 And we're live. Welcome back, everyone, to our final class of this year's MIT Computational Law Report. I just wanted to personally thank all of you for showing up these last few weeks. When this course started, our intention was to introduce all of you to computational law and give you some tools to start exploring ideas at the intersection of law, technology, business, and society. And I truly feel like these goals have been met. When I think back to everything from our conversations regarding legal syntax to discussions about legal frontiers that are being braved by regulators in Wyoming, I'm not only impressed by the knowledge of our incredible speakers, but we've had the honor of listening to over the last four weeks. But I'm also equally impressed by the level of engagement and thoughtful questions you all brought to the table. Your contributions have planted seeds of ideas that I know I'll personally be thinking about and iterating on for a long time. And I just want to say again that it was such a pleasure sharing this experience with all of you. So now I'm going to pass over to Dazza, who has a couple of things to say as well. Thank you so much, TMA. And thank you for being such a terrific anchor host for the entire, I guess I'd call it for every episode of this season of our show or for the classic. Great. Like TMA, I also want to share my heartfelt admiration for the level of game that everybody's brought this year. It's really been, I think we've learned as much from you as we've all learned from the speakers. And we're just terribly grateful for your level of attention and for your contributions. And I may have a few more remarks along those lines to say at the end, but I don't want to cheat us from these amazing speakers. And also there's some other remarks that I hope that will want to hear from the co-presenters. Just one, I guess I'd say kind of program note is that we're going, I'm going to put this at the top of the hour rather than the end. We're going to launch a monthly computational community building call. It will be similar-ish to what we do during office hours. And we thought the office hours worked incredibly well with this group of people where it was a little bit more discussion. And we're going to pair it with flash talks. So they'll be incredibly tight, like two-ish minute talks on point, just like the three talks that we heard over the last month. And then we'll have an opportunity for discussion and a little bit of intro and outro. So if you're in this class or if you have ever presented to this class or about to present to this class, you can expect an invitation to those. And they'll be the last Friday of each month from 12 to 1 during the same period of time. And we'll see how that goes. So this will be sort of the MIT take on a monthly call, in this case, in the area of computational law. So with that, I'd like to hand it to Brian Wilson, who has some remarks and in particular is going to just do a little bit more depth for those of you who have elected to a class project. And then Brian, perhaps you can hand it forward so we can come to the speakers. And I'll do the intros for the speakers. Thank you. Sure. And so building on what Daza said and what TMA said, I think we're all really, really grateful for everything that we've been able to do in this course period. When we started the publication of the Computational Law Report a few years ago, we wanted to create a really strong anchor of convening experts, holding conversations about topics in the space and producing content. And I think with this course, that has been something that we've been able to achieve. And in the real spirit of MIT and durable learning and building and creating and iterating, we're really excited to see the final projects that everybody who is decided to submit one, what they'll submit over the next couple of days. And so to just briefly recap, for project submissions, you'll submit a quad chart and either a prototype, a paper, or a pitch deck. And with the quad chart, we really wanted to drive home that these are very pithy ways to organize your thoughts in a strong and cohesive anchor. So you've all seen these descriptions before, and you've seen the way that this plays out. But what you haven't seen and something that we're really excited about is the ability to organize the submissions using the quad charts. So we'll be able to put everybody's slide that they're submitting for the quad chart in a comprehensive slide deck so that we can embed that slide deck in the core site itself so that whenever anybody goes to see what projects people have done in the past, they can scroll through your project and see what you did and how you learned about it. And we think that type of learning is going to be incredibly valuable for the way that we move the field forward and move toward the computational law future that I think everybody is so excited about. And so with that, I'm going to go out of screen share and hand it over to Andrew for a few remarks as well. Sure, thanks, Brian. I just wanted to say thank you to all the speakers, my fellow team members, and especially the participants in this course. We've had excellent discussions about a variety of thought-provoking topics, and we all really appreciate your interest in and your contributions to this course. Computational law is a very exciting discipline with important implications for how society incorporates major technological advancements. My belief is that this discipline will grow, and I am encouraged by the significant response we've had to this course. The early community of computational law, which I would say everyone on this call is part of, makes me optimistic that we can address the novel questions and challenges ahead. So thank you, and I'll pass this to Megan. Hi, everyone. So echoing the sentiments of the entire team as well as thanking the guest speakers that we had, this has been really, really inspiring. As I mentioned very early on, I was part of an earlier generation, well, not an older generation, I guess, just last year, of this course. And I think that the rigor that you brought to this years just knocked my years out of the park completely. And I think all this is very inspiring and encouraging, as Andrew and Tammy were all saying, in how this area is growing and how we're heading towards a very beautiful future with computational law. So with