 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. In today's episode of Totten Science and Tech, we will be discussing the issue of weaponization of space and commercialization of space and we are joined by Prabir Prakash. So Prabir, this is becoming an issue of concern these days because on the one hand, US is accusing Russia and China constantly of weaponizing space carrying out anti-satellite tests but the US itself is also doing these things and the US is also opposing any efforts of banning the weaponization of space. So can you first tell us about where do we currently stand in terms of the capabilities of different countries and carrying out and launching weapons from space and in space? You know of course India has also carried out an anti-satellite weapon experiment shall we say where we destroyed a satellite. So this is not something which is restricted only to China, Russia and the United States. We seem to have also joined forces and it is true that all of them are a dangerous territory because what you are doing effectively is creating weapons which will try and destroy each other's satellites at least and that creates enormous possibilities of space debris and it risks all future space activities. So that's of course the immediate risk that seems to be there but more importantly there are two aspects to this that we must really think about. One is what you have talked about putting weapons in space which are of different kinds not just against each other's satellites but also weapons in space which can control the earth which means you are really talking about laser weapons, some things which can hit the ground, you are talking of other weapons that you mount, some things called railguns, all kinds of science fiction to far out science talks, technology talks are there particularly by weapon developer companies. But if you leave that out what you are really talking about control of space in order to control the ground below and that's something which is not a matter of conjecture but that's what the space command or space force vision seems to be. They have a vision 2020 they put out and in fact it has a picture saying that. So ability to control the ground is also further elaborated by saying in the 16th, 17th century to the navy the ships which control the oceans and therefore control the ground and build the empires and of course we know whose empires they were basically the colonial vision and now we intend and that's the space commands actual document which says we intend to control the space in order to control the land beneath. So you know there is absolutely no the aorta of doubt about the intentions and it is not about using space denying space to others it is about control and command of space in order to control the ground beneath which means the control the earth. So it's a vision of being again regaining the hegemony of the world the military terms which the US felt that it had lost partially that last 10 years there is a feeling that US has been losing its complete hegemony of the world which it had it felt after 1990 and therefore now space becomes the way to regain that hegemony back. So this is one element of what we're seeing and the second part of it is also the commercial vision on whose behest for whom is it going to do all of this that came out recently in what's called the Artemis chords which the US talked about exploiting moon for commercial purposes and asked other countries to join in this a signal departure for what was the 1967 treaty for basically commercial exploitation of outer space as well as moon and other such bodies which said this is the common heritage of mankind it talked about really global commons. So this whole understanding of commons which cannot be exploited by any country but belongs to the entire humankind is also being contested and there are various arguments being put forward which I'm not going to go into. So when you talk about the militarization or the weaponization of space we have to see that hand in hand it's also talking about commercially exploiting whatever are these resources believing that even if it is not important today maybe 20, 30, 40, 50 years down the line and that's the long-range vision they're trying to set in place that the United States will control all of that and if that becomes commercially important then they would be in control of that as well. So you are talking of a vision which says control the ground belief with space weapons and control the space for itself and commercially exploited under the leadership of the United States. This is the crux of the vision that we seem to see and so bipartisan vision because when these things were voted in the US Congress the Republicans were joined by a significant section of the Democrats as well. So this is by no means something which is exclusively Trumpian vision which it was when Ronald Reagan was pushing his Star Wars program that that did to lead to fracturing of the consensus of the United States. The Trump vision what he's presenting the space force as well as well as the commercial exploitation of moon under the ages of Elon Musk and companies like that. This seems to be something which is shared in bipartisan terms the certain section of the Democrats did vote against it but by and large there was a consensus behind both of these. So I think we are entering a phase where the US thinks it can regain its hegemony through either new class of weapons the hypersonic weapons which they are also developing of course so has Russia so has China. India is also developing hypersonic weapons but that's a part but what are the other range of things that it is talking about and there are a whole range of quite frightening weapons and it's no longer the Star Wars scenario which appeared very distant. This is something which appears that it might happen over the next five ten years and that is pay placing humanity itself at a huge risk. So of course the US has openly stated that this that the objective is to dominate space and control the earth from space in its various military documents but the message that is coming out through the media through its propaganda is that this is in response to Russian and Chinese hostilities in space. So what is the what how much truth is there to these claims? Well you know whenever you do something when all this said you know I was I'm not the first it happened so and so did this so and so did this and so on. Both Russia, China and even Canada is on record asking for what is called the Paros Agreement prevention of an arms race in space so that is a proposal which has been on the table for quite some time and therefore all that US has to do is to agree to this agreement write how to do it in a way that such measures cannot be taken by others as well and there you have it. So if peace was the intent not weaponizing space was the intent then that should have led to the Paros Treaty. Now what what is it that we are seeing we are actually seeing treaties which have been signed dried and dusted so to say the basically this is the open space treaty of 1967 which envisaged the world the outer space as something which would not be exclusive preserve of any country. Now when you start going back on that there is a fundamental departure so all the rest are essentially hogwash for internal consumption the reality is the US is now charting a different course it believes that on the ground it is no longer able to control theaters of war that essentially even countries like Iran can contest what would be otherwise unilateral control of the air ground and sea space the ocean space around or near countries which is the what would be called any theater of war it could control this is what post 1990 it had his vision that it could control any theater of war any place in the world and in fact if you look at the United States you will see it's the only country with such huge aircraft carrier forces the idea was really force projection anywhere in the world now the field that is under threat because of the kind of equalization if you will of weapon weaponry which is that you can you don't have to confront aircraft carriers with aircraft carriers a a missile of a certain kind can actually bring down a carrier or at least three four or five such strikes would incapacitate aircraft carriers so effectively this whole force projection principle on which the US work is at risk that you have cheaper easier ways to neutralize it and when Iran actually brought down the drone which was hovering above 60 000 feet with the missile that showed that this missile capabilities are such that the US doesn't really know what will happen if they bring aircraft carriers near Iran so that seems to be the argument the logic of this kind of expansion of weapon weaponry in space which is what US is trying to now build but behind that is also that if it becomes economically viable to have a space regime which then they can control they also think that they may be able to make lots of money out of it but the primary purpose seems to be more strategic than commercial to Artemis accords also signal their intention is very clear that they will try and control all space commerce and they have asked people to join the countries to join the Artemis accord which essentially will be accept US dominance over whatever economic activity takes place I must digress here to say one thing you know the problem of weaponization is space that if a space war really takes place then as experts have already commented that it will create so much space debris that it will effectively be in the end of satellites all our space satellites are at a risk all our communication satellites will probably stop stop functioning the space debris will ensure that space is an economic territory economic space so to say that that space is something which we can position communication satellites and a huge number of our activities of the ground today depend on space whether it's television whether it is communications or whether it is even your positioning yourself the GPS system all of it depend on space that is at risk so it's a risk which is huge and the fact that nobody is talking about it also shows the problems today that we don't seem to have a peace movement a peace lobby in countries and somehow we are fatalistically accepting that yes you know in acceleration of the arms race the nuclear weapons race the ballistic missile race all of this will continue and all the missile treaties all the nuclear treaties are being dismantled one by one we now only have the new start on which we probably need to discuss another day which is also very much at risk and now we are joined by the space weaponization as an additional element to all this so we must see all of it in in totality but as I said the basic problem is not that this all this is happening but the resistance to all of this is very weak and that's what is really the cause for concern today so thank you for be for joining us today and that's all the time we have keep watching news click