 Good morning and welcome. My name is Lise Grande and I'm the head of the United States Institute of Peace, which was established by the U.S. Congress in 1984 as a national, public, nonpartisan institution dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. We're very pleased to welcome everyone to the launch of a new, important USIP report that focuses on strategic stability in space. The report looks at the factors that are contributing to and driving this instability, and it also looks at the efforts of other countries, including our adversaries, to control, perhaps even dominate the use of space, the types of technologies that can enter space, and the resources that are available in space. We have an exceptional group of panelists with us today, each of whom brings deep technical expertise and knowledge, and we're here to discuss what needs to be done to ensure stability in space in light of the factors that are discussed in the report. It's privileged to welcome Dr. Scott Pace, the director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute. To welcome Professor Bruce McDonald from John Hopkins, who is one of the authors of the report, Dr. Carla Freeman and Allison McFarland. We're very pleased to welcome Dr. Law from NASA, to welcome Dr. Nate Daly from the Mead of Corporation, and Victoria Sampson, the director of the Washington Office of the Secure World Foundation. With his permission, I'd like to hand over to Dr. Scott Pace, who is going to be moderating this morning's conversation. Thank you, and welcome everyone. Glad to be here on this beautiful day, and thank you to the US Institute for Peace for making this great facility available for discussion of a really, I think, important topic. As was said, I'm the director of the Space Policy Institute over at George Washington University, just a few blocks in that direction. So this is a great location. I was part of the scoping group, but as others will quick to point out, that doesn't mean I'm responsible for everything in the report, but was certainly part of a broad range of people who were talked to and inputs were taken in thinking about this topic. Our panelists today, again, a great group of Bruce McDonald, the lead author here, teaches at that other school, Johns Hopkins University, and I'm proud to say I actually hired a new assistant professor from Johns Hopkins, so we're all good. He wrote really one of the earliest studies on Chinese-based weapons, I think, 2008, back in the US Security, on US Security and Council on Foreign Relations, so Bruce has been thinking about this for a long time. He was at US Institute for Peace for several years, and of course, now it's at Johns Hopkins, and like me, as a fallen engineer, descended from engineering into policy. Dr. Bobby Allall, associate administrator for technology, policy, and strategy at the office of the administrator at NASA, another proud graduate of George Washington University. I'll have to put a plug in for that, but she heads up analytical teams at NASA headquarters studies and analysis, which in many ways replicates some of the things that I did when I was there and taking them in new directions, so I consider Bobby a kind of kind of kindred spirit in bringing analysis to bear on space issues. Nat Daly, principal architect, system engineering at the MITRE Corporation. I would point out that the system engineering he's dealing with really cuts across all sectors, so NASA, DOD, I think you look at some commercial issues, some things, other civil agencies, and maybe a little international from time to time, so in terms of overall, what the overall environment looks like in system engineering, MITRE Corporation has a gross or great amount of technical depth on the subject. My friend Victoria Samson, the Washington Office of Secure World Foundation, a group that, NGO, that certainly we've partnered with a long time, worked together on the definition of long-term sustainability of space activities and what the guidelines were, so we've crossed paths in the UN structure for many years, sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing with the Chinese and other countries, but again, I think a great partnership. And then finally, Carla Freeman, senior expert on China here at the US Institute for Peace. Also is one of the co-authors of the report with Bruce and Allison McFarland, also in the China program here at USIP. So her work on China's evolving policy towards space as a strategic frontier is one of the areas of interest in China's global policy, and for me, one of the significance of it, we've noticed very carefully how China talks about other areas that it considers core interests, and that language is used with respect to things like Taiwan, South China Sea, Tibet, so forth. And I don't know that it's quite been used in space yet, but so certainly China's evolving policies towards space given precedent with other areas or shared domains is something of interest. On administrative details, I note the report is now available online, so it's live, and that you can submit in the course of this discussion. Welcome to submit questions online through the event page, or if in person, there will be some note cards being collected, and then I'll see them here, and I will try to pick what I hope is the most interesting or provocative ones. And finally, there's coffee and snacks afterwards, so please stick around. With that, we're going to have about 30, 40 minutes of discussions. Each of our panelists have about five, seven minutes. I've got a series of questions that I'd like to start with, and then we'll take questions from the audience. With that, the lead author, Bruce, inviting a lead off. Thank you very much, Scott, and welcome everybody here to USIP. This whole effort got started with Patricia Kim and Jennifer Statz here at the Peace Institute about three or four years ago, and there was growing concerns even then over the trajectory of US-Chinese relations and the lack of mechanisms to resolve issues peacefully, and there were concerns about conflict, especially