that, I think I will hand it back to Dazza. I don't want to take up any more time. So yeah, thank you. Great, thank you so much. OK, now let's get into the main course. Today, we're going to space. And what we're going to do is discuss current and emerging trends in law and dispute resolution involving space and the moon and orbit and all sorts of stuff once we get off the Earth. And so we're going to ask whether or how, I think mostly how, computational law could help to meet the growing challenges that are raised by our, well, increasingly inhabiting space as a people. And so we have two amazing speakers. First, Viva, who is a legal hacking leader who we know from her work in New York legal hackers and who has gained some real expertise based on her work at McGill in Canada and also as an attorney at King and Spaulding in this somewhat niche, but really we think essential area of arbitration of space-based disputes. And so with that, I'd like to hand the microphone off to Viva. And I think you should be able to advance your slides. And we've sent you the deck. But let me know if you have any issue if you'd like us to do the slides for you. Could you please do the slides? I could just do the next slide. Yeah, I could. Or should I be doing just a screen share? I guess those are the two options. I think either way. I've got it queued up, or we can hand it over. Probably it's best if you do it, Viva, because you've got a lot of slides in there. You just kind of select a few to talk over. Yeah. OK. Just give me a second here. Where's Chris? So at least one of the students has a special custom background for today. I don't know if I see him. He's not here yet. We'll be on the lookout for Chris. He's coming from Space Command today. Ah, good. Here we go. Sorry, Viva. I'm just making sure it's in present mode. Is everyone, are we able to see stuff? Looks good. Awesome. Great. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Daza, for the warm welcome. It's my first time attending this class. And as Daza mentioned, I am a trial and global disputes lawyer at King and Spalding and one of the organizers for legal hackers in New York. I have an interest both in space law and space and law. And I've combined that interest and thinking specifically about space disputes. And so I'm here today to discuss current and emerging trends in space law as well as space-related disputes. And as Daza mentioned, posed some questions on the field of computational on how that field might help advance space law itself. So before I begin, I guess, I will make a disclaimer, which is just that I'm here. My capacity as a student, I'm here to learn about systems design and thinking and the views that I express are solely my own. They're not legal advice. And I'm here to learn and share with you the same way you're here to learn and share with me. So with that, we're going to get started and discuss specifically what my presentation will be about, which is a quick and dirty table of contents on why space matters, why I believe we should be analyzing space disputes, the status of current space-related disputes, what we might imagine future space-related disputes to look like, as well as the role of computational law in the resolution of future space disputes. So why are we talking about space and scores? And why should we talk about disputes in particular? I believe there's three different reasons. First, space has a growing number of actors, a growing number of stakeholders. And what was once an industry that was dominated by a few states has now opened up to other states and to the private sector. In just over 10 years, more than 20 countries have started investing in space programs. They're proposing their own private endeavors, their own projects in space just last year. India and Israel tried to land a probe on the moon. Space activities in Africa have picked up significantly. The continent has, I think, more than 14 space agencies alone. A number of countries are launching satellites into space, which was unheard of until a long time. And because of that growth, we're also seeing an increase in private actors, non-state actors, primarily in the satellite industry. The other reason why the growth of these actors is important is that the space sector is seeing a new cycle of development. And older and more technologies are making way for new actors and new commercial downstream activities that come from primarily the satellite industry signals and data. And as would be expected, that is leading to new economic opportunities, new assets. Last year, the space industry stood at $350 billion. It's expected to grow to a trillion, more than a trillion, which isn't small amounts of money. And these are numbers. There is a big hype about space as well, so we should take that into consideration. But the best is yet to come, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, and the industry is growing. Of course, the pandemic this year will have an effect on the industry, as every industry has been affected. So I guess we'll see how that affects some of these new actors. But just to say that it is a growing industry with increased assets as well. In terms of the law and policy, I think that's the interesting part. That's why we're here. Space has been described as the Wild Wild West. And I think for a while, perhaps it was, perhaps it still may be, because it was the unknown. And now, I think the industry is maturing or it's growing. It's emerging. Sorry, it's not maturing yet. The five outer space treaties, there are five UN space treaties which were negotiated in the 60s and till the 80s during the Cold War. Those have principles. Those are mostly focused on space actors. Those treaties are going to stay. They will probably be renegotiated. We'll see what happens, what countries do. But last year, what's more interesting for me is America, the United States, launched the Artemis program, which brought with it the Artemis Accords, which is, to me, very exciting as someone who used in the past work in the government of Canada as well. That program promotes principles like the peaceful use of space and opens up the field formally to new actors, to new space actors. And the principles focus on transparency. They focus on peaceful use of space, emergency assistance, space exploration, and the use of space resources. So these are things that the past treaties never talked