 It's one o'clock. I'm going to end it. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Victoria Samson. I'm the Washington Office Director at the Secure World Foundation. The Secure World Foundation is a private operating foundation that focuses on the long term, sustainable use of outer space. We push for best practices and norms of behavior to make sure that space is accessible to and usable for all the long term. So today's conversation in 10 years of the Wolf Amendment, assessing effects and outcomes. In April 2011, Congress passed the Wolf Amendment to put speed bumps in front of possible cooperation with China in space and reaffirmed the policy annually in subsequent legislation. 10 years later, sufficient time has passed to ask, did it accomplish what it set out to do? In order to understand how this legislation has shaped US national interest in activities, Secure World Foundation is hosting a discussion that looks at the original intent of the legislation, how it has evolved, presents US experiences and carrying out its requirements, examine consequences of legislation, and analyze as possible, pass forward for engagement with China in space. So just really quickly, we have a fantastic group here, but I'm gonna go to the next slide, please. Just wanna have this title here, how to turn on closed captions. Basically, it's a pretty easy process. Step one, find the closed caption button, click it. Step two, click on show subtitles, and we have a live closed caption here who we're very happy to have here and should be able to do the work for us. Next slide, please. Can you go back to the question? Thank you. So all of our panelists, our keynote speaker and our panel have agreed to take questions. We're really excited about that. So you can start thinking about questions you may wanna ask and start submitting them, even as I speak. So how to ask questions, step one, find the Q and A button and click it. You may wanna upvote, and then if your question isn't there already, put your question in the space, and we'll try and get through as many as we can before. All right, next slide, please. So just a really quick background before we go into our keynote presentation. Basically, the first question is, well, what is the Wolf Amendment? In April, 2011, the 112th U.S. Congress, with speed numbers in front of OSTP, the Office of Science Technology Policy of the White House, and NASA, if they wanted to engage with violent agreements in coordination with China. As stated, the legislation read at that point, none of the funds made available by this division may be used by NASA or the OSTP to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement, or execute a bilateral program, policy order, or contract of any kind. To participate, collaborate, coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company, unless such activities are specially, specifically authorized by law enacted after the date of the Actors Division. And the limitation also applies to funds used to affect the hosting of official Chinese visitors at facilities belonging to or utilized by NASA. So that's what the law said in 2011. Each year, it gets passed in subsequent legislation and it's modified a little bit through time. The most recent version of the 2021 version really just really quickly. It's basically the same thing. None of the funds made available by the staff may be used for NASA, OSTP. They've since added the National Space Council, so that's been restarted again. Again, to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement, or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company, unless the activities are specifically authorized by law. None of these funds made available may be used to effectuate the hosting of official Chinese visitors at any facilities belonging to or utilized by NASA. And there's the subclass limitations, shall not apply to activities which NASA, OSTP, or NSC, after consultation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation have certified one. Pose no risk of resulting in a transfer of technology, data, or other information with national security or economic security implications to China or a Chinese-owned company. And two, will not involve knowing interactions with officials who have been determined by the United States to have direct involvement with violations of human rights. And then the final clause, any certification made under that shall be submitted to the committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives in the Senate and the Federal Bureau of Investigation no later than 30 days prior to the activity in question and shall include a description of the purpose of the activity, its agenda, its major participants, its location and timing. So again, I just wanted you to set the stage properly. It's not a ban necessarily, but it does require pre-notifying Congress and vetting partners. And so that's why we've been describing it as a speed bump. Looking back at some of the language of the original sponsor, Representative Frank Wolf, Virginia, what was it intended to do? What were the main goals at that point? Definitely, there's an interest in punishing the Chinese for human rights violations, also for cyber attacks on U.S. and its institutes. There is a concern about using it to keep the Chinese instilling, whether it's U.S. intellectual property or military technology. There's an interest in not helping the Chinese developing its space capabilities, specifically keeping them out of the space station. At that point, it did not officially, it did it for restricting bilateral, not multilateral meetings and placed no restrictions on activities involving individual Chinese nationals unless they were acting as official representatives of the Chinese government. And I think in general, I think it's fair to say it's response to gaps, whether real or perceived in coordination between Congress and NASA. So with that brief opening, I'd like to point out that we have a fantastic conversational keynote like it started. This would try to get my notes up. Charles Frank Bolden Jr. is a major general retired of the United States Marine Corps. He was astronaut retired before he flew on four space shuttle missions. And of course, former administrator of NASA from 2009 to 2017. He is currently founder and CEO emeritus of the Charles of Bolden Group LLC. As NASA administrator, administrator Bolden director of the transition from 30 years of space shuttle missions to a new era in the use of the space station and space aeronautics technology development. Under his direction, the agency developed the Space Launch System Rocket SLS and Orion spacecraft to carry astronauts to deep space destinations such as asteroids and moon and Mars and also established a new space technology mission directorate to develop cutting edge technologies. I could probably spend a good chunk of the hour describing his background by wonks. I'm anxious to have him speak. So Mr. Bolden, can you please talk a little bit about your trips, you know, looking back, your trips to China prior to the Wolf Amendment and maybe your early goals when you first became NASA administrator and engaging with the Chinese? Yeah, I think, thanks very much, Victoria. First of all, for inviting me to be a part of this organization this day. Let me go back if I can. And I think everything you said is very accurate. But if we go back to the very beginning what brought about the Wolf Amendment, President Obama had two initiatives that he really wanted to push. One was Muslim outreach. And both of these initiatives caused the administration quite a bit of turmoil. Muslim outreach was one, I did that when I went to the Middle East and we established relationships with what the president described as non-traditional partners. So countries like the UAE that now has a, you know, and Mars orbiter and now can big player in the family of space-faring nations. But the other initiative was to have me travel to China to meet with representatives of the Chinese Space Agency and evaluate the feasibility of working cooperatively with them in human space life because we had a very strong interest in bringing them to the International Space Station, not making them a member of the partners of the International Space Station, but just allowing them to participate in the research that was going on because I for one was concerned that if we did not open the door to the Chinese, they, because they had a 50 year program in place. They had a plan for 50 year development of their space program that they would go off without us because they didn't, you know, economically or any other way, they didn't really need us. And that over time, they would probably begin to attract some of our partners. And so that was my fear at the time. Before I went, met with Congressman Wolf because he was the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee responsible for NASA funding. And he asked me not to go. In fact, he told me not to go. I reminded him that I work for the president and that, you know, my direction came from the president but that we would do whatever he needed for us to do before we went and when we returned. And that was where the stipulation came out prior to the Wolf Amendment that we meet with the intelligence organizations, get briefs, assure them of what we were gonna do and that we would not violate any of the safeguards that later became a part of the Wolf Amendment. We did all that. We traveled, I took Bill Gerstenmeier who was the head of the human spaceflight program at the time, Peggy Whitson who was the chief of the astronaut office. And we spent about a week traveling through China. We went from Beijing to Shanghai out to their Gobi Desert Launch Site for all their human missions and pretty much had open access to everything that they had. At the time they were working on Tianggong, their first space station. So they allowed us to get into the module to take a look at it, to look into the capsule that was in development at the time to carry their crews and one of the highlights was actually meeting the first two women that had been selected to be Chinese astronauts. They were mesmerized by meeting with Peggy Whitson. She was a legend there and everybody knew who she was. So, but the highlight of the trip for all of us was to go to the Gobi Desert to the launch site and actually have an opportunity to look at their capabilities. It was not much unlike the Kennedy Space Center. A lot of the systems that they use were sort of like we did, although they had a much better underground facility for long-term stays in the event of a, some catastrophe at the launch site, but that's neither here nor there. We came back and our recommendation, we went in and gave a report to Congressman Wolfe, gave him a complete and thorough report of what we had done, what we had seen and people with whom we had met. He said that he appreciated all that but he was going to make us an OSTP pay. And so he actually reduced significantly the OSTP budget that year. He did not do anything to NASA's budget other than putting in what became known as the Wolfe Amendment, the amendment and the budget that limited bilateral activities. It turned out that it really did not limit to any great extent anything that we were able to do with the Chinese aeronautics in science or in any other field except for human spaceflight. And so when we say the Wolfe Amendment 10 years on, did it accomplish its purpose? If you look at what was Congressman Frank Wolfe's purpose, which was to try to isolate the Chinese into more closely abiding with our norms in human rights, it did not accomplish its purpose at all. If we're looking at slowing their program or keeping them from developing a space program, it did not do that at all. So I think whatever its purposes were, it did not end up doing any of that because we already had safeguards in place to keep them from getting our technology. We were limiting the access on the part of students who came to China. We were working with intelligence communities and everybody else. So I think unfortunately what it has done has caused us to now be on the outside looking at as China presses forward with their 50 year space program and doing things that some people say they're moving at an incredible pace. I think they're moving at the pace that they set way back in 2010. So nothing that they do surprises me. They're just doing everything they said they were gonna do. Okay, thank you. Going back to when your goals as administrator was any interest at that point in doing human space flight cooperation with China? Maybe bring them onto the space station or anything like that? That was the intent. The intent of the trip was to, from NASA's perspective, was to travel to see technologically were they up to speed, you know, could we bring them on? Could we bring them to the International Space Station? Did they have the capability of getting there on their own without us having to provide any technology? And we became very comfortable because their systems were not that much unlike the Russian Soyuz and the like. We actually took the plans for the autonomous