and all of these military things, there are a lot of parallels and a lot of reasons to pay attention to environmental concerns, or can we look at this through a different perspective and draw different conclusions that help us on the path toward developing something that we can practice verification through. So just taking in the annex to the report, there's all of these treaties and you can see when they were done, how many parties there are to them, and all of the different types of verification tools used as part of that treaty. But to just hone in on three brief examples, we have the arms trade treaty. It aims to stem the illicit arms trade. It relies on state's national reporting to verify compliance. And there are several technical concepts that could be applied to really increase the monitoring and compliance evaluation processes, but these practices are politically untenable so they never made it to the agreement. Similarly, many environmental treaties use the same tool of national reporting to verify or monitor compliance. And after all, very few actors are better suited to monitor things like pollution occurring within a state's borders more than the state. So the Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution is one example that really leverages that to great effect. On the other hand, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty illustrates another verification practice on site inspections where inspectors are able to come to a test site to either observe a test or in other cases to do some sort of measurement that would inform a verification practice. I really like this example because it illustrates not only just a new type of verification practice, but also the verification protocol was negotiated well after the treaty was originally signed but before it was ratified. So it shows that these treaties are still living beasts and there can be changes and improvements as we go forward that help our verification. Those are just three examples though. So we have the mutual onsite inspections as provided by the Threshold Test Ban Treaty and some other treaties. National reporting as seen in many environmental agreements but then there are three other types of verification that I think break down when you look at all sorts of treaties and agreements. So you find these basically five core types of verification. Mutual onsite inspections, inspections performed by an implementing organization such as those done by the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency. National reporting like we mentioned, National Technical Means of Verification and International Technical Means of Verification. Those last two are interesting in the space context. National Technical Means of Verification is essentially Cold War era shorthand for state satellite systems which are generally exempt from interference under many treaties if the satellites are contributing to a verification mission and International Technical Means of Verification is a little bit of a one step forward from that where it's performed most notably by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty organization's International Monitoring System which is a collection of about over 100 sensors, hydroacoustic and seismic sensors around the world that detect instances or events that could be interpreted as nuclear tests. So the accounting that I did of the verification practices throughout history and verification theory helps frame what the future might hold for verifying state compliance with agreements on space security issues and space sustainability. And one thing that's very clear is that verification is a low trust activity meaning that states are broadly unable to politically trust each other, both trust that another state's behavior is compliant but also trusting others in their compliance judgment. So states need to make this decision for themselves and to be frankly self-reliant. Therefore, each state party to an agreement must be able to independently verify other's behavior. This is really interesting and important for space security treaty because right now there's as is well noted around the world a pretty big deficit in space sensing equipment, expertise, analytical chops, all of those things that right now it's just not very available. The United States is far and away probably the most capable state when it comes to sensing and characterizing tracking space objects but there's a long way to go on the road to a comprehensive and complete catalog. It's also not something that one state can do from its own territory. It requires a lot of geographically distributed nodes for sensing and so it's really a global pursuit. Other states are developing their own systems. Many states in Asia have their own networks. Europe is developing a really robust SSA capability but pretty much every system struggles with Southern Hemisphere coverage and struggled to track the smallest objects like fragments of debris. And the other aspect is these databases aren't really compatible with each other. So it's very difficult to share data and to check each other's work to understand how somebody else is thinking about the same things that you're seeing. There is also and this is very important as we think about a certain concepts of anti-satellite weapons direct descent anti-satellite testing would rely on missile launch notification and detection. Many, if not most of the early warning radars are regionally focused and not really designed to promptly detect missile launches outside the acute security threats that a state faces. Now many states have global coverage. But there are workarounds. So the workarounds that if a satellite is destroyed by a direct descent ASAP missile, it's either a test or it's an attack. There's not really a big middle ground there. I suppose it could be an accident but that's probably unlikely. If it is a test, we might know the owner of the satellite target and then we can potentially work backwards from there to identify the non-compliant party