about. And so a new field is emerging where new regulations, new policies will start being negotiated, will start being discussed, which will determine our path going forward for this growing industry. So the Artemis Accords, I would also mention were signed last year. A number of countries, I think it's around eight, including the UK, including Canada, a number of space faring nations, but also other countries are part of the Accords. There's been some disagreement. They are controversial. A number of other countries don't like the Accords because they shift the movement away from the UN system that currently exists. But nonetheless, I think they're a game changer. And additionally, we're also seeing movement on domestic fronts, where countries are establishing regulatory regimes for property rights for their companies, which is also really interesting. And so particularly, I would note the United States, Luxembourg, the UAE, we'll see if that list grows in the future. But I think it's an interesting start. So this is just a slide to share a little bit background on the space economy. I won't spend too much time on it given that we're here for a short period. But I just wanted to put it up there in case anyone would like to look into what the space economy entails, at least pursuant to the OECD. I see that the formatting has messed up at the bottom there. So I apologize about that. So why analyze space disputes? I think that in any economy, this I don't think this is brain science, but conflict avoidance is important, but disputes will come up. What can we learn from these disputes? I think that that's the part that, going forward, as we think about this growing economy, as we think about these emerging laws, how might we design dispute resolution systems to ensure effective dispute resolution? When these disputes do occur, how might we track the development of space law and promote the rule of law in outer space? And how might we generate a legal infrastructure that provides predictability and certainty to space actors, right? It's space is inherently risky, at least right now. And so you do need predictability and certainty for investors to invest, for countries to know what they're signing up for. So these are the three reasons why I think looking at disputes is incredibly important. And it's important to keep this in mind, I think, especially from a computational law angle as well, because I think, I mean, I would argue that each of these three reasons have a link to computational law. And I'm excited to discuss some of those angles later today. So moving quickly to the current status of space related disputes. I think there are three trends. This is what I've been able to find in my research. Disputes are resolved amicably, which means they're not going always to courts or being written up. They're usually behind closed doors and they focus primarily on state actors. This is what we found before we started our research. And we weren't, the question was, what are commercial parties doing? And so I'll touch on very briefly on commercial parties, but before I do that, I'll just share two examples, two quick examples of disputes involving state actors, just so you have an idea of what has happened in the past. The first example is the USSR, had a nuclear powered satellite which crashed in the late 70s and created a bit of a frenzy, of course. It's during the Cold War, America notified Canada of this happening. And people had to go out and clean up the mess in Canada, it was in the territory of Canada. Ultimately, Canada filed, it wasn't a formal claim, it was a, I should have actually put up the papers on it, but they requested reimbursement for the cleanup. And it was pursuant to the liability convention, which is one of the UN treaties, one of the five treaties. Ultimately, they didn't end up using the dispute resolution mechanism, the dispute was resolved amicably, just diplomatically really, between the countries. But it's an interesting example for me because you see a satellite falling out of space, entering the territory of another country, creating a giant mess, which is, which was a nuclear powered satellite. So people actually, so this photo is of individuals looking for radiation, trying to track down where all the debris landed. And the two countries privately basically negotiating a solution. Another example here is Japan. Japan had put out a tender for the purchase of a multifunctional satellite. Number of countries were competing, the European communities in particular felt that the tender wasn't designed, was designed in a way that favored US industries. And so it launched a consultation that the World Trade Organization. So these are the kind of state to state disputes that I've been talking about. The research project that we launched sought to assess specifically what commercial parties are doing. We couldn't find much, at least formal research on this topic. And so we decided to look more carefully at the study of space-related disputes and commercial entities. And so the research project is at McGill University and it seeks to understand which dispute resolution mechanisms will be most prominent for space-related disputes, both current and future. We've got two different streams to the project, but both of the streams currently focus on arbitration. It is the most popular and most widely known dispute resolution mechanism, which has its both and it has pros and cons. But basically the question we're trying to look at is how might arbitration contribute to the resolution of space-related disputes? And there we've got three preliminary results. These are not groundbreaking, but they're still important indicators in terms of where the current industry is. The first result just being that the disputes are increasing and primarily satellite-related disputes that matches what the space industry currently looks like and that makes sense. The disputes involve commercial actors as well as investors, so non-state and state actors. And then we were also able to survey industry respondents and understand what their dispute resolution needs are. So they are looking for processes that are confidential, that are timely, and that have technical expertise throughout the dispute resolution process. But the disputes themselves are not very complicated. So this raises the question of what kinds of disputes we might see in the future. And this is really me setting up the stage, hopefully to talk about these topics further with everyone in discussion. But disputes will involve any combination of space actors, any combination of issues and facts. As I said, the laws are still being determined. And not all space disputes will be very complicated. Some might be, some might not be. And I've identified at least five areas where I think future disputes will come up. The first one involves satellite-related disputes just based on the fact, based on our current research. And knowing that satellite disputes really dominate the industry currently. Future disputes might also involve space debris. So basically man-made objects floating around the earth. 