docking system, what we call the international docking standards because we wanted, we were hoping that they in the design of their space of their human capsule that they would design in a docking mechanism that would be compatible with what we had on the International Space Station. So that if at some time in the future we were able to reach an agreement where they would fly a Chinese astronaut to the International Space Station, they wouldn't have to go through the process of trying to figure out, you know, how do you dock with a vehicle that's not the same system as ours? And so whether or not they adopted our design concepts or not, I do not know. My guess is they did or my hope is that they did because we were looking at any number of things like the fact that at some point we may need their help for rescue of a crew or we may need their help. You know, the America's human spaceflight program exists today or still is sustained today because we went for about 10 years depending on the Russians. We didn't want to do that, but the Columbia accident forced us to go that route. And so we were able to continue to operate and on the International Space Station while shuttle was not flying. And we were able to complete the International Space Station pretty much on time about a year late because we were able to use the Russian Soyuz to get crews to the station while we use shuttle to transport the work crews. So, but those are the kinds of things that we were looking at. And that's the reason we took Bill Verstenmeier and Peggy Whitson because they were the technical experts, not me. And you know, they evaluated the systems that they had and said, hey, it looks like Soyuz to me. And so we can work with that. And we came back and began to work with, you know, with the National Security Council and other organizations to draft the language that would go into an agreement. And we worked on that for the balance of the two terms of the Obama administration. And several times we thought we were almost there. We essentially took Crafted use as a template, the agreement that we had worked with the Russians for bringing them into the International Space Station program, you know, kind of substituting China or taking out Russian, putting in China. We thought that would work for us. And you said it didn't really, in terms of how NASA functioned, it didn't really affect it too much. But were there any times where NASA just said, okay, this is worth it enough for us. We're gonna put on the request. We're gonna let Congress know. We're gonna ask them to vet possible partners. Of course they'd do anything, was there any, and you know, can you describe a little bit if that was the case, what that process was like or there's any burden involved there? Yeah, we never went back to them to request permission to do any, or not permission, because it wasn't permission to get the agreement that it was okay to do human space flight. But there were a number of initiatives in terms of aviation safety. We were working with the, you know, the US FAA. We worked with the Chinese equivalent of the FAA, which is really the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force. So we worked with the Chinese government in trying to put in place some of the new systems of air traffic management and air traffic control because it turned out that China was always the bottleneck in transportation to and from Asia because of old systems that they had, safety and ground movement at airports, safety and just movement back and forth in their air traffic system. So we went to the Congress and said, hey, we're meeting with them and we wanna help them with this. We went to Congress when they flew Shangga, I forget which number it was, Shangga 3 or whatever, which was their first lunar lander that was gonna have a rover in it. So we went and briefed the Congress that we were gonna provide landing site data from our missions to them so that they, to help them select a landing site. We did that. We provided landing imagery once they were on the surface and even imagery of their rover as it came out of the lander. We worked collaboratively with them in a program called severe, which is a multilateral program. So we didn't really have a problem there, but we did have to have bilateral meetings with Chinese in areas like looking at earthquakes. And we worked in particular with them in a project that was looking at glacial characterization in the Himalayas as a part of a program called severe, where it was Chinese and American scientists working together. So for a period of time, we worked very well with them in mainly in the science but also somewhat in the aviation safety arena. And we sponsored a Chinese aviation safety person to head up the International Safety Council and EFAR I think was the name of the International Federation for Aviation Regulation or something like that. I forget what the acronym stood for, but we actually sponsored a Chinese to become president of that organization. And he was elected and served a term and did a pretty good job in it. Thank you. Before I ask my next question, just a reminder to the audience that Mr. Bolden will be taking questions. If you have any place to submit them, we'll try and get them through them. Going back to the Wolf Amendment, did it affect having in your experience, did it affect having Chinese nationals at NASA facilities or NASA conferences? It did initially because we overreacted. And if you're looking wikipedia, they will cite an incidence where I forget which conference it was, but we had a conference at Ames Research Center and they denied access to any Chinese participants in the conference. And I actually think it was Congressman Wolf who came out and said, look, this is not what we intended. So if you can vet these people, we're fine with them participating, it's just you can't spend any money to make their participation possible. But it didn't stop them from participating, but it really began to slow things because it was not just Congressman Wolf and his committee in the House, there were people inside the State Department even inside the National Security Council who were not exactly China fans. And so the State Department would slow you on visas. So even when you briefed the Congress and you got the authorization, sometimes we weren't able to get Chinese here in time to participate because they were slow on visa approval. Yeah, I believe it. Question, do you have any ideas of what the ISS partners may have thought about the Wolf Amendment? Did you ever, I don't know if that's something that they would have spoken with you about it? Yeah, we talked about it all the time. And what we did was we encouraged, because they weren't subject to the Wolf Amendment, we encouraged partners to work with China to the greatest extent possible. And Samantha Christofareti, who is one of the Italian astronauts who actually flew on the International Space Station and is getting ready to fly again early next year. Samantha actually, the Italians in the Chinese worked a deal where she actually went and trained for the potential of flying to the Chinese Space Station Chow Dong. It turned out it didn't work out for the Italians. And so she never flew, but she actually trained with them and was prospectively going to fly with them. So we encouraged the international partners to work with China because they weren't restricted. So had we ever been able to get over the hump, we would not have had a problem at all getting Chinese clearance to come aboard the International Space Station to service crew members. Great, well, it's good, let's go. I could probably ask questions for a while, but I know our audience is anxious to get some thoughts into you. There's one from Justin Kurt saying, you know, suppose the Wolf Amendment could be changed to allow for more coordination. What sort of opportunities for norm building do you think the US would seek to engage with China on? And Daniel Poros is one that's kind of related could repeal the Wolf Amendment to be used as a carrot to get China to join efforts to develop norms. This goes back to the debate that Congressman Wolf, and by the way, Congressman Wolf is a dear friend. I have the utmost respect for him. I think the thing that a lot of people didn't understand about Congressman Wolf was his passion for human rights. He has probably spent more time in China and Myanmar and other places like that than any other living American. But he had a very strong bilateral bipartisan group, Barbara Boxer, Senator, almost all the Senator, a number of members of the Senate and the House who were passionate civil rights, civil liberties advocates and human rights advocates. And so that was his driving motivation. It was interesting, we thought when he left the House and Congressman Wilk, Congressman Colbertson took over the committee that the backing for the Wolf Amendment might wane, but we found Congressman Colbertson was even worse because he was paranoid about the Chinese. And he didn't want us to fly any equipment that had Chinese components on the International Space Station and he didn't want us to take anything to the International Space Station that had come from China and the like. So at least Congressman Wolf was passionate for a purpose, a real strong belief. We never did figure out what it was about Congressman Colbertson that made him object other than the fact that he just did not like China. I understand, or we're getting close on time, but looking ahead, where do you see the US-China relationship evolving in space? And is the Wolf Amendment gonna be a continued part of this? Or as you said, it wasn't a huge factor for NASA. So is it just something that, is it more optical? What sort of engagements do you think might be possible in the future? Well, I'm not a prognosticator, but in reading what people think are the hopes for the Biden administration, I haven't seen anybody that expresses any optimism that there's gonna be any change in the enthusiasm of the Biden administration trying to normalize relations with China from the standpoint of human spaceflight. I tell people all the time that human spaceflight is a unique ability to conduct soft power. And I always say that NASA is maybe not the number one soft power tool of the United States, but it's definitely number two next to the State Department and a little bit ahead of the Department of Defense, believe it or not. But when you can work for 20 plus years with Russia and never leave the International Space Station, no matter what's going on down here on the ground, then that says something about the value of that bilateral relationship. So there will be people who would disagree with me on there, everybody's wondering, what's gonna happen to the International Space Station and the crews if the Russians challenge President Biden and go into your crane like they did Crimea, that remains to be seen. But when they went into Crimea, we were able to be nuanced in our foreign policy and understand that you don't throw out the baby with the bath water and that we found ways to continue to work to put sort of a, President Obama and President Putin sort of put a bubble around the International Space Station so that it was never a subject of sanctions or never, there were people who wanted to consider it in sanctions, but we never violated that bubble and we continued the diplomatic relation, the space diplomatic relationship that we have with the Russians. And my hope would be that at some point along the way, hopefully in my lifetime, we'll begin to find a way to be nuanced enough in our relationship with China that we do the same thing. Well, I think that's a fantastic note and this portion on, thank you, Mr. Rebold, it's really fascinating hearing your insights. I think I'd like to move on now to the panel, but Mr. Rebold has said he'll stick around for the Q and A portion of that as well. So if you have more questions for him, you can ask him at that point. Thank you. Moving on to our first speaker on our panel, McKenna Young. McKenna is an associate fellow with the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies or CSIS. Her research interests include international collaboration, space security and orbital debris. Prior to joining us CSIS, McKenna worked for the FAA as an aerospace engineer focusing on automatic dependent surveillance broadcast certification and integration in small aircraft. McKenna, floor is yours. And again, we'll be, as I said before, we'll be taking Q and A later on. Please feel free to submit questions, but please submit them to the Q and A and not the chat. Thank you very much. All right, McKenna. Thanks just to hear your thoughts. Thank you so much, Victoria. I believe my video is off. If the host could turn that back on, that would be wonderful. But I can get going here. I wanted to thank you again and Administrator Bolden and Secure World Foundation for hosting this event. I'm so happy to be involved and a part of this conversation with such an incredible panel. So Victoria and Administrator Bolden gave a wonderful, there we go. Wonderful overview of the Wolf Amendment language. And I just