going into nuclear conflict, and this led to the report enhancing US-China strategic stability in an era of strategic competition about two years ago. And this led on to a follow-on effort that became more focused on a particular aspect of that growing instability, which was space, which has become a very topical issue, not to mention balloons of recent vintage, but we're facing unprecedented challenges in space and destabilizing challenges as space technology grows by leaps and bounds just much faster than I think most people are even aware of. Some of the changes are revolutionary, some are almost elementary, and yet have profound impacts particularly on the business side of space. So this led to discussions among several of us about looking specifically at space and what the challenges to stability are in space. This is just another issue added to the overall concerns of instability in US-Chinese relations. We've benefited, fortunately, in the development of this study, benefited from an able panel of experts, two of whom are here with us today, and the others who've contributed made great contributions indeed to us, and and we are looking at there are many potential drivers of instability in space, and we polled our experts to find out which of these were the most pressing. You can take your pick from many and they did, but the three issues emerged as most concerning. One is the issue of what's called entanglement of conventional and nuclear space sensor systems which poses the threat of an unintended escalation of a purely conventional conflict into the nuclear realm which nobody wants to see. It wouldn't be in China's interest, it wouldn't be in the United States' interest, but wars have been known in the past to escalate when neither side intended them to escalate, and where nuclear weapons are involved that could be very scary. So this poses a serious threat and this was far and away the number one identified issue. The second is the study looked at is looking at the testing and deployment of what are called direct ascent anti-satellite weapons. These are weapons that would go up and directly collide with a satellite and destroy the satellite, but with the very unfortunate side effect of creating a large debris field which could sabotage other satellites that are in orbit. And if you take for example the Chinese test that they conducted in January of 2011 which created several thousand pieces, detectable pieces, trackable pieces of debris, it could lead to collisions with other satellites as well. Now just imagine if there were a conflict and you had several hundred satellites broken up, you would create a huge amount of debris which would run the risk of ultimately leading to making large parts of the orbital area around the earth unusable. So and we now have several other countries have tested this technology as well so there's an issue that needs to be addressed there. And then the third issue was the, in here it's of a more benign nature, but looking at the growth of satellites, just sheer numbers of satellites. We've all heard about Elon Musk and the number of satellites that he is launching, but to just give you some perspective on this, in the year 2010 there were about a thousand satellites in orbit. This year there are over 6,000 satellites in orbit. And get this, the projection by the end of this decade there will be about 58,000 satellites in orbit and you don't have to go much further than that where some of the projections go into hundreds of thousands of satellites in orbit and yet there's no controlling body to try to regulate this. It's a bit like the Wild West out there and to give you an idea of the impact this is going to have on business and what the future holds for space with the advances in technology that Morgan Stanley predicts that space industry will grow from $350 billion back in 2016 up to $1.1 trillion. There's a lot of economic activity that's going on there, so we have there's some immense challenges and the technology is growing ever faster that is going to create marvelous opportunities economically. We've all heard about the potential benefits to mankind in space, but unfortunately there are some potential downsides too and the hope is that we that the United States and China is the two largest space powers can work together to at least not agree on everything. We're never going to agree on everything, but to identify areas of overlapping interests where we can begin to make progress and so we have in the report some conclusions and recommendations how to address these issues most of which revolve around the United States and China to get talking again to address these issues. So with that and I think we've been able to help by outside people and our panel of experts and we're proud to have this report released which we hope will lead to a lot of discussion and questions and interaction and hopefully progress. Thank you. Thank you Bruce. Thank you Bruce. Thank you Bruce. What Scott didn't say was he was also my dissertation advisor so it's always interesting to share the stage with your dissertation advisor. So I'm going to hit on Bruce's second and third points about the number of objects in the green space and so if you think the sky is falling hang on let me oh was that not was I not audible before okay I will look down. So if you think the sky is falling you aren't entirely wrong this January at 2,500 kilograms NASA satellite retired in 2005 re-entered the atmosphere just months before a Chinese rocket had had an uncontrolled re-entry and it isn't just re-entries that are problematic. In recent months China has complained that a U.S. satellite came too close to comfort or comfort to their space station and there have been a number of close calls to the International Space Station as well. In 2022 alone we had to conduct three collision avoidance maneuvers two of them were fragments from the Russian ASAT test to the third was a fragment from a 2020 explosion of a Russian upper-stage tank. So we absolutely have an evolving crisis on our hands analysis conducted by NASA's Orbal Degree Program Office shows that the number of objects in space is increasing at an exponential space it's almost as sort of like a vertical line in the last many years. 