95% of these man-made objects are just space junk. They're in low earth orbit. And I think disputes will come up whether they be environmental or commercial for that matter on this issue. This space resources is another one. I think that's a really interesting one. Last year NASA awarded contracts to four companies to collect space resources and transfer that ownership to NASA itself. And so that's an interesting, I think prototype for what's to come in the future. Forgive me on this one, just so people are thinking along the lines of the wrapper. So first of all, this is just essential information for every citizen of our planet about what we are living into in space and the legal framework. From a computational law perspective, where we're headed is part, I mean, there's relationships to all of these five projections of future dispute types. But in particular, as we think about a commodities exchange and other transactions and things like that, this idea of resource allocation and what, and you could argue all war of our species has been about resource allocation and different opinions about that. But you start getting into questions and wrinkles there when it's not just a government transfer of some kind, but especially when you have public and private parties or private to private, and they've got contracts and transactions and all that stuff. Okay, sorry, right back to you. And I should probably say we do need to take care to make sure Bruce can make some remarks and then we can all talk about what you both said. For sure. So space resources, I think it's important to yes to put an asterisk on it. Spaceflight related accidents, I'm sure people have seen a number of different news articles discussing Virgin, SpaceX, a number of different companies offering tourism opportunities for individuals. Already people who are private citizens have been to space, but this would really mass, would feed up that process and will allow a number of other individuals to also go up in mass, or number of masses to go up, sorry, is what I meant. Space weapons and other interesting, the militarization of space is another interesting field, kind of dodging on resources, weapons, it's more the real policy, I guess, but it is a very important field as well. So I now have in the next three slides just three kind of examples of disputes. This is really to give you a flavor of the types of issues and disputes that might come up. And we will, we can talk about this in discussion. The first one, I'll let you take a quick look at the slide, I won't read it out loud. This is another, as I said, example. So please keep in mind what kinds of issues you spot or what kinds of disputes might come up from this hypothetical. Similarly, we talked about space resources, here's another hypothetical, I'll let you quickly glance through it. Party A is a citizen of country A, party B is a citizen of country B, both parties are licensed. So they have licenses to perform space resource activities in the same celestial body by country A. They have a dispute over the space resources extracted as well as who has rights to those resources remaining in C2. And neither party can afford to stop extraction, right? So how can we imagine what are the types of disputes and the issues that the parties will have to duke out? Similarly, another example on space travel and liability. This one involves public-private partnerships. Again, I'll let you take a quick glance at that and then we'll move on. So I now leave just a stage for the conversation, hopefully, for the discussion. In order to prepare for what's yet to come, I believe that we'll have to design dispute resolution processes and regimes that are responsive to the needs of an emerging space industry. The research that we have so far looks at commercial disputes that are mostly contractual in nature. We need to have a dispute system designed that can ensure effective dispute resolution when disputes do arise. We need to be able to track the development of space law as it plays out and to promote rule of law in outer space. And we need to generate a legal infrastructure and to design one that provides predictability and certainty to space actors and all of their different kinds. And so with this, I'll just leave you with some proposed building blocks. These are by no means unique. They're derived from the field of conflict of law or private international law, but they'll help you think about ideas and places where computational law might be able to assist, let's say legislators or diplomats, negotiators, as well as all the actors who are involved who have a vested interest in this field and who are still working on grounds that are still currently shifting. So the three kind of general areas are just jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition, enforcement. And these raise interesting questions, hopefully for discussion, which we can marry, perhaps, with some of the hypotheticals. And with that, I'll end here. Thank you so much for your attention. It's a pleasure to be here. And I'm looking forward to hearing what's to come. Here, here. Thank you so much, Viva. That was extraordinary. So now that we have some basis in what's going on in space and what sort of legal framework supply and some of the reality about what's the path for disputes and dispute resolution, Bruce Kahan is going to join us to talk about a very specific proposal for a space commodities exchange and open the question of the potential for computational law capabilities such as smart contracts or other automated code base that represents rules, contract provisions, possibly integrations for dispute resolution of various types as well. Bruce is