wanted to, you know, second that the language doesn't literally bar collaboration. There are methods of collaborating with the Chinese in space, but it makes it extremely difficult and it certainly discourages it by jumping through all of these hoops to work with this particular country. Representative Wolf retired just three years after the amendment was introduced and the effects have created a decade long divide in the civil space domain between these two superpowers. And it does not seem to have made any grand political strides like Administrator Bolden pointed to. And rather it's pushed China to become even more of a rival to the US in space. It's further pushed collaboration away, especially scientific collaboration which can help everyone learn more about space and who we are. And possibly this happened more than what Representative Wolf initially intended. As was mentioned, Chinese scientists were unable to participate in conferences, held at NASA facilities and it became really a much greater divide than was initially intended, I believe. And it hasn't worked that well. We have not seen these desired changes in human rights policies because of this amendment. China's global influence has continued to grow rather rapidly in just about every single domain, including space. Being left out of these US-led missions does not discourage the Chinese in space. Rather, it's almost propelled them to make their own programs and missions to rival those in the US. I know some of my fellow panelists will speak more to these specific capabilities, but an example is the ISS International Space Station. Without a way to contribute, China began to develop and test their own module space stations to create their own environment for humans in low-earth orbit. They have two test beds right now that have been launched in 2011 and 2016 to test out this permanent space station with the ISS approaching its retirement pretty soon. Other countries that support this long-term human presence in low-earth orbit may be interested in participating and partnering with China on their space station instead of partnering with us in our ISS that may be going down pretty soon. It's been pretty interesting to see how they have just continued to create their own programs that rival ours. Similarly, as NASA enters its new era of exploration with its Moon to Mars projects, it touts international collaboration as a really integral part of these plans. The Artemis program and similarly Artemis Accords are very reliant on international cooperation to sustain the Artemis Accords in particular. NASA is very proud of, they describe a shared vision for existing in space together as civil space agencies. Over a dozen countries to date have become signatories and others have indicated interest as well. But closing China off from cooperating in these projects could be a really big strategic mistake. If we can't come together to at least sign on to some basic norms of operation, I think that's a really big missed opportunity. And as China continues to grow as a space power, US cooperation and collaboration in some of these space projects, it's a real missed opportunity of understanding the goals and the capabilities of their space programs. Further, it would establish avenues of communication and trust between the two nations that could be mutually beneficial. Collaborating with non-allied countries in space is not a foreign concept to NASA or the US. It was proven to be very successful actually with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And it's continued to this day with Russia. So the fact that this break with Chinese trust in space is pretty jarring considering the relationship we've been able to sustain with Russia over the past few decades. The space domain is unique and it is so far removed from the ground that a lot of these diplomatic relationships are able to sustain regardless of the geopolitical tensions happening a couple of miles down. And as administrator Bolden mentioned, we have worked collaboratively with them a few times in the last decade, particularly we were able to document the landing of the Chinese rover on the far side of the moon. While this was not a groundbreaking collaboration, it sets a good precedent for trust-building that we can work together in space safely and securely. Particularly also Chinese, the Chinese commercial sector is growing. They are promising really extensive launch services that are at a low lucrative price for foreign entities. So there are many avenues for our fellow allies to collaborate with China in space. And the fact that we are not interested is a pretty big missed opportunity in my opinion. So to sum it all up, in my opinion, the Wolf Amendment has neither discouraged Chinese space ambitions or altered China's behavior on these human rights issues. It's only muddled our relationship with China and created a pretty wide opening for a challenger to rival NASA's historic leadership role in space exploration. These provisions are not needed to protect our technology. And they almost suggest that China is the only country that we need to be worried about with this technology threat. And that is simply not the case. The Wolf Amendment continues to serve only to stifle mutually beneficial cooperation for science and exploration. Thank you. Thank you, McKenna. That really laid out the case, I think, very thoroughly about weaknesses of the Wolf Amendment and what it actually was not able to accomplish. So thank you very much for that. I feel obligated to point out as a secure world employee. McKenna brought up commercial space for China and my colleague Ian Christensen has been doing some groundbreaking research on looking at the Chinese commercial space sector. I would encourage those who are interested to look at. And I also feel obligated to support and promote the excellent work McKenna's been doing in CSIS in general on counter space threat assessment. They put out a fantastic global counter space threat assessment that secure world is happy to coordinate with ours as well. And yeah, I think McKenna has been very involved in it and been doing great work on the Russia part as well, I believe. So looking forward to continuing to collaborate with you on that. All right, thank you, McKenna. Moving on to our next speaker. We have Kevin Paul-Peter of CNA. Kevin Paul-Peter is a research scientist in the CNA China Studies Division. He is an internationally recognized expert on China's space program and is widely published on Chinese national security issues focusing on Chinese military modernization, China's defense industry and Chinese views on information warfare. Kevin, the floor is yours and I do believe you have a PowerPoint right so we should be in a second. Okay, thank you, Victoria and thank you to the Secure World Foundation for organizing this. Been asked today to talk a little bit about China's space program and I'm also gonna add in a little bit about US-China relations because I think that also affects how we view the Wolf Amendment. Just as a disclaimer, these are my own views and should not be regarded as representing the opinions of CNA or any of your sponsors. And I think you'll sort of hear the same drum beat that Administrator Bolden and McKenna had talked about but if you could advance the slide for me. And looking at sort of evaluating China's space program one way to do it is just a simple way is just to look at the number of launches that they've conducted and it's really truly amazing the amount of progress that China has made since let's say the 1990s up until now. In mid 1990s China was conducting just a few space launches and those that were launched had a tendency to explode had a terrible failure rate. They could not, international customers were afraid to launch their satellites or launch their satellites on Chinese rockets and what happened with some illegal technology transfer from US corporations as well as widespread reforms within the Chinese space industry they've really been able to turn around their launch system. And you can see here that since 2010 they've been pretty much in the ballpark with competing with the United States on the number of launches. And more of a more importantly they've really upped the reliability whereas in the 1990s they may be had a reliability of somewhere in the low 70%. Now China's there at the sort of international standard of around 95% reliability. So they have come really a long way in both the quality of the rockets of ensuring that they're safe and reliable as well as the sheer amount of launch numbers. If you could advance the slide. Yeah, so what we've seen then with the launch with the increasing launch rate is that the number of satellites in orbit for China has just really dramatically increased. And so at the end of 2020 China had over 400 satellites in orbit second most behind the United States which I think at about that time had between 1100 and 1200 satellites. So the US is still very much in the lead but the PRC is catching up quick. And here we see this just dramatic increase in the number of satellites. China right now has just about every type of satellite. If you could go back, there we go, thank you. Just has about every type of satellite that a country could possibly want. They've established a global 24 hour all weather earth remote sensing system. They have a global satellite navigation system similar to the US GPS system. They've launched missions to the moon. They've landed two rovers on the moon. They've had a lunar sample return mission. They've conducted a mission to Mars that orbited, landed a lander and then also a rover. So they've really just been achieving outstanding progress and not to mention human space flight. China has conducted a number of manned and unmanned missions since 1999. Eight of those have been manned flights. They have launched two small, what they call space laboratories of around eight tons. They right now have a more permanent long-term, I should say, a space station, a 20 ton Tien Ha that they're going to attach two other 20 ton modules for a 60 ton space station. So still smaller, much smaller than the ISS but nevertheless a good step forward. And so China's really made some substantial progress. And in fact, General David Thompson just recently, he's the vice chief of space operations for the US Space Force has said that China is accelerating twice the rate of innovation or twice as fast as accelerating their space program as the US is. And right now what the Chinese say is that they are probably the third leading space power, that they are behind Russia and the United States but they are absolutely coming on strong. Next slide, please. One other thing that I think we also need to keep in mind as we evaluate the Wolf Amendment is just the overall tenor of the US-China relationship. And I think it's safe to say that in the past 10 years the relations have really taken a turn for the worse. And there are now concerns of an emerging Cold War between the US and China. I think relations are probably at their worst now since the 1960s. Here in the US, I think there's a view probably across nearly all constituencies that China has become more aggressive and less politically and economically open and that China has become a strategic competitor of the United States. So when Chinese leader Xi Jinping says, make statements like it is for the people of Asia to run the affairs of Asia or that the Pacific Ocean is vast enough to accommodate China and the United States. What many in the US hear is that this is really code words for China wanting to dictate what happens in Asia and let the United States sort of have everything to, if you slice the Pacific Ocean into, the United States gets everything on the eastern side and China gets everything sort of dictates what happens on the western side. And of course, in regards to human rights there's been crackdowns in Xinjiang against the Uyghur Muslims. And of course in Hong Kong, restricting democracy and voting rights there. And then we've had a steady drumbeat of military intense military coercion against Taiwan. The PRC view on the other hand is probably just as dire and they see themselves in an existential conflict with the US. They're accusing the US of trying to foment a color revolution in China. And they argue that the US plays a destabilizing role in the world affairs that is intended to restrict China's rise as a world power. Now, one of the reasons why people are saying this is an emerging cold war is that we've had the military competition, we've had the economic competition but now we see a growing ideological competition where China is now trying to position its mode of governance of authoritarian state run capitalism as the best model for governing a country and for the entire world. And so you see the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party argues that China provides a model for countries that want to accelerate development and maintain their independence. They also state that their performance, especially since 1979 has declared to the world with indisputable facts that the CCP is qualified to be the