2022 alone saw nearly 180 new launches that's about four launches a week and deploying more than 2,300 spacecraft into Earth orbit and as of 2023 as I think Bruce mentioned there's more than 7,000 working satellites in space and again you know the core point is working because there's many many more defunct non-working satellites and just the number of satellites working satellites alone that's 20 times those as in 1982. North orbit the region of space below 2,000 kilometers has the highest concentration of operational spacecraft as well as debris but actually something has changed and I think Bruce kind of hinted to that so between 2000 and 2010 it was the Chinese ASAT test test and the collision between a US satellite and a Russian satellite drove most of the increase but since 2010 between 2010 to 2023 the proliferation of CubeSats and the deployment of large constellations of spacecraft were primarily responsible for the number of objects in below 700 kilometers and the other thing that's important to note because you know Bruce talked about the role of government it's a private sector that's leading this transformation just two companies SpaceX and OneWeb have launched nearly 4,400 satellites between just the two of them and these satellites are part of what you know what we call mega constellations which are basically a group of satellites working together as a team and and there's hundreds of of all thousands of individual satellites in this and if you look at ITU filings and again Bruce hinted to that the number of satellites to be launched in the coming years is staggering over 430,000 are planned and obviously you know we don't know how many actually end up being in in orbit but we do need to start to think about this these satellites will need to avoid each other and other spacecraft and they actually they need to reenter the atmosphere too since that's the actual disposal plan for them and it's hard to believe but while there are guidelines on how to behave in space there is no formal governance or what we call authorization or supervision as required by article 6 of the outer space treaty and again mega constellations just are one part of the debris challenge there's more than 47,000 objects bigger than 10 centimeters as of this year and larger objects are just the tip of the iceberg there's you know a million objects over I think a millimeter and and hundreds of millions as the right ranging from you know the size of dust particles to flecks of paint that are too small to be tracked and actually these are the debris that that present the most near-term mission-ending risk to operational spacecraft and given how heavily our economy and our society depends a study dependent these spacecraft it is really important to to to make sure that they continue to say operational 22 was an eventful year as I said earlier we detected four on-orbit fragmentations one Russian two Japanese one Chinese each of them generated hundreds of fragments larger than large enough to be tracked and of course many more too small to be tracked and of course the task of tracking is getting harder and of course one major challenge is even if we manage our own satellites our own private companies and remove our own debris not enough we own less than half of the total number of objects in space you know the rest belong to Russia I think about 30 percent China about 20 percent and other countries and by treaty we cannot touch other countries objects without their their permission I mean of course this is a challenge but it's also an opportunity space is a big diverse and innovative sector and together we can come up with approaches that don't just involve technology but regulatory policy and other kind of innovations the White House and NASA are doing a lot of work in this area and actually Scott started a lot of that and we can talk about that later on but I just want to end by saying that you know I spent 25 years in Boston before I came to DC in Boston we call the debris problem wicked hard and and to solve problems like this we really need all hands on deck and the hands had better also be Chinese it's not a problem America can solve alone so let's roll up our sleeves and get to work excellent okay next thank you how to wrap thank you Scott I'd also like to point out that on my doctoral committee was Bruce I'm also sharing this stage with one of my committee members and so I thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the scoping committee early on in this in this research and opportunity to speak here today what I'd like to do is take some of the passages that really struck me in this report and highlight these for the audience and I have a few comments on those the report quotes an uncertain era in which domestic and international policymaking is hard pressed to keep up with technological advances in the field I would also add technology plus business plus economics and strategy so strategy business and technology those that's the equation for enterprise architecture and that's kind of my trade as an enterprise architect in the in the space community so I'd say it's it's a little bit more I'll talk to that a little bit more further on the report says spacefaring powers and space stakeholders need to quote take urgent action to address the implications of this surge in space technology before major problems ensue in the economic and military dimensions of the space domain dialogue and cooperation among space powers to address these issues has never been more needed I believe that the disciplines of research development technology and engineering systems engineering and architecture can contribute to that dialogue and cooperation by underscoring its support with direct linkages between space situational awareness to policy and apparent behaviors the report says as two of the world's three most formidable space powers the