the Ashoka fellow for a social investment entrepreneur and a lecturer at Stanford University. And he's also associated with our friends, who we love very much at Codex. So with that, Bruce, are you able to screen share? I guess is the first practical question. Yeah, give me a second. I will screen show that. Perfect. OK, you're up. You can see that. And I'll make it bigger. And before I do that, I thought I would, in the chat, put some links. I think you may have distributed it to the class, but just in case. These are ongoing webinars concerning a report that I co-authored with Mir Sadat talking about space policy and finance. And I think for those who are interested, it's good grounding. Aviva, that was amazing. As a former wild gotcha lawyer, again, kudos to you for taking an interest in it. I think for the class, remember the background of what was describing were UN treaties born out of the Cold War. And they trace the governing law from whichever state has registered the satellite or other space object. So you end up with a huge conflict of law or choice of law set of questions, which is obviously the specialization in anything in space. Which country am I in on the ISS, on the International Space Station? On one side, you're in Russian law. And on the other side, you're in US law. So this is a presentation I gave in October to the Open GIS Consortium's New Space Workshop in Europe. And I thought, given Das's invitation, it would apply. So enough about me. I do too many things. I teach at Stanford. I have a number of projects, including creating this commodities exchange for space. So I do too many things. Get over it, I'm fine with it. When we were growing up as kids in the 60s, we could imagine not only the trading cards, but actually transacting in space. And it was amazing science fiction. And when many of us look up at the night sky, we see the moon this way. Sometimes we don't see the back of it. But we do see the front of it. Well, US Geological Survey and others who've been expert at mining the Earth see places that would have been impacted by asteroids and other objects and deposited rare earth or other minerals that could be mined. So when you look up, you've got to think, golly, that's a huge set of resources that Earth could use and Earthlings could use. And so what in the world is a recovering Wall Street lawyer, Hong Kong merchant banker, geospatial technology finding its pioneer doing thinking about this stuff? Well, one of the places of conflict I'll suggest is that space is a challenge of two primary economic systems that we've developed on Earth. One is the centrally planned variety, and the other is the hybrid market-based with rule-based economy. And those systems don't necessarily get along nicely on Earth and probably will have points of intersection up in space. So one of the things that I've been championing is could we use a bit of financial engineering, including computational law, to grow the space economy? And a prime example, as you'll see, I hope, is this Kamayothi's exchange. Making money in space is not easy. And you have a lot of risks, and you have very low equity. You don't make money for a long time. You're investing in assets that don't necessarily work, et cetera, et cetera. So you've got to get through those startup kind of expenses, but they are big expenses. For those who are familiar with VC venture capital, there's obviously a lot of folklore around it, but very few startup companies become unicorns and survive five years. So depending on venture-backed money for space, when you've got these assets that are going to be critical infrastructures, not necessarily a viable long-term strategy for government or companies. And here is just the flow of venture capital. On Earth, we've developed various specializations by region for particular types of goods and services. And we could expect that types of specialization to be repeated in space. And there's obviously a competition with rising economic systems like China. Over the course of years, were you an investor and you were putting together a portfolio of assets to hold? You would bury that asset allocation because no one group of assets would be dominant in a particular year. So you have to have, and perhaps this suggests, that space could be an asset allocation. Again, with precious metals, no one particular metal, whether it's platinum or gold or silver, dominates year in and year out. So let's go back to the history of commodities exchange. The Chicago Board of Trade is probably the most well-known. But if you go way back, you see that there was a royal exchange in 1571. There was a rice exchange in Japan in 1710. The Chicago Board of Trade was very much an enabler of the Transcontinental Railroad and what people would put on and receive from the Transcontinental Railroad that moved goods and material from the east to San Francisco, where I am. And historically, commodities exchange transfers risk. And this is very key to the computational wall conversation that we're having. And the modern trading, and we can get into blockchain, but let's move that to the side as a mechanical device for this. Historically, an exchange does a couple of things. It standardizes the commodity that you think you are buying or selling. How do you define it? What's the minimum quality and quantity of it? It standardizes the contract terms. What am I expected to pay? When do I get the livery? What are my rates of recourse? And then it actually creates a secondary asset, meaning the commodity contract is now an asset that can be traded, separate and apart from the commodity itself. So these are the things that exchanges have done over the last 300 years. And it's a very essential function in the economy. We don't really see it that often, but it has tremendous benefits in making transactions fast and dependable in the commodity market. We're seeing a little bit of what happens when that's not so reliable with the GameStop nonsense going on this week. And there are modern dashboards for traders to track. Because in effect, you want to know, well, what's the demand for a given commodity as related to a secondary commodity that it's used with? Or a secondary product that it produces? And knowing where supply and demand meet for space assets is intensely valuable. So you don't over 100 invest in one and lack the other. In doing the research, the revenue of an