guide in the new international order and international security. So there's a real sense here that this competition is being met by both sides. Next slide, please. And then we'd also need to take a look at the PRC space program itself, take another look. And sometimes when I give these presentations, people say, well, isn't space just something that countries do? And I would answer, well, yes and no. I think we need to keep in mind that China may do space but they also do it for real hard national interest reasons that it can't be divorced from what the Communist Party envisions China to be in the future. And so China states that it is now wanting to transition from being a major space power. I stated they now view themselves as the third major space power to being a strong space power by mid-century which likely means that they want to be equal to the US in some aspects, but in some aspects probably superior to the US space program. We also need to keep in mind that China space program is inherently tied to the Chinese military. So for example, the China manned space engineering office which runs their human spaceflight program is a military office. There's also some real, there's really a military dimension to the whole Chinese space program. It is at, they are using it to develop a global C4 ISR architecture to enable long range precision strikes. They have a robust counter space program. The vice chief of space operations for the Space Force has said that China and Russia are regularly attacking US satellites. But there's also this ideological dimension especially when it comes to human spaceflight and that the Chinese people are told that China's human spaceflight program proves that they should insist on exerting the political advantage of the socialist system and that human spaceflight is used to reinforce the master narrative of the essential role of the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese society that only it can lead China and the Chinese people to greatness. So you can't really divorce what China is trying to do in space with what it's trying to do here on earth. And we also have to keep in mind that China's probably going to do what it wants in space regardless of whether it cooperates with the US or not. China has its own ambitions and I can tell you from my own research that when the Chinese human spaceflight program was approved in 1992, it was about competition with the United States and about China's position in the world at that time and that they viewed that human spaceflight was one way that they could demonstrate to the world that they were a major space power. Okay, next slide please, final slide here. I know I've taken up a lot of time. So what am I trying to say here? I'm not saying that we shouldn't have restrictions on cooperation with China. I'm not saying that we shouldn't protest human rights abuses in China but we also need to keep a realistic assessment of what our ability is to change China. Similarly, we should keep a realistic assessment of what China wants to do in space, that they view space as an inherent part of their program to become a superpower and space plays an outsized role in demonstrating that. And finally, here's some food for thought, looking forward at how we should maybe think about the Wolf Amendment. There is one organization that has been maintaining cooperative activities with China through all of these ups and downs and that's the Defense Department. In the 2000 National Defense Authorization Act due to the perception that the U.S. military was sort of giving away more than it was getting from China, there were restrictions placed on U.S. Mil-Mil relations with China and 12 operational areas. You can see those at the bottom. It had required the Secretary of Defense to submit annual certification that no violations occurred. That requirement was removed in the 2012 NDAA. And really since 2000, the Defense Department has kept up a number of activities, including high-level talks. We have defense attaché offices in each other's capitals. We've conducted ship visits. We've conducted humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercises. There's a thing called the MMCA, the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement where we discuss actions, encounters between the two militaries on the high seas. So there is an avenue, there is an approach here to maybe how to govern relations with China that don't have to give away the technology, the technology that is possible here with cooperation space. Next slide, please. Okay, with that, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at the email, but I'll turn it back over to Victoria. Great, thank you so much, Kevin. Really appreciate that overview of the Chinese space capabilities and appreciate even more the thoughts for how we might look ahead to future engagement. Before we move on to our next speaker, I'd like to point out there's a question in the chat a few minutes ago, asking for links as in the documents that I mentioned and one of my esteemed colleagues came to the rescue. We have links for the Secure World Global Counter-Space Threat Assessment, a link for the CSS Space Threat Assessment, and then the link to the 2021 SW import in partnership with the Kailas Foundation on US Perceptions of Commercial Space Activities in China. So those, you can access them through the chat. And with that, I'd like to have our next speaker be ready, Marco Aliberte. Marco is an Associate Senior Fellow for the European Space Policy Institute. And he is also a member of the Space Power and Policy Applied Research Consortium at Flinders University, Adelaide. Prior to joining SP in October, 2012, he conducted research activities on international relations of East Asia at IGS, an Italian think tank, and had experience in the private sector. He is the author of five books published by Springer and more than a dozen policy papers, conference proceedings, and public reports and space policy matters. Marco, we're looking forward to hearing the Europe, speak for all of Europe, the European perspective on the World Amendment. Thanks. Thank you very much, Victoria. Good afternoon, everyone. And thanks for having me. What I would like to do is maybe to provide a European perspective on both the World Amendment and on cooperation with China, since the two issues are closely interconnected. I would maybe start by saying that it's a bit tough to present a European approach to China, since there is no single China policy in Europe, but rather a variety of different and sometimes contending China policies. Views on China vary across European member states and between European institutions. Even within the same institutions, there are different views based on the specific issue under considerations. For instance, within the external election service, China simultaneously labeled as a cooperation partner, as an economic competitor, and as an assist technique rival. From an overall perspective, however, we can say that in space, Europeans have traditionally seen China as a certainly difficult actor that should be, however, engaged through policy dialogue and programmatic cooperation rather than isolation and confrontation. And this sense is well reflected in the great number of cooperative ventures taking place at different levels, including at the ISA levels, EU at national levels. At ISA level, there is a longstanding cooperation with different Chinese entities that date back to 1976, just one year after the creation of ISA, several domains have been covered from space science to exploration and from human space flights to applications. The current focus is on space science. We join missions with the Chinese Academy of Science underway, for instance, SMILE, or the Einstein Probo, or ISA possible participation to the Shunkien Space Telescope. Another area is, for instance, Earth observation. Here ISA and the National Remote Sensing Center of China recently launched the Dragon 5 program for the exploitation of Chinese, ISA, and other European satellites, including Pernicus, for geoscience and applications development. And another important area is human space flight, where ISA has been cooperating with the Chinese Center for Space Utilization on microgravity experiment on board Tingong, and also with the Ocean Center of China with regard, for instance, to ocean training. There have been also discussion on ISA contribution to Tingong in return of flight opportunities for European astronauts, although these has been put aside. At U-Level, the European External Elections Service has established a comprehensive space dialogue with China, where civil and security-related space issues are being discussed. And China has also participated in several space-related call in the EU Framework Program for Research and Innovation with most of the codes covering space science and applications, for instance, genesis applications, but also topics relevant to specificity, for instance, space weather, NEOs, address, though, from a scientific and hence a less sensitive angle. Besides U and ISA, there is also strong partnership between UMEDSAT and the China Meteorological Administration. And we also have many, many cooperation experience between European member states and China. Examples include CNES, CNSA joint oceanography satellites, or CNES contribution to the space variable object monitor satellites to study gamma ray burst, or, for instance, ASIC contribution to the China seismoelectromagnetic satellites to study earthquakes. Now, we have to say that this cooperation between ASIC, CNES, or DLR, and Chinese counterparts is almost exclusively focused on programmatic purposes. In some cases, there is an industrial dimension, but it's not politically laden. From a political perspective, what we can say is that European countries and institutions see that relations with China are inevitably complex, because we do not share the same values, we do not share the same political systems or approach to multilateralism. But to say with President Charmichael, cooperating with China is not only an opportunity, but also a necessity for Europe. And these more comparative stance as compared to that of the US builds on several considerations. First of all, the recognition that you cannot build effective solution for global space governance without China participating in it, that we cannot set defined norms or rules for the safety, security, and sustainability of space activities, only through coalitions of the willing that do not have China on board. Second, the fact that engagement, in any case, leads to a higher degree of understanding between partners, reducing misconception and possible tensions. Sustain policy dialogue is, in our view, per se an important TCBM that can allow us to better understand the underlying intention and concerns of China space program, but also to learn more about their interests, needs, and priorities for the future. A third element is that, is the belief, basically, that it's through cooperation rather than seclusion that we could have a chance to influence or at least inform Chinese programmatic directions. Fourth element, the discussion of space cooperation also draws on the belief well pointed out also by U.S. analysts like Alana Korolikowski that any form of cooperation or non-cooperation will have domestic effects, including empowering some actors at the expenses of others. For instance, we can use international cooperation to make civilian actors more prominent and influential within the ecosystem. The Dragon 5 program that I mentioned before was basically elevated to a flagship program by the Ministry of Science and Technology an appellation that comes with higher budget and more political visibility within the system. Another element is that, in our view, Beijing is an important potential partner for future large missions and clearly a costly one to exclude. So basically leaving untapped opportunities offered by its ascendancy may prevent European space programs from being effective or maybe way too much dependent on its historical partners. And a final consideration that I wanted to make here is that a Chinese statement on the rationale for engaging with China is that Chinese statement and positions within international fora for instance, KOPOS have not been necessarily detrimental but actually have been constructive to European views and interests one for all China's views as space as a community of shared interests and attaches at least on the surface is important to the concept of open and inclusive governance. Now, although this pro-cooperative stance is now under questions for a variety of reasons and collectively we cannot deny that we have become more worried of China and we are also very far from the golden years of senior European corporations when we even proposed China to jointly develop Galileo with us we still prefer to maintain a dialogue and cooperation channels open to China. And this is why our assessment of the Wolf Amendment is not so positive. Actually we see it as having had detrimental effects not only for the US but also Europe of course. And again here, there are