United States and China both have incentives and opportunities to promote this sort of communication and cooperation I have a few quotes to highlight that later on but I would add that well I'll get to that later on so furthermore I liked that the report addresses it would appear worthwhile for US policymakers to review whether US national security concerns about restricting the transfer of space related technologies to China and that it might be better served by focusing on restrictions than by broad prohibition on a dialogue with China on important issues the same the report goes on to suggest that the United States could work on some aspects of space technology and policy with China where there are opportunities of mutual benefit while consciously avoiding other sensitive areas so I would point to the successes of the federal aviation administration's ASIAS program the aviation safety information analysis and sharing system I think that's a good example for a systems oriented solution it focuses on a minimum viable set of information that's agreed upon that can set and all the participants from the airline industry have agreed to those that minimum viable set because it mitigates risk of spilling proprietary information that would give a competitor any advantage so it's important to kind of focus on a minimum viable information set that might focus on something like a space ASIAS or space life safety interactions with China could also provide important insights into directions Chinese space planning is taking the US Soviet Apollo Soyuz project that led a joint mission between the US and the Soviets in 1975 the first international crewed space mission by the way showed that it is possible to cooperate in space with a sophisticated adversary without losing vital secrets to that rival so although China poses a challenge to US and allied interests in space overlapping interests they still exist both sides see great opportunity in space despite differences in perspectives but space doesn't care space debris is indiscriminate about whose satellites it crashes into the recent 4 January low intensity explosion breakup of cosmos 2499 and the associated 85 pieces at 1169 kilometers altitude exemplify that so both sides have an interest in more efficient space traffic management than ever in this congested environment and both sides share these interests with other space actors as well the report also goes on to address unilateral bilateral and multilateral action to tackle these three drivers that Bruce enumerated of instability that take various forms and encompass not only a dialogue but also concrete steps that built on unilateral measures and one another I'd add that another information sharing design polycentricism is a potential candidate for future US China space relations as I alluded to with the space ASIAS system in fact in 2022 Dr. Maria the jaw testified before Congress regarding manufacturing in space he said in order to meet the needs of this community there must be an unambiguated distributed immutable ledger of who did what to whom when and where as of this very testimony I would challenge any government to demonstrate that it is currently capable of delivering such a capability more complaints of harmful interference damage and threats will be raised whilst we are left ill prepared to assemble the evidence required to assess and quantify space events and activities so let me give you another example from some of my original research in the field from 2019 and this is from China's deputy director of the ministry of foreign affairs at the world space forum he said reshaping and adaptation of space traffic management initiatives involves complex questions who will be the manager who will manage STM how will and how can we combine all stakeholder aspects of space technology and policy with China where there are opportunities and mutual benefits while consciously avoiding sensitive areas unquote so again I'd point to the successes of that ASIAS program because it sets a good example of a systems oriented solution it focuses on that minimum viable information set that that I had mentioned all right so I'd argue that both sides recognize the value of purposely engineered systems for coupling information shared systems that promote international transparency and confidence building measures architecture and system engineering they can be utilized to galvanize strategic and constructive engagement plans to achieve conditions of stability in space and subsequently a viable global space economy social sciences and constructive engagement methods can be coupled with systems engineering and architectures in impactful ways the space peace conflict spectrum requires mindful and purpose purposeful integration without shaping its progress we're left watching it to play out as Russia conducts ASAT testing uncannily close to the invasion of the Ukraine or threats to starlink and bias at continued so indeed as we've seen last year the consequences of doing nothing are not nothing with respect to policy polycentricism I'll wrap up with this Victor and Eleanor Ostrom you know first theorized that political units could operate in a coherent manner with predictable patterns that is a system to the extent that they take each other into account in competitive relationships enter into various contractual and cooperative undertakings and have recourse to central mechanisms to resolve conflicts so in this way we can weave a fabric of information flows that intentionally strengthens efforts of constructive engagements toward the goal of realizing conditions of stability that are better for business create economic conditions for all to flourish so these polycentric kinds of designs for information flows and governments could result in the creation of stronger and more hubs and flows which can catalyze norms cascades as well and so I'll conclude with that for now okay thoughts to think about and Victoria thanks Scott um this is exciting for me because there are not one not two but three sized people on the panel no one ever is