exchange seems to come more from the data and the value of knowing that supply-demand relationship than the actual transaction fees for putting the contract together and settling it. This is just showing you how variable commodities prices can be. And again, the comparative returns based on the different types of commodity indexes. Space, as Vika was saying, is growing, which is fantastic. But it's not growing predictably. And that's a problem because you do need with long-term assets that you're going to build for space such as ground stations for satellites, you need some predictability so that you're not left holding a dysfunctional asset. Universities like each of ours, Stanford and MIT, have endowments that they invest. And clearly, they might want to have some exposure to the space industry. I've identified five buckets of commodities that could trade on a space commodities exchange. So I'll go through them really quickly. Raw materials, Viva hinted at this with the resources. If I could find lunar rock with water or ice, I can make water out of it. I could make processed goods. I could make oxygen, hydrogen, for fuel. Third bucket would be services. We have a lot of those. We have launch and bandwidth and debris removal coming online. Financial derivatives, you wouldn't think of a financial derivative as a commodity contract, but it actually is. So Das and I can bet on the movement of the interest rates. He can take one side of the bed. I can take the other. Those swaps are very similar to what you could issue for. Does the launch happen or not? And the effect of creating those swaps or other derivatives is to relieve the pressure on the equity raised by a space company that they're holding all that risk. They can externalize and push that risk out into the market to people who enjoy buying risk and don't understand space. And then the fifth bucket are financial indexes. If we decide we want to have a slice of our portfolio, our retirement funds that are invested in the index for lunar commodities, we can buy an index on that. So those are the five commodities. And then this is kind of the most fun I've had with the exchange project is naming the trading symbols for the commodities. So here you see a bit of that. Alperus has fun with that. So launch from Earth to lower orbit of inanimate cargo by kilogram, et cetera. One of the things that this solves potentially for the government, whether it's the US government or other allied nations is typically defense budgets don't get passed on time, which means that the whole supply chain that's depending on those appropriations is in doubt, or being able to buy a commodity at the end of the procurement path would tell people, no, no, no, you're going to get paid for that commodity. This is a very elegant but oversimplified wall chart of the defense federal acquisitions process. Many hundreds of steps. And whether you get through it is not simple or predictable. As compared to there are 23 core principles that the commodity futures trading commission, the CFTC, that regulates exchanges, uses to assure that the rules that are built for the exchange to operate actually end up producing commodities that are delivered. So there's a much simpler and the two processes in terms of our focus on computational law. This is not easy. This is easy. So how would you onboard commodities? We've thought about that. And I've created an acronym called a CRL, a commoditization readiness level. So some of you certainly at MIT would have been exposed to TRLs, technology readiness levels that go from zero to nine. Is it just a technology that works in the lab? Or can you produce it at scale? An MRL, can you manufacture it? You've got it in the lab, but actually can you do it? And deploy an IRL and investor readiness level? And then the interactions of those RLs produce a commoditization readiness level. And the reason I needed a CRL was I need to know how to define the commodity for sale before it's produced so it can be traded. So this is a little bit of how those interrelate. And I know I'm running short on time, so I'm going fast. And then just for those who would ask how you're going to organize this, there's obviously a spectrum for public-private ownership of entities like an exchange. And because we're going really fast, my thought is that we will have the expertise to define each of the five buckets, but that the ownership structure of this exchange, which has to last decades, would be primarily in a trust with some private ownership and membership. But the key piece of this, I think, that interrelates to the topic that we've had is, first, we need the financial engineering for space, not just the technical. Second, the rulebook that the exchange writes for itself and its members to agree to very much comes back to Viva's point, which is let's make people who can agree on how to handle their rights have a forum in which to do so, and then to transact based on that. So the rulebook, which I've not emphasized in this presentation, is incredibly important. And it qualifies who can be a member of the exchange and whether you trust them to buy and sell, and that gets into some international relations and conflict avoidance issues. So anyway, with that, I'm going to stop sharing and open it up to questions. And I know we stop at the top of the hour. So I hope that was OK. That was amazing. The chat has really been very active, and we've got a back chat. In fact, I'm so enthused by your remarks. I've decided just to take a trip to Mars for a moment and get in the spirit of the discussion to come. And in that spirit, we want to say that anyone that needs to leave at 1 PM Eastern understood. However, we have had some back talk, and many of us that are offering the class are able to stay another 10 minutes. And I want to ask it so I'd like to invite those that would like to continue the discussion to stay 10 more minutes. And let me just ask right now, Viva and or Bruce can wonder if both of you remain 10 minutes. No pressure. Honestly, I can't. I have to get on with Apple at the top of the hour. But people, let me put my email in the chat so folks can feel free to email anytime. Great. So the first question that we have, oh, I'm sorry. Tammy, would you like to pose the questions please? Let's start with one of the questions you have to leave. So I can get it started. Brian, you listening asks, what resources are