many differences but a common view is that the amendment has been in a sense effective in achieving only one objective that is preventing substantive cooperation between the United States and China but has been in a sense disastrous in terms of effects because basically it was a self-imposed ban that was in our view or at least in the view of many informed by domestic political consideration rather than a grand strategy towards China. It was also explained by Nazar administrator. And for one thing was also mentioned by McKenna before the progress of Chinese space activities during the Obama and Trump administration really showed that restriction have not achieved basically the underlying objective of inhibiting China's rise and actually have been kind of productive as a matter of fact they have only in my view strengthened China resolve to develop its space program and assert itself as a space power in all respect. What is more sanctions or the sanctions the ban has severe the links between the two countries and made the new generation of Chinese scientists and intellectual even more suspicious than resentful of the US. And what they think is a two standard approach when it comes to the moral argument advocated by congressman Wolf. Third, if the goal was to limit or even control Chinese access to space technology we cannot deny that restriction have been ineffective because they have pushed China towards other countries more I would say dispose towards cooperation. And ironically this has offered less control over technology transfer than a cooperation scenario. As also put actually by professor free Johnson freeze the US actually had more chances to determine what globally available technology China could get through engagement actually rather than the attachment. And actually by stressing innovation and staying ahead rather than trying to constrain China and closely related to this another point that I want to make is that the ban basically has made the US less effective in influencing or at least understanding China's programmatic directions technical capabilities and intentions. While the lack of transparency enough China's space codes creates always creates the need of worst case assessment and also often hyper hyping or even asynophenia in many instances a regular dialogue and exchange could have helped basically the two nations to understand each other's intention more clearly and potentially could have given way to a sort of mutual assurance of intention while increasing transparency across the board. A final point before I close is that basically the ban has completely my view or like the amendment has completely overlooked the fact that the alternative to cooperating with China basically was a decent the inevitable decent into a space race whereas cooperation not necessarily but could have in principle avoided the scenario and also could have prevented or at least inhibited the formation of antagonist blocks particularly the C no Russian axis while their relation remains a very an axis of convenience as Bobo Lo said the China exclusion policy has been basically cementing their cooperation and is eventually sporing the emergence of a sort of new bipolarization of the international space community. And in my view it was in Washington interest not to make this happen because this verification basically is going to have very detrimental effect on the ultimate goal at least the ultimate declare goal of ensuring strategic stability in space. And with this I stop and thank you for your attention. Thank you Marco. Really appreciate hearing a European perspective. I think oftentimes when we in the United States talk about the US-China relationship and we don't acknowledge that there are ripple effects for other space actors. And it was really interesting to hear you viewpoint about the negative consequences all the way around for US-China and Europe. Thank you very much. With that we'll move on to our next speaker John Lowett of the National Committee on US-China Relations. John is deputy vice president programs for the National Committee on US-China Relations where he oversees the committee's congressional education effort including leading staff trips to China and programming its Hill briefings for new members of Congress and its 40 under 40 style Young Leaders Forum. He launched the US-China Student Leaders Exchange and programs a variety of other committee projects. John, the floor is yours. Well, thank you so much Victoria. Thanks to you and the Secure World Foundation for having me here today with administrator Bolden and my fellow panelists. And for any audita that my last minute arrival in this Zoom room may have caused, I apologize. But I'm delighted to be here and just wanna start off with a ready acknowledgement that I'm a different type of panelist from the scholars with whom I'm sharing this afternoon stage. I'm not a space policy expert or indeed a US-China policy expert but as a deputy vice president at the National Committee on US-China Relations I work for this US educational nonprofit founded back in 1966 which is committed to establishing and maintaining a safe place to talk about China and the US's policy towards China. We were established 13 years before diplomatic relations were established and going back to Kevin's comments arguably when the relationship was at another point a huge trowel in the relationship. So we understand the importance of discussion and of engagement when times are even bad to try to improve what the future may look like. We made our first kind of big splash in 72 when we were tapped to program the Chinese ping-pong teams return visit to the United States the first time a delegation from the PRC set foot on US soil. And so that's the perspective that I wanna speak about for the next few minutes. Frequently our work takes the form of people-to-people diplomacy so that we're looking for ways to increase the nuanced understanding that Americans and Chinese have of each other. We engage in a lot of public education bringing together Americans from different perspectives and increasingly bringing them in to discussions with Chinese and other perspectives Europeans others from Asia, et cetera. But one of our big goals is to make sure that US government and American thought leaders are as well-informed as possible so that US policy can be as well-informed as possible. We've seen multiple opportunities in our 55-year existence where we believe that US's narratives about China and the bilateral relationship have perhaps grown distorted. And when that happens, we see the US pushed in ways that arguably are not in our own best interest. So we are trying to make sure that discussion is taking place such that the US is acting in its own best interest. I became aware of the Wolf Amendment and the US's kind of shifting attitudes towards US-China space cooperation back in 2013, a couple of years after the Wolf Amendment's passage. I had been planning a forum for US and Chinese emerging leaders in Greater Houston. And we had selected that in large part because in our alumni base, we had two NASA astronauts that we were very proud of. And one of them in 2013 was serving as the chief astronaut at the Johnson Space Center. And we saw this fantastic opportunity not only to have a great forum and discussion, but we were working directly with NASA to bring a big chunk of the forum participants over to the Johnson Space Center and we were working closely for a couple of months to make that happen. About a week or a week and a half before I had 40 people flying into Texas, NASA informed me that our visit was not going to be able to take place, that they were airing on the side of caution, that we could visit as ordinary tourists, that they would not be able to prevent that, there was no citizenship check, but that any kind of special access that we had been talking about would not be able to take place. The future years when the annual forum moved back to China, we wanted to again include active NASA astronauts as we had done with two others prior to 2011. But this time again, we saw a big shift whether that's following the letter of the law of the Wolf Amendment or whether that was just reflection of changing attitudes. Our request to have an active NASA astronaut join us for a conference in China was simply shut down, that was not going to happen, which is, it was simply disappointing because here we were trying to establish unofficial channels of communication, just trying to get astronauts to have conversations, have one astronaut in a delegation of 20 or so Americans have conversations with Chinese nationals and that that was going to be impossible, certainly when that was taking place on Chinese soil. So I wanna shift a bit and this goes back, I suppose I'm echoing some of Kevin's statements here, but here we are at the 10th anniversary of the Wolf Amendment and it comes at a challenging time in the broader US-China relationship and we just, we have to acknowledge that. I agree with Kevin's statement that the relationship today is arguably at its lowest point in many decades, perhaps since the National Committee's own birth and for all of the reasons, the Taiwan's and the Hong Kong's and the Xinjiang's, all of that, there are real concrete reasons why the relationship has sunk so low and even though we're seeing an occasional fine in the relationship and we've seen a toning down in the rhetoric since President Biden took office, things are still remaining at a low, at an incredible low. We're at a point in the relationship in which everything is being viewed through a national security lens. We've seen the pendulum swinging back and forth over the last many decades between security and business but we are strongly on the national security side of things. This is, of course, being seen quite acutely with respect to tech in which everything or virtually everything is seen as being potentially dual-use technologies, so export bans are certainly on the rise, black-listed companies and so forth and this translates quite directly into the economic and investment sector. So there's the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, SIFIUS, an interagency committee. They have been authorizing all of our transactions looking at foreign investment coming into the United States and anything that has the potential of being national security, compromising national security, those investments are rejected. There was a major reform in 2018 with the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act and now today we're looking at discussions on the Hill and draft legislation to potentially establish an outbound, an American outbound investment screening mechanism to screen, yeah, Americans who want to invest abroad and that's largely directed at China, right? The notion is no one wants to be paying for the rope that's later going to hang us. So space and space cooperation cannot be viewed in a vacuum but it's part of a much larger context that has been going on for several years. Now, many within and outside of the current administration have started pushing less for decoupling, kind of the watchword of the prior administration that we've got to sever these connections between the US and China and shifting more towards a small yard, high fence approach. Let's figure out really the things that we need to, the strategic assets that we need to protect but let's not give up the wider benefits that we gain from cooperation and economic partnership. And it's that concept when applied to US-China space relations which I think offers some room to move forward. It certainly fits in with the Biden administration's framework of cooperate, compete and when necessary confront China. So pushing forward, finding the areas of space cooperation that we can get a drive, a wedge in to create more space from the national committee's perspective, these are all good things. It seems to me speaking personally, it's inevitable that in the years and decades ahead, there's going to be complete recognition that we need to speak with the Chinese. Space traffic management, space tourism, the preliminaries and other more sensitive strategic topics as the Chinese space program continues to develop, it's going to become a necessity. So getting from where we are today when so little has been happening to where we will be in coming decades, figuring out how we bridge that gap during this intervening times, that seems to be critical. So I very much applaud today's discussion as a step on this journey to figure out how we can have these discussions with China. And I very much look forward to seeing where discussions like ours today, where it pushes the US, our allies and China itself, and China itself for future cooperation. So thank you, Victoria, thank you very much. Thank you, John. I'm curious to hear what this conversation leads as well. And it was really nice, really fascinating for me as a person who's probably too involved in the space side of things to hear a non-space perspective and to hear about how the Wolf Amendment had negative externalities on the US-China relationship independent of space things. So thank you