from size and space this is just like a big day for me anyways thank you to the USIP for inviting me to participate and to speak at this panel I'll be talking about two things essentially during the few minutes I have first of all talking about counter space capabilities and then a little bit about the UN discussions on space security my counter space discussions come from the my organization the secure world foundation we're a non-profit that focuses on the long-term sustainable use of outer space I'm the co-editor of our global counter space threat assessment which we put out every year it's an unclassified source of looking at counter space capabilities that we see around the world we look at five different categories one of them is direct descent asat has been discussed here another one is co-orbital where the interceptor gets up into orbit and either does a close approach to interfere or some way in which take out the target another one is directed energy looking at lasers essentially mostly to affect imagery one is the fourth is radiofrequency interference jamming and then the fifth is cyber I will not go into exhaustive detail on all those but I will point out that when we first started working on this document in 2018 we had six countries we were covering the most recent version from last year we're in process updating them now but the 2022 version has 11 countries so you can see that this topic is growing and space capabilities are proliferating relevant to this discussion I'll focus mostly on direct descent asat so there's strong evidence that China has been doing a sustained amount of research development on a broad range of counter space capabilities and they've got one possibly three programs to develop a direct descent anti-satellite capability but I'd like to you know divide that to two different options one looking at what kind of targets it can hit specifically how high up can they go so low earth orbit is about zero to two thousand kilometers and it has a mature capability to be able to target those satellites that are there but higher up medium earth orbit which is about let's see 20,000 kilometers I'm talking to us audience 12,000 miles or then again geostationary orbit which 36,000 kilometers 24,000 miles does not have that capability and I think it's important to make that distinction because oftentimes you know here in the media we say okay China can hit us satellites and you assume that every satellite everywhere is a threat not exactly I don't want to downplay the threat but I think you cannot make good policy decisions if you don't have a good sense of what the threat actually is and then just to kind of contextualize it the United States has no official direct descent anti-satellite weapons program but it has demonstrated a direct descent anti-satellite capability with its missile defense interceptors in 2008 when it shot down a deorbitating US satellite and so that is operational it's there and the US has developed direct descent anti-satellite capabilities in the past both kinetic and nuclear and probably could develop them pretty quickly if it just had to do so in the near future and so I'm happy to talk more about counter space stuff if there's more Q&A but just talking specifically about you know how do we handle this sort of thing the United Nations has been focusing on various aspects of space both civil space and security space the civil space side of the house which Scott Pace has been very involved in I think has done a lot of work in terms of establishing guidelines for long-term sustainable use of space the security side of the house the UN has been stopped and this is not just a space thing it's been a you know a nonproliferation thing where they haven't be able to agree on the agenda to discuss much less move ahead in discussions and having followed these discussions for over a decade plus you know the part of the problem is that there's a disconnect in terms of how the major players identify what the threat is for space the US of its allies looks at more of a congestion test almost an environmental issue where behavioral aspects are concerned you know bad behavior on orbit whereas Russia and China and their allies tend to focus more on they're worried about a specifically designed weapon being placed into space and targeting from space to ground essentially space-based miscellaneous interceptors and then so that's one disconnect and the other disconnect is how do you handle this do you do a treaty which frankly there has not been a real treaty on space in four plus decades so probably not at least not right now or do you do a nonbinding norms approach and that's kind of where the UN has gone to this point they've had a they're entering year two of a two-year program called an open-ended working group which is a very UN designation but basically it's the idea that it's open to any UN member that wants to participate in discussion on space threats and it's meant to be inclusive so civil societies allow to participate in terms of being there to watch so I was actually just they had the third meeting out of four last week in Geneva I was there I'm just a civil society observational category and so it's been interesting because they're trying to define what the major threats are to space security and stability and how do you identify responsible behavior in space and so you know obviously there's not a hundred percent agreement and we can go into where probably some of the problems are later but I will point out like one of the things that's coming up is a lot of countries are identifying things like deliberately creating debris on orbit as something that's irresponsible that is to say through you know deliberately having destructive direct to send anti-satellite missile tests and this builds on to a unilateral commitment the United States made actually we're coming up on a year anniversary it was April 2022 where the US made the commitment not to conduct destructive anti-satellite missile tests it has since been joined into that commitment by nine countries so