there for doing due diligence research on satellites? And I might expand that for extra credit to other space-based resources. So I think the due diligence is a couple of four. First, given the international nature of space and given the sensitivity for national security, which you'll certainly read about in the report that I posted for you all, we need to know where every part and every piece of software came from. That's an essential piece of business. And it shouldn't be left for the end of the story. It needs to be embedded. Second, with the commodities exchange, you get an enormous amount of data validation for the commodity complying with the definition of its type. And so one way to organize the diligence for purposes of trading is to have a registry of who can trade and what they can trade. And to let the experts in, let's say that in order or the debris removal, define the technologies and proofs that need to be embedded before the commodity can be offered for sale. So that would standardize not only the diligence, but as importantly, the interoperability of one commodity with a second. I mean, the worst thing that would be is you get a USB-A plug and a USB-C recharger in space and they can't fit together. I can't get that back from Mars that way or Matt Damon next to him. So I need to make sure that there's not only legal interoperability, but there needs to be practical, technical interoperability. Interoperability always is a question not just to technology, but there's business and process interoperability. There's legal interoperability, in fact. So, Viva, we wanted to pose the same question to you. Did you have any talks about due diligence? Or I know when we were prepping for the lecture, we were thinking about almost like legal framework is preventative law before we get to disputes. What can we learn upfront to maybe structure things? And is due diligence part of that? Or what do you think? Yeah, no. So firstly, I would just, this is more, I see some comments on registries. And I would just say that there is a registration convention and every object that goes into outer space is supposed to be registered. It's not always followed. And I can share the link for that. And you can actually, it's really fun. You can look up literally everything or a lot of things. Sorry, they're not all of them. That have been launched. And I think that kind of shows what the drafters of these conventions were thinking about before, especially during the Cold War. But even now, I think it's an important way to give notification and for actors to know what is going to go to outer space. And I think that could probably be the start of other due diligence. When we talk about interoperability, how can commodities, how can something that's going, let's say there's a probe that's being put up on X asteroid that has to be launched from somewhere. It has to be launched from Earth, usually. Initially, at least it has to be launched from Earth. After that, perhaps there's something in outer space that can serve as a launching pad for other locations. But how can we monitor what goes up and what comes down is something that the drafters have thought about, which I think is worth underscoring. In terms of future, I mean, I think it'll be interesting to see. I agree with Bruce. I mean, interoperability will be one of those things. I think some standardization may come from contracts themselves. It might be that, for example, a space exchange, a future space exchange has certain rules that all traders have to follow, including a clause that is a standardized clause that just in order to participate on the exchange, you have to do, and that helps with the due diligence. But a lot of interoperability issues will have to kind of navigate how states have been operating and how these new space actors, how they are going to be playing a role in this new economy. And I don't quite know how that will pan out. I think it'll be interesting. Sorry, I'm also getting distracted by the comments. They are terrific. And so just to help us organize everything, we're going to rely on TMA to be the spokesperson of the peoples. Thanks, Dazza. Bruce, I don't know if it's time for a very quick last question, but Antonio asked whether or not Russia, you see Russia as being part of the space economy and what the legal treatment for Russia should be? I think you have to ask the State Department to be really petty here. The exchange itself would have some rules and there will be nation states that cannot or will choose not to meet those rules, particularly around transparency and around accountability. So I'm not the UN. The UN is the UN. There are space treaties the UN has written that have not been adopted by certain states and that kind of speaks for itself in terms of what to do with certain states who choose to go it along. So folks, I apologize. Thank you so much for letting me participate in the class. I've got a bounce, but I'm open to any questions and Dazza knows where I live on earth so far. Great, thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. Have a great weekend. Thank you. Bye. And I'm also gonna have to jump off. So just thanks to everybody for participating and email me if you have any questions about projects and looking forward to seeing what we can put together with all of them. Thanks, Brian. So maybe we can ask, we have one more question and then we can wrap it up for today. So Anya asked, I'm gonna broaden Anya's question a little bit. So thank you, Anya, for letting me take, Anya, for letting me take liberties with your question, but would you presume that any computational contract or rules in addition to distributed ledger technologies like blockchain would be more appropriate for commoditization of space? And if so, would an exchange tradeable fund be a potential financial instrument to start with? I mean, okay, so I'm not an expert in this field. I think computational law offers an opportunity to not make the mistakes of the past and it offers an opportunity to think outside the box. So to the extent that we can focus on issues that come up that are repeated issues, to the extent these are technical issues, I think computational law can help with that. And the idea of the hypotheticals was to give people a chance to think about what kinds of disputes or issues are technical, that can be automated, that can be crowdsourced, that can be