very much for coming here today. Our last speaker is, I'd like to move on to now, is Scott Pace. Scott is the director of the Space Policy Institute and professor of the practice of international affairs at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. He is also a member of the faculty of the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. And most recently, he served as deputy assistant to the president and executive secretary of the National Space Council from 2017 to 2020. Scott, the floor is yours. Okay, thank you, Victoria. Pleasure to be here and then pleasure to see Charlie again. I think this is the part of the program where one says everything has been said and everyone has talked, but not everyone has said everything or some variation like that. That I first of all, want to start by commending and agreeing with Charlie on his description of events and some of the nuances that he described in the history of how we got there with the Wolf Amendment. It should also be noted that the sort of thing didn't begin with him, but actually, Sean O'Keefe had one of the first meetings with the Chinese National Space Agency on the ninth floor at NASA headquarters. That Mike Griffin went to China. And in fact, I was working for Mike and we talked with Congressman Wolf before that trip. Wasn't thrilled about it either, but we did talk to him about what we would do and what we would not be doing. And that some of this need for engagement with non-traditional partners, as Charlie put it, not only was there in the Obama administration, but also continued into the Trump administration as Charlie was our science envoy for space in 2018 and 2019, where he visited Vietnam and Malaysia and Jordan and UAE and a number of other countries that of course we hope to see involved. So I think the thing that maybe is sometimes confuses space people or space community about the Wolf Amendment is that it's about more than just space. As was rightly pointed out, Mr. Wolf was very, very much a human rights advocate. This is a very serious and moral point for him. And discussions of cost-benefit analysis and what would work or not work wasn't really the primary thing. It was simply is wrong to cooperate with countries which have particularly egregious patterns of human rights abuses. So issues of sort of utility are not primary. The other half of it though was issue of confidence and whether or not there was in fact a strategy. I think Charlie's description of NASA's approach was rather clear and straightforward. And I think Congressman Wolf was actually supportive. I think Charlie's description of maybe some NASA overreactions that Mr. Wolf didn't really support. It's also accurate. And the reason that Mr. Wolf was more flexible in a lot of these things was because he understood what NASA's intentions were and that he could understand what boundaries NASA would be looking for. Where what was not mentioned is the lack of confidence that he had in the science advisor, Dr. John Holdren. And some of the confrontation that led to the OSTP budget being cut in part was because Mr. Wolf felt rightly or wrongly that his concerns weren't really being given serious attention by the White House and that the White House was going to do whatever it wanted to do without necessarily consulting with Congress. And that is really not a good stance to take with an appropriator who then responds in an appropriate blunt manner. So a lack of a clear strategy or plan for engaging with China that could be discussed I think is also what led to the Wolf Amendment. Now, when we, when I think when Charlie was over there and I think this was him, if it wasn't his quote that he can correct me, one of the things I recall the Chinese saying was very bluntly, well, look, we don't need you. We can do whatever it is we want to do and we don't need you. And I think then, nod, that's probably true. And then the second was, you don't need us. And I'm like, well, yeah, that's true, we don't. And the third was, but we could do great things together. Well, yeah, that's true. We could do some good things together. And I think there are things that we could do with China certainly in areas of science cooperation. We did do science cooperation with the Soviet Union in a number of areas that were not particularly technically sensitive, militarily sensitive that were mutually beneficial. And in a number of summit statements that we had with China on other broader issues, we used the phrase cooperation, which is transparent, reciprocal and mutually beneficial. And I think it was certainly possible to find areas like that in science, space science, whether it's exchange of rocks or biomedical data or environmental data, you could all go out and do. Human space flight though is different. It's different in terms of symbolism. It's different in terms of the larger impact it makes. It's different in the degree of trust that has to be built. So first of all, I think we should distinguish between unmanned scientific and robotic cooperation where I think there are opportunities. And human space flight cooperation where I don't believe there are opportunities. From a NASA standpoint, I can again see the argument for wanting to explore human space flight cooperation with China, but from a larger diplomatic standpoint, I think the argument is no. And the reason it's no is because cooperation doesn't precede the relationship. It follows the relationship. That is space cooperation tends to be a lagging indicator. We don't have space cooperation and then decide we like each other and we'll do more things together. It's when there is a general geopolitical concordance or an intention to pursue detente, as the case was with the Soviet Union, that we then find ways of symbolizing that through space cooperation. When we brought Russia into the space station program and during the Clinton administration, it was to symbolize a post-Soviet relationship that the Soviet Union was no more. We wanted to symbolize that there was a new order of things. Russia was making progress, or trying to make progress toward a democracy. They had fundamentally changed. The military situation was different. The political situation was different. And so simply saying that we had cooperated with Russia really kind of misses the big geopolitical change that had to occur. That change has not occurred in China and in fact, it's gotten worse. The kinds of progress that we were seeing over time in China that led to, say, entry into the WTO during the Clinton administration that we saw with Deng Xiaoping and Zhang Zemin and Hu Jingtao, all of that has largely come to a stop and reversed with Xi Jinping. China is a big place. There's a lot of different views with a lot of different parts and stakeholders. But I don't think it can be overstated how much of an influence Xi Jinping has effectively as a modern emperor and probably a more extreme situation that you really have to go back to Mao to find something similar. He's not Mao, it's different, but it is a very, very concerning environment today, militarily, economically, politically. As a result of the decisions the CCP has taken and the direction that Xi Jinping has decided to go in. So that colors pretty much everything we do in space is really just, I think, a very, very small part of that. When you look at things that, again, that we might do together, I think that all of them can be done with the Wolf Amendment in place. In contrast to maybe some of the other speakers, I think the Wolf Amendment is maybe important symbolically, a statement of principle, if you will, and I can understand the criticism that it didn't accomplish what it was supposed to accomplish. But a lot of things didn't happen because there was no reason for them to happen. In the case of Russia, cooperation with the space station was important politically, but also they had things to offer. They had long-term life expo, on-orbit experience, they had vehicles, there was something there. There was nothing, to my mind, really compelling that the Chinese have in human spaceflight that would justify the amount of political energy necessary to engage with it. And by the way, engaging with the regime, that is absolutely antithetical. Would we cooperate with Russia the way we are now? If conditions that they are now existed back then? No, we probably wouldn't. We've kept it isolated, we've kept it going, but certainly the conditions with Russia today would not support, say, the brand new creation of a station program. I mean, the situation with China, I would argue, is even worse. So the Wolf Amendment, I don't think, frankly, has been that big a deal. People have made a lot about it, but I just simply don't think there was some large backlog of wonderful projects that would have happened if only for the Wolf Amendment. I think other reasons have been in the way. Now, the question was raised about, well, we have to have a dialogue with China, we should keep lines of communication open with them. Absolutely agree with that. That's why I say there are probably some unmanned scientific things that we can and should explore doing. We have a civil dialogue with China that occurs routinely. It certainly can cover things like space traffic management and other issues of space environment sustainability. We do not have, to my knowledge, a national security or space dialogue. We did have one with the Russians in 2020 in Vienna. We should probably have more. We probably should have one with China. Certainly China's buildup of new ICBM silos in Western China. We'd probably like to have a discussion about nuclear arms control to include them as well as Russian. But there's nothing that really prevents us from having that kind of security dialogue and we probably should look forward to it. So I would argue that the Wolf Amendment will likely stay in place because there is bipartisan support for it. It's not fundamentally getting in the way of anything really important. The things that we might do could certainly pass the tests laid by the Wolf Amendment. There is a need to keep engaged with China. But we also should recognize that it's larger geopolitical trends which are going in a bad direction that will fundamentally constrain space more than the Wolf Amendment had or will. So let me pause there. Great, thank you, Scott. I really appreciate your insights and looking at it from your perspective from pre-Minister of Bolden's work and then looking at more pragmatic eye what we might be able to accomplish. So with that, I'd like to open it up to the whole panel. So if you guys can all turn on your cameras please and anyone who wants to speak and just pipe up. But first question coming in is from Rob Ronsy. Rob asks, given the impacts of the Wolf Amendment, given that the impacts of the Wolf Amendment can't be undone and that the geopolitical realities have grown complex in the years since it was first adopted, what do you see? What do you hope could be done with the amendment moving forward? So I mean, that's a real question, right? Where do we see moving forward? We'd like to take first crack at this. Well, I could describe some things that we've already tried and things we could do more with the existence of the Wolf Amendment. But if you want to start with if the Wolf Amendment changed, what would we do? Maybe that's a different question. We'll take any wild prognostications at this point. Go crazy. Okay. Well, I would say issues of behavior. For example, even in the Russian space station case before we had the Russians on space station and before Tsar and Sveta were launched, we had the Shuttle Mirror program. We had a kind of an on-ramp, if you will, of experiences that we built up over time. And there were some really rocky periods in that. Okay. This was not a cakewalk, both technically and politically and all kinds of issues. So it takes a while to build that kind of trust even with the political direction. Some baby steps that could be taken right now would be not at that scale. It would be simply scientific data sharing and trust. The Chinese put, for example, restrictions on who has access to scientific databases and they want people to have authorization and permission before accessing those bases in ways that are more restrictive than NASA or ESA or other partners do. So we'd like to see Chinese at least normalize access to their public scientific data in a manner that's similar to what we do. And people like Jim Green and Chief Scientist NASA can talk about that. We'd like to have commitments or maybe even handshake agreements be observed. There was a case of a mission where the Chonger spacecraft was gonna then to clear out debris was gonna crash into the moon, create a plume. And therefore that would produce an opportunity for lunar reconnaissance orbit to observe that plume and get some data characterization out of it. And we would share that data. And the Chinese go, sure. And then the vehicle crashes into the moon without warning. And we go, well, wait a minute, weren't you gonna give us a heads up? Something happened. We're like, well, right, that's not exactly builds confidence because what