in an agreement that would ban a formal agreement that would ban direct descent anti-satellite weapons. If it's an attack, we probably have bigger fish to fry. However, because there are several objects in space with unknown provenance pieces of debris, for example, or other objects that we're not really sure who's the owner of that. Even an improved global SSA capacity may not be enough to deter states from attempting to cheat an agreement. So we have to have better terrestrial sensors but also sensing of space. Just as a note, there are a great number of ways that you could design or types of things that you might be interested in prohibiting in space as it relates to security and improving the stability of the domain. I looked at three different types of concepts, the first being that direct descent anti-satellite test ban, the second being a co-orbital anti-satellite destructive test ban. Such an agreement could focus on reducing the risks of misperception and miscalculation by promoting better communication between treaty parties, which would help in when we think about rendezvous and proximity operations, defining whether those are malign or potentially beneficial activities. But the one thing that that example specifically points to is that verification is not a predictive practice nor does it assign intent. Those are, again, both political activities. And with this in mind, a verification regime as part of a treaty on co-orbital ASAT testing would really have to enable states to be able to differentiate between those two things. What is an accident? What is intentional and what is maligned? With that in mind, destructive co-orbital ASAT testing would, by its very nature, destroy a satellite target, which made me or sent me down a path of thinking about, well, if we ignore the types of tools used, maybe we can think about the effects and the effect would be the creation of debris, which sounds to me very much like a multinational environmental agreement. And so thinking about debris as pollutants, there are a lot of parallels to be drawn from a lot of the environmental agreements that we've seen in the past and more recently in the present. Such an agreement would require a really good baseline on the current catalog of space objects, as well as more effectively clarifying the results of fragmentations. We don't really have a great catalog as it relates to small pieces of debris, things under 10 centimeters, things under one centimeter in diameter that are still lethal to other satellites that would count as pollutants of space. The difference between countries' assessments of the debris population is pretty well documented. You can go to the interagency space debris coordination committee and see the differences in modeling. It's pretty stark to put it lightly. But it's clear that based on all three of these examples that states need to do a lot of work to be able to independently verify the terms of a future agreement. The globally limited technical capacity, the sparse state capacity to do the analytical steps needed and the extremely fraught political relations doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence. One other thing that I think is very important to note is the potential for the commercial sector to become active in the sphere. And it's something that we don't really have a lot of history with. There are almost zero instances in which the commercial sector participates in verification in a meaningful way. Amnesty International, for instance, audits, states, arms trade, in support of the arms trade treaty, but that's one of the very few examples. And so when we understand states as the primary entities in doing the process of verification and ensuring other states are compliant with their obligations, when you add the commercial sector into that mix, it creates some really interesting tension that I think will be, at the very least, exciting to watch going forward. Understanding how states plan to manage that is one of the next steps that I think we really need to be paying attention to. I call that out toward the end of the report. But overall, the biggest takeaways are that we really need to be better at managing how we watch space and how we do the analysis of space situational awareness so that we know what's going on, so that we can understand how to talk to each other about what we see and to defray some of the concerning instances and be able to have frank conversations that lead to either enforcement actions in a future treaty or at least better understanding of one's intentions. Thanks again to Secure World. I'm really looking forward to the questions. I see some in the chat already. All right, thank you for that, Ben. My first initial short question for you is you made some intimations about using maybe synergies or ideas from environmental law. Do you think to push this work forward, we should be looking more in pursuing the environmental law treaty route to look at space as an environment regulated as such or should be looking at the security side and looking at outlawing behavior? So it depends. It's a great question, but it really stems from what the purpose of an agreement would be. Is it to limit the amount of debris or is it to manage interstate tension? Is it something that, are we looking to prevent an arms race in outer space because of the security aspects of it or because we want to ensure that space is usable for current and future generations? I think that obviously there's challenges in using the environmental parallels in that things like the convention on long-range trans-boundary air pollution implies that that pollution is crossing borders and one's own pollution affects your neighbors and your neighbor's neighbors. But there aren't really borders in space like that. So it's more difficult to understand the rights, responsibilities and obligations of states as polluters in that same framework. So it takes a little bit of massaging. I think if the end goal is to limit the amount of debris in space