there's 10 countries total and I think there's going to be a few more coming on soon but also there's a UN general assembly resolution in December where 155 countries voted in support of this type of commitment and so you can see okay we're seeing this sort of norm evolving or this idea of response behavior evolving and you know there are some people who would look at this issue and say well you know if it's really that you know important and scary why don't we have a treaty well you know treaties don't just jump out a whole cloth you know you have to have discussions and then you look at the outer space treaty there are discussions the UN general assembly resolutions and then eventually an outer space treaty so I think just because it doesn't solve every problem doesn't mean it can't be helpful in solving this problem the problem is of course as Bobby brought out the idea of debris I mean the debris that's created from these anti-satellite tests it's agnostic it does not care if you are an ally the person who created it if you are in its way you'll be affected by it and as of right now we don't have any way in which to take out debris that's created there are a lot of companies working on that and I hope that'll happen soon but for right now what's up there we're stuck with and so the idea is you don't want to deliberate more so hopefully the structures and anti-satellite test moratorium will continue and be expanded upon I look forward to discussing more during the panel thank you analogy somebody once gave me was that you know being in a pool you know if somebody breathes in the pool you can't really be safe that is very accurate yes Karla I guess it's good afternoon now and thanks so much as the usip china team representative on the panel and a co-author on the report it's really my honor to join such an esteemed group of experts today and in all of you in the audience I also want to mention that if we had been able to squeeze another chair on the on this podium on this stage the third author on the report Ali McFarland would be joining me here and making remarks and I see our publications team way up there and I want to thank them for their hard work on this report which is now live on the website and will be in hard copy I think quite soon so look as we look for pathways to stability in space so we understand China as a highly competitive actor in space with ambitions to lead space related innovation exploration commercial activities military capabilities China understands space is the commanding heights in future economic development and warfare and it appears to be pursuing a goal of leading or even dominating the use of space between the earth and the moon it's been ratcheting up milestone after milestone in space suggesting that that goal may be achievable at least it looks that way it's not just headlines like the completion of the Beidou satellite network or the landing of the placement of the U2 jade rabbit rover on the far side of the moon or its Tiangong space station or plans for these go along mega constellations but also its expansion of a range of national security and counter space programs that some panel fellow panelists study closely let me just add a couple of points to the discussion already laid out by these experts here with the space environment a global commons beyond the sovereign control of any any state and inaccessible to all the growing congestion in space as as more and more players enter spaces has been described along with intensifying great power competition and particularly u.s. China's strategic rivalry and and then all of China's ambitions its its civilian its military capabilities and all these activities in space all of these elevate the risk of a tragedy of the commons situation though in our report we approach the challenge of China and instability in space from the point of view that sustaining the stability that the usability of space is a global issue on which the united states can lead and which all countries including China are stakeholders in the fact is that space debris is Nate said is indiscriminate in what it strikes doesn't know what country's assets what country's assets it's hitting and coordinating satellite orbits for mega constellations have broad international benefits both technical and actually that go to our very human identity in that unregulated growth could be disruptive to science but also literally brighten the night sky and then lowering the risk of entanglement of course is is key to reducing the risk of of an existential issue of nuclear warfare so i thought i would contribute to the discussion today just by laying out briefly what china's positions on all of the three issues that we highlight in the report are first nuclear entanglement as we point out in the report China has indicated that a u.s. use of strategic nuclear satellite assets in a purely non-nuclear role would make them legitimate targets of chinese and chinese analyte anti satellite actions and so that suggests that in the event of a conventional conflict between the two nations the u.s. has to be prepared for potential chinese attacks on on an essential part of our our nuclear infrastructure so we have of course proposed that the u.s. take steps unilaterally to disentangle its nuclear and conventional mission architectures and encourage as well a u.s. china strategic stability dialogue and the two sides appeared to agree at least at the biden she meeting and in in november 2021 that that was a good idea but that that dialogue hasn't taken place even as as beijing continues to expand its nuclear arsenal in the u.s. is modernizing its own and and bruce mentioned the 2021 us ip report and i think that presciently reflected given that the two countries have never launched any regular official dialogue on strategic stability but that there's a significant perception gap over the potential impact of u.s. missile defense on china's second strike capability and the idea is if that failure to bridge the gap persists beijing's is going to continue to to build up its nuclear forces