was agreed to at the scientific level is not what was eventually approvable, okay? So you really have to see higher authority. The really big case of this was, which still colors things, is of course the Chinese ASET test. And it wasn't just the Chinese ASET test by itself in 2007, my God, we've done ASET tests. So, you know, who are we? Okay, but they had prior earlier that year at Copas in the technical committees had agreed to how to mitigate orbital debris. And so if they were to conduct that test, we knew they had technical people who could have conducted that test in a much cleaner manner. Frankly, just as the Russians in recent testing could have done it in a cleaner manner. They chose not to. And we don't think they're incompetent. Therefore, we think they must have done this intentionally for some reason, which again means what was agreed to at a working or technical level, frankly, didn't have political backing or political support. Those are the kinds of things that lead you not to particularly trust what they say. Now, so if we got back into a more healthier pattern of small agreements, building and being executed and trusting at a small level, that would be a good place to start at before talking about larger, more grandiose ideas of human spaceflight cooperation. Well, it's not my rant. Thank you, Scott. I always love your rants. Other thoughts may have a panelist about moving forward. This is Charlie. I'll let go of what Scott said. And I think I put it in the chat within the Q and A. You know, if given an opportunity, I would think that we would need to go back and work with Congress to renegotiate the Wolf Amendment. I agree with Scott that there are a number of benefits from it without a doubt, but finding things that it should apply to, you know, we, one of the things that I don't think we'll sit well with people is if you've got to know who you're working with. And so we need to admit that anytime you do any work in space, you're working with the People's Liberation Army Air Force. And when you're working in aeronautics, Scott mentioned the fact that we could look at space traffic management when we finally signed the agreement on air traffic management, you know, at the very end of my tenure as the NASA administrator, we had worked on that for years. I was in China to sign the agreement. And all of a sudden there was no signing ceremony. And I talked, you know, I happened to go to a chamber of commerce meeting up in Shanghai and met a gentleman from Boeing who said, hey, you haven't talked to the right person. You've got to get this general from the People's Liberation Army Air Force to agree and it'll go like clockwork. And he was absolutely right. You know, we brought them into the discussion and formed them of what we had been working with the Chinese equivalent of the FAA. And I mean, it was like that, the agreement was signed. But it wasn't signed when I went over there to sign it because we were working with the space agency and the civilian aeronautics organization. So anybody who thinks you're going to work with China in aeronautics and space and not talk to the People's Liberation Army Air Force just doesn't understand how things work over there. So we've got to bite our tongue, do like DOD does because I think it's Kevin that mentioned the fact that, you know, we've been working with the Chinese military for decades. I remember when I was still on active duty in the Marine Corps and we brought the hierarchy of the People's Liberation Army Navy to San Diego, California and took them aboard this highly complex, highly classified communication ship for the third fleet and watched their eyes just bulge as they saw the complexity and the capability on that platform. But at that time, the third fleet commander had a distinct purpose. He wanted to show them what they were up against if they decided that they wanted to tangle with us there. So those are opportunities that we have, but I would go back and, you know, work with Congress, always work with Congress. Scott pointed this out. You know, any administration who, one of the reasons I had such difficulty in the Obama administration was because I wanted to work with Congress and I wanted to engage Congress in budget planning. And that was a no-no. You know, that was OMB said, no, no, we, there is no budget until the president signs it and we would always say, but how do you get to a budget that's gonna float in Congress if they are not engaged? That's what DOD does. DOD just ignores OMB and goes and works the budgets they want them and that's why they get what they want. To a degree. To a degree, yes. Thank you, guys. Very smart. We always do need, Congress needs to be working with absolutely. Thoughts by the other panelists. Yes, actually I wanted to expand a little bit on this because I think Scott gave an excellent point of reflection and I would say in the research I was doing some years ago when I was studying U.S.-China relation, I indeed got the impression that the wolf amendment, you know, came into place because of, I would say, misbehavior, not of NASA, but of the OSTP and not even the OSTP, but in the person of John Holtron actually. So, but the point that I wanted to make, you know, is that how is that that you, we put in place an amendment, you know, that is intended to, in a sense, punish, you know, a person that is not behaving well, which was John Holtron or at least behaving well, behaving well according to your standards, you know, the standard of wolf. And basically the repercussion is that you're creating limitations, you know, on U.S. ability to do things on NASA or the OSTP ability to do things when this decision should be, but this is a reflection actually for everyone, should be based, should be a collegial decision. It should not be a decision that derives from a legal obligation. So it should be part, that was the point that I was making before, it should be part of an overall strategy, you know, I'm not cooperating with China because I do not want to cooperate with China, not because the law prohibits me to cooperate with China. So I don't think that eventually the amendment did not punish China at all as, but punish only the U.S. in a sense, it did punish the U.S. And actually it's ability and it's freedom of maneuver when it comes to space diplomacy. And also in space diplomacy, we have some, I would say instances, you know, where space cooperation acted as a sort of forerunner, you know, of broader diplomatic advancement, which was, again, in my view report, well by Kissinger and its decision when he said, low, what was the NASA administrator back in the 70s, you know, to Moscow, to negotiate the Apollo-Soyuz test project. So in a sense, I have actually the hope that since space has such symbols, it can act as a forerunner, you know, of diplomatic, you know, advancement, you know what I said. Yeah, but Marco, I can agree with a lot of that, but I think the problem really is the sequencing. That is the administrator was sent to Moscow for Apollo-Soyuz, but this was after the 1972 Nixon-Breznev Summit Agreement on Dayton. So we had a political condition first that we then use space, which is very powerful symbolically, as you say, to then sort of cement that. But again, that's where space is a lagging indicator. Not something that leads. And then we come to what do we think, you know, Xi Jinping is going to do. If, you know, if Xi Jinping said that he had no problem with recognizing Taiwanese independence, I'd have the Chinese on the space station tomorrow. But, you know, that's not where we are in the broader relationship. Any other thoughts from the panelists? Let me, yeah, Scott just reminded me of one thing. My trip to China was not done in a vacuum. And it was not something that was generated because President Obama just wanted to do something. It was one of the products from the latest US-China space dialogue that came out of President Obama's meeting with then President Hu. So it was an agreement mutually made by the two presidents that we would have reciprocal visits. The second visit, the reciprocal visit, which was supposed to be a Chinese delegation to JPL Johnson Space Center and Kennedy Space Center never occurred because the Wolf Amendment and Congressman Wolf forbade that. And the way to restart again, even under the context of the Wolf Amendment would be to have a civil space dialogue, for example, with China and then bring up some of these things. But what I would caution as a one, I would absolutely have that dialogue. I wouldn't try to load it up with too much freight, particularly like the most human thing I would do is maybe an exchange of biomedical data, but I wouldn't give any indication that we're gonna be flying Chinese astronauts or anything like that, but I would keep it very much at a scientific exchange levels and to open up that line of cooperation, but still keeping the really big symbolic stuff and high trust stuff off the table because you would just break the system if you tried that too fast and too soon. And I agree 100% with that. And that's a confidence building maneuver that allows the Chinese to agree to the stipulation that what they do must demonstrate transparency, reciprocity, and mutual benefit. And if they're not willing to do what Scott says, then we're no, they're not serious. Thank you. Actually, I would like to shift gears a little bit. There's been an interesting couple of questions or comments that I'd love to hear the panel's thoughts on. One comment is by Greg Schuster who says the Wolf Amendment has really handcuffed earth sciences here at Langley. I've been told not to even answer email from Chinese domains. From this perspective, the Wolf Amendment has stopped much earth science work from ever getting started. And then along the same lines, Jim Crawford asked, given the extreme breadth in NASA's portfolio, does anyone see an opportunity to separate some aspects of earth science from the amendment? For example, dialogue and environmental issues of global public interest, such as air quality and climate change have suffered at the agency. And I would just add, given the Biden administration's interest in fighting climate change, maybe this is something that might be a possibility. And just curious, what do you guys think about that? One's to answer that. I'm seeing grimacing. Okay, I just don't want to big foot anyone, but I'll say, absolutely, multilateral cooperation is perfectly fine. There are actually a number of multilateral organizations in climate and earth environments and something like Group on Earth Observations, for example, that could be part of this. We cooperate and engage with China all the time in the ITU as a multilateral thing, protecting space spectrum and such. This is really focused on bilateral issues and I think especially more sensitive human space flight issues, which is kind of right for it to do. Now, I think there is sometimes overreactions and sensitivities, the fellow at Langley maybe shouldn't be responding to emails from Chinese domains for separate purposes, not just the China, not just the Wolf Amendment, but maybe from a good security practice standpoint. He wants to be careful who he's talking to. But that's simply a matter of any federal employee, being current on IT security and export control rules and all the rest of that. But I think there's a ton of multilateral engagements that we're already part of, including environmental ones, that you could imagine having conversations with. We cooperate and talk with the Chinese all the time in COPAs. I mean, on long-term sustainability of space activities, I think the Chinese were fairly constructive in many cases, more so than other countries and where we could find common ground. So I think there are these openings here, but I think they fundamentally depend on the Chinese leadership. This is where I keep coming back to Xi Jinping and the tone that he's taken. In every other area of shared domains, whether it's been the South China Sea, whether it's been in region, Tibet, Taiwan, whether it's been in cyberspace or even in polar regions, we have some really problematic activities that has not yet crossed that way into space as much, never mind the ASAP test. I've been trying to find out, and I keep asking Kevin if he's seen it, the latest Chinese white paper, which is supposed to have been out this year, every five years they come out with one. I haven't seen it. For, and I would be looking for key language that the party uses on issues of vital interest, which usually signal them being inflexible. They have certain language they use when they talk about China, when they talk about some of the Taiwan or they talk about Hong Kong or Uyghurs or other issues where you go, there is no discussion here to be had. They haven't really gone that way in space. They've left themselves flexibility, but I wouldn't be surprised if Xi Jinping decides to declare space of vital interest of some sort, in which case all that flexibility kind of goes away. So there's still hope for space to be less confrontational than other areas, but Chinese behavior in other areas is not encouraging. Thank