standardized really and what kinds of issues will require secondary tertiary forms of thinking about them, which overlap with, we've already touched on it, right? Political issues, military issues, we haven't even gotten, I mean, there's environmental issues. So not every, I mean, for the commodities exchange, right? I think it's also really important to think about the big picture and not just think of resources that will be traded in the future, but also learn from the lessons of how the trade of resources has raised legal and ethical issues for nations that have been left out of the conversation. And so I think talking specifically about contracts and ways to simplify those, I think we should absolutely do it. But I think we should also think about, there are limits to computational law. At some point, certain things cannot only be passed on to automation. Some things will require cooperation and standardization. And then the question is, how do we do that? And how do we agree to what the rules of the games are gonna, what will be the rules to the game? And that's where everything in many ways breaks down. And I appreciate the question on Russia as well. You know, countries may do their own thing and that's what Russia does and has done and America will do its thing. And then you have parallel systems. And in fact, you do have plugs that look differently and you have to bring a thing with you at all times. So I think my answer is, I know it's a bit broader than what's asked, but I think it's really important to focus on what are technical issues, that computational law, that smart contracts, that automation, that blockchain can help with and what are the issues that will require bigger, will require perhaps more thinking, more cooperation? And what will the standardization bodies be? So this is an open question that I think is still being negotiated. So I will stop looking at the chat, but I'll end there. Dazza, Dazza, it looks like you've got- I did, if I may just- Please join in. Thanks, just to, I hope, you know, catalyze thinking from any of the students that are in the class now, any of the speakers in the class or any of the people out in the land of the internet that may be hearing this later, you know, they'll probably imagine that there may be some phases, like we may have this kind of stage and phase the eventual adoption and adoption of general standards and formal standards. In between now, when there's a lot of bilateral things and maybe a few little multilateral things with the commercial space and everything, and then that, you know, kind of globalist standardization, there may be, are there opportunities that you could imagine where alliances or federations or other ongoing, repeatable, continuous multilateral, maybe contract and other legal framework-based voluntary systems could begin to find what the best practices are, which may be right for codification as a standard. And what could that look like? And what would your job description be in that? And who could hire you? Or how can you get that funded? And how do we build it? Anyway, those are some questions I would love to tantalize you all with. I love that. I actually had a thought to just one quick thought. I feel like what you said, Viva, about how there are certain technical issues, but then also these like cooperation and human thinking issues that we're gonna have to eventually resolve, makes me feel like there may be new legal frameworks that we're gonna have to think up that are better suited for codification of these rules. And perhaps what we already have, it's kind of like the point about the economy, as we might not have an economic system that is currently suitable for space, but thinking about these questions will eventually reveal possibilities that we just haven't thought of yet. So anyway, do you guys have any more thoughts before we close up? I think I would just add, I think it's really important to think about the system that we would like and learn from the past. And I think this is why I mentioned how might we use, I see computational law as a tool, there are also other tools that are out there. And how might we design a new system? And of course it will be a competition for the best idea. Standardization bodies will adopt what works and what has been adopted. And so in a way, we all have an opportunity to think about these bigger questions and propose solutions that hopefully can be part of the answer going forward, maybe not this year, but definitely in the next few decades where we see the economy growing, there is opportunity, there's a lot of good that's come from space. So these are just big picture questions that I hope to leave with you. Thank you for the invitation, Daza. It's been a pleasure. I really like this class. I, you know, it's really nice to be talking to some of you and learning about things that people are interested in as well. You're here. We all wanna thank you so much as well for putting together that kind of grounding presentation and being such a good sport to just co-think with us some of the implications and new directions. And just to be absolutely clear, we do this every year. You're always welcome here, my fellow legal hacker. Good. And so with that, it is that time now. We are going to wrap up the class and that is also wrapping up the last live session for the 2021 edition of the MIT IAP computational law course. And so on behalf of the team and on behalf of MIT, I wanna thank you all from all around the world who've come and brought your A game and helped co-create with us what the course has become. And we will be following up as we always do with an email wrapping up and providing the links and the slide decks and even the videos. So you can relive the great times and moments of this class into the future and share it out. And with more information for those of you that are going to be submitting your class projects along the lines of what Brian said. And last but not least, while this is an end, it's only the end of the beginning. So an invitation to our last Friday of the month, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern time, computational law community building call. And we hope that you will join us for that if you're a participant in this class in any role or capacity you are invited. So with that, thanks again, everybody. And we hope that you enjoyed this class as much as we did. Bye-bye.