then the environmental protocol and the environmental, multinational environmental agreements are my tier one A examples. That said, there's plenty of room for lessons to be learned from security agreements and cross-pollination on that. But if the goal of an agreement is to focus on security aspects and the international geopolitical competition from a military perspective then obviously it makes probably a little bit more sense to take leads from the security side of things. Excellent, fair enough. And I want to make sure that we address this question from Mr. Hassan. You can read it, but I'll read it aloud. How would you assess the impact of the absence of verification mechanisms and agreed definitions affecting the effectiveness of non-legally blinding norms and unilateral commitments? So yeah, and maybe Olga may also answer after or may offer an answer after you speak on this. But when we look at these non-binding norms and the unilateral declarations, is it a problem if they don't have verification mechanisms and agreed definitions in there? Doesn't that kind of muddy the waters? It does. It's a really good question because that is one of the core sticking points of which is better, a treaty, a legally binding treaty or a norm of behavioral expectation or customary international law and are these, is one better than the other is one sufficient without the rest. I do think that there is a growing awareness that to take an enforcement action depending on what that is, a state can enact sanctions or take some compensatory action outside the core principles of a treaty. If there are objectionable behaviors, it doesn't need to meet exactly a treaty law article X, it doesn't need to be that stringent. It does need to be reasonable and prudent. And I think having that, those rights and obligations codified in treaties helps that discussion get to an end point. But the lack of definitions and the lack of verification in that, it still, it doesn't inhibit enforcement necessarily. It does inhibit global acceptance and global resolve toward that enforcement. So if individual states want to piece meal and enforcement or a compensatory activity, they're free to do that. It just might not be seen as a reasonable or legitimate action and could be seen as inflammatory or escalator. I see that and that certainly makes sense. And it seems perhaps too difficult to look at unilateral declarations by states and we even ask or expect that they would say exactly the same things with the exact same language and the exact same definitions and the exact same verification mechanisms. That doesn't, I would say dilute necessarily the effect of those declarations. Cognizant of our time, I'm going to start to wrap up in the next few minutes. We were not able to get to all the questions, but that's fine because the questions were excellent, but Ben and Olga have their reports which are out there for download by everyone. And they likely also can be contacted by whether it's social media or through their contact details in some of the documents that we've provided. So there are the reports that we have right there. And you've seen that our research fellows for this year were focusing on security and space and anti-satellite activities. This is not the only work that secure world is doing on that. And we know that this effort on anti-satellite destructive tests is multifaceted. It's polycentric as we've learned from last year's fellows. So in December of 2022, the UNGA passed a resolution calling them on states not to conduct such tests and to date as Olga and Ben discussed 37 countries have made that unilateral commitment given the risk posed by such commercials, given the risk posed by such tests to commercial space activities. Now the commercial sector has also begun to weigh in to date 36 commercial space entities from 11 countries have adopted a space industry statement in support of international commitments to not conduct destructive anti-satellite testing in space including 10 new signatories since the statement was released by secure world just two weeks ago. We thank those companies for their commitment to the sustainability of outer space. And in alphabetical order, those new companies are Charter, Impulsion, GMBH, GHGSAT, Cal Morris Incorporated, Kion Space, LifeShip, Lumie Space, Share My Space, Space Locker and Think Tank Maths Unlimited. So every actor helps, every commitment helps, every statement in support helps. So the secure world foundation continues to encourage interested commercial space companies to add their support and to sign the statement. For more information about how about it and how to sign it, please visit swfound.org industry ASET statement or contact my colleague Ian Christensen who is our director of private sector programs. With that, I think it is time to take a step back and for everyone to download the reports, sit with them for a while. We believe that they will assist the discussions that are happening. And I personally would like to thank this year's fellows Olga and Ben for the real great scholarship and research that they have conducted for these reports. We only give them 30 minutes to go over their reports during this time. But really what is in there and the thought that has gone into it is really significant. And we do this because we really think that it will assist discussions. It will get through some of those roadblocks and it is time to assess some of these assumptions that we have which may prevent the work that we do on space sustainability. So with that, I'm going to conclude our webinar for this year's research fellows. We will have research fellow next year. We haven't decided exactly what the topic and the research questions we're going to be, but there are additional tasks that need to be researched in our further discussions on space sustainability. Thank you also to everyone who has attended today and this video will be posted on YouTube for folks to watch in the future. Thank you so much and good evening or afternoon.