you, Scott. Other thoughts? No. I'll just pop in to say, I think that this is an area where, as Scott mentioned, there is a lot of room for more cooperation with Chinese scientists and science and climate data. That's a great entry point to that trust building and just sharing information, continuing to work on science. Climate change is something that's gonna affect all of us similar to a lot of issues in the space domain with norms and space debris. So opening the door to some of these really vital interests just to start the conversation, start this trust building a bit. I think that that's a great place where we could see some continued small cooperation that could lead to something bigger in the future. Yeah, and the question is, how much do we, how demanding are we in those cooperative areas? An example is there's a thing called the University Space Research Association, which is the association of all 105 or more PhD granting space institutions, mostly US, but we have international members in USRA. Chinese University of Hong Kong, for example, was a member. And there isn't a lot of discussions about how that would work, but people got comfortable with it. Well, with the suppression of Hong Kong in recent years, there's not much happened with Chinese University of Hong Kong. In fact, people are looking to get out and other entities you might have worked with. A number of Chinese universities that we might want to go to are under sanction for technology theft or their ties to the PLA. You actually have to work to find an entity. They do exist, but you really have to work to find entities that aren't really terribly tainted or suppressed. So, again, it's a very, very small space, getting smaller in which to move. It doesn't mean we shouldn't offer it, but we should be, I think, very realistic about what the prospects are. Thank you so much. Marco, it looks like you wanted to add anything. Yeah, I just wanted to add, of course, I fully agree. I think there is a lot of room actually to initiate incremental steps of, I would say, cooperation, starting with scientific dimensions, for instance, even related, as I was mentioning, to, for instance, we want to deal with or treat address safety issues. We can start from scientific operations, for instance, with regard to space weather or NEOs, that do have an impact on other issue area, but can be addressed incrementally as little steps from a scientific perspective. So, scientific exchange also, university to university exchange or just exchange of data. And this can lead to a higher degree of, I would say, understanding and additional exchange into new areas, basically. And this, I think, it's a sort of functional approach that, of course, we can start from scratch, inviting them to the International Space Station, also because they may not be interested anymore, but we can start out with incremental, I would say, step. And with regard to the, yes, the International Space Station is new with paper. It should be out in two weeks or one. Two weeks or one, that'd be exciting. Thank you. Christmas. Happy New Year to us. Actually, there's a, moving on, there's a question for John, hoping to get some experience from his background. As Scott and Charlie talk about the potential role of an official civil space dialogue, John, does your experience at the committee offer any lessons for what role civil society can play, whether it's in track two conversations and other ways, and supporting or enabling such official discussions? What's been your background on this? Yeah, sure. I mean, the National Committee has, it currently runs about six track two dialogues on a variety of topics, but that all move into more sensitive areas. So everything from human rights and rule of law to maritime law and economic issues, to preventive defense. So there is opportunity. I will say that during this pandemic period where all track twos are taking place virtually, I think that we're a little bit more in maintenance mode than we are having real conversation. A, an American watcher, prominent American watcher in China who was in our office a few years ago, but during this downturn was asked, are track twos still worth having today? And he said, absolutely. You should have plenary sessions for 15 minutes, and then coffee breaks for 45, right? That everything is taking place on the sidelines, and that the plenary sessions when everyone is listening in, and the years of technology and so forth is not where the best exchanges take place. That option doesn't exist right now, but you still have to maintain the foundations, right? For the moment when we're going to be able to sit down across the table. So I think there is potential for sure. I didn't mention our healthcare track two. So the notion of scientific cooperation in limited areas, many of these areas frankly fit within what the CCP is looking to expand on, but within limited areas, I think track twos play a vital role and having some that look at space within all of these contexts, I think would be quite fruitful. Hey, Victoria, if I could chime in with a question using the prerogative of one of the panelists. So in looking at our Artemis program, and then also looking at the joint vision that China and Russia have issued on lunar, on manned lunar exploration, they look awfully similar, establishing an orbiting station around the moon, setting up a base in the South Pole. So I'll just put out a question, my own question to the panel is looking forward if the Chinese and maybe the Chinese Russian vision actually comes about, is there anything that we need to do or both sides or all three sides need to do to sort of de-conflict in our activities on the moon, on the moon and around the moon, and is any of that prevented by the Wolf Amendment? Sure, let me take a shot and let me see if Charlie can correct me. The short answer is there's a lot of stuff which is already in place, that interoperability on docking systems is already there. Actually, the Shenzhou atmosphere, I think is comparable, wouldn't need a ridiculous airlock to do cross support. So certainly talking about safety and rescue operations is certainly one could imagine a civil dialogue on. The Chinese use open standards, communications and navigation standards from consultative committee on space data standards, which is an international organization of all the major space agencies. They participate in the International Space Exploration Forum. So there's a general agreement on, or not general agreement, general understanding of what people's various plans are. I think the only thing I would probably say as a next step is have China sign the Artemis Accords. And if they don't feel they can sign the Artemis Accords for whatever reason, they should develop something similar with the Russians. And then we can do cross recognition of there because we're not doing anything in the Artemis Accords. It's not under existing international law anyway. So I would first of all, happy to have them sign the Artemis Accords. And if they don't wanna do that, then happy to discuss some other guidance system that they would wanna have for their cooperation on the International Lunar Research Station. And we can do, we should obviously be talking to each other if we're on the South Pole of the Moon. And all the technical pieces already really exist. And I think meeting the Chinese on the Moon and coordinating for safety and responsible activities there is maybe the most ambitious thing I could imagine doing. They're not gonna be inside our program. We're not gonna be inside their program, but we can certainly imagine meeting on the Moon. Thank you. So it actually leads to a question from Mariel Borowitz, I'd love to hear. I think Scott sort of answered it, but I'd love to hear the rest of the panels. Very quick response since we're in our last five minutes. Then Mariel asked, given the current trajectory of US-China relations and the plans of the respective nations with regard to lunar development, what actions do you think the US should or could take in this arena? Should we attempt more engagement or should we review this as an area of strategic competition? Would like this. Kevin, do you want to take a quick shot at that? Well, I think Scott probably addressed most of that, but yeah, I mean, I made the point in the briefing that we can't, in my opening remarks was that we can't really separate space with what is happening down here on Earth. And so there is that ideological contest that is going on and maybe that's distasteful to say to someone when we're talking about space, but there is a sort of benefit that both sides get to doing their own thing in human spaceflight and also in manned lunar exploration. So there are some downsides to cooperating extensively with the Chinese on the moon. And each has its own purposes, that the Chinese have their own reasons for doing it and thinking that we could maybe co-op them, it's maybe a bridge too far. Other thoughts? Yeah, great. Something I could imagine thinking of being not requiring signing the Artemis Accord, but maybe taking a portion of them is we don't want anybody walking on Neil Armstrong's footprints. And they probably don't want us to steal their rovers. So a agreement to talk about non-deconfliction and how we respect each other is maybe jibbly on historical sites. And such an agreement could be open to any country that has demonstrated the ability to soft land on the moon. So it doesn't mean every country, but it means countries who've demonstrated soft landing capabilities like China, like Russia, like ourselves, potentially Israel, maybe make progress. And again, being very focused on operational matters, safety matters, non-interference, kinds of things from a very practical standpoint. I could see something like that happening and I don't see the Wolf Amendment being really a barrier to that one way or the other. One has to find things of value to do that are worth doing and overcoming the otherwise large political barriers that are put in place. So political barriers go down because conditions improve, you do more things easily. If political barriers are high because geopolitical conditions aren't good, then you really, really have to have a big value proposition to make it worthwhile. Station has sustained, for example, that value proposition, even against things like Crimea and threats in Ukraine, but it's not invulnerable. And the station is coming near the end of its life and conditions are not improving. So what comes next for human spaceflight will probably not be a singular facility like the station. Thanks, Marco, really quickly. Yes, I think three things that should be addressed, actually, for the coming way of lunar exploration activities, as Scott mentioned, protection of cultural heritage, but also what safety zone, the creation of safety zones on the moon will actually imply, and three, also the resource issue, possibly. It isn't clear whether the international lunar research stations by China and Russia will be linked to some governance principle in the same way the Artemis did, but in any case, there is a need to ensure convergence between the views of China and Russia and the US and Artemis signatories on these three topics in my view. Thank you. All right, well, I think we're just about at time. I recognize everyone's a little zoom tired these days, so I don't want to take too long, but I'd just like to, first of all, thank all the panelists for their excellent insights, and especially thank you to Mr. Goldin for his conversational keynote. There's clapping going on the chat, so that's great. This video, this conversation has been recorded, and the video will be posted fairly shortly up on our website. But I'd like to end with just some final thoughts. It seems to me having listened to the conversation today, there was agreement that the US needs to find some way in which to engage with China as a space power, and the US is doing it at the multilateral level, but as Scott pointed out, there are ways, a number of ways that could benefit from cooperation that are transparent, reciprocal, and mutually beneficial. And the commercial sector, understanding their commercial space sector, which is burgeoning, and it would help US companies compete and develop a more informed business or competitive strategy. In terms of national security, it's important to build a more informed understanding about the capabilities or plans of China, so the US can have strong policy responses. And then there's a need to work together on coordination issues, whether it's space traffic management, mega constellations, looking at space for climate change, or things of that nature. And just in general, engaging with China is critical to enable space operations, so that space can continue to be used in a sustainable manner that is equitable and accessible for all. So with that, thank you all for joining us, and we really appreciate your interest today. And we look forward to seeing you at future SWF events. I hope everyone has a great end of this 2021. Here's to a good 2022. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye everyone.