and that will inspire a security dilemma and uh in washington that that beijing is intent on on it transitioning to a far more aggressive dangerous nuclear posture on debris to date china's taken a pretty defensive position with respect to its its asat test uh and uh to da asat testing and space debris generally some chinese experts have uh sought to or have articulated a justification for the 2007 asat test gen generated such a massive debris cloud on the grounds that the current space regime lacks the regulations on space debris and what constitutes quote unquote harmful contamination and in the aftermath of the launch a number of chinese analysts contended that a key motive for them the test was peaceful actually aimed at encouraging the united states to undertake uh space arms control uh as i've written elsewhere chinese scholars so these are unofficial views they've also criticized the current space regime with respect to regulations on space debris notably been on the defensive about their own debris cloud including invoking lex surrender on the idea that states may establish new rules by their legal acts concept also used by some chinese legal scholars with respect to to maritime rights and chinese experts have also invoked the right under the ost to dispose of the satellite their satellites as chinese national property in addition and defending the test they've explicitly pointed to the principle of free access which is interesting heading that space is not the privilege of any single country but for all countries to enjoy the province of mankind this past december as victoria mentioned china voted against the a un general assembly resolution for countries not to conduct direct descent and desatellite tests that create space debris just to wrap up at the same time all of this is happening china has also called for improvements to space governance particularly with respect to the protection of space assets also talking informally about establishing technical and technological approaches to mitigating debris i guess just saying given the high stakes of inaction we repropose some fairly modest ways set forward uh have been described that reflect the fact that these are areas where our two countries and the international community have profound and and even i would say existential stakes stop there awesome super i noticed on the agenda i was given a little time to a sort of reply and reply and rebut but really this is about the panelists but if i might take a moderator privilege to just to have a few comments um so one of the things that maybe uh not a statement really a question is you know sort of what do we mean by instability uh because of course there's all kinds of instability nuclear escalation stability sort of crisis stability uh first mover advantage some things done by rand i think on what my first mover my advantage might be um you know and uh you know does it mean that we're concerned about a lack of of resilience that we we don't have enough stability and therefore somebody might get a benefit from an attack uh so linkage between conventional and and nuclear escalation um and if that latter is the case there could be an argument for active defenses in space in order to defend against attacks to create greater resilience and therefore greater crisis stability but that of course produces a linkages between space based defenses ballistic missile defenses ground based asets so previous things which are kind of in separate compartments start becoming very very linked and it's really hard to figure out how the other side is going to perceive all that you know without having some more of these dialogues unfortunately it's a dialogue that really hasn't happened we've tried to have uh the chinese dialogues and three party talks of course on nuclear we've tried to have a number of security discussions and of course those haven't really happened and on one hand the voice of optimism says that uh we're not that far apart from china on many space things we've had positive discussions for example on space resources we've had some space science activities although we wish they were more open about some of their data uh we have uh areas where i think we are in agreement about some things that have a common threat you know like like space debris on the other hand we've seen china's behavior in other shared domains that uh don't follow really rules of international law whether it's Antarctica uh whether it's the south china sea whether it's Uyghurs to bats taiwan i mean the list goes on um so space isn't yet in one of those i think crisis categories where it's a zero sum game discussion uh so there's hope but on the other hand behavior in other domains of course uh has been has been problematic um i think one of the um other things we should sort of sort of think about um is where where could we have some starts at at discussion um you know to some extent it's it's important to realize that space cooperation follows political events it doesn't precede them so as i mentioned Apollo Soyuz test project was done out of a detente uh decision between the soviet union united states coming out of a summit meeting with nixon and breznev and it followed after that we didn't have space cooperation first and then we decided we're gonna have to taunt so the political conditions i think have to be there so we can't have space cooperation get too far out ahead of where the political realities are nonetheless i think there are things that we could do open exchange of scientific data exchange of biomedical data for example lunar sample exchanges you can imagine a number of things uh that that could be done that the the political freight could bear but it's important not to overreach and and do things that i think that it can't uh one suggestion that i've heard for uh in finding a channel given how fraught bilateral us china discussions might be is to take a model from what the un has done uh on gps and gnss and beta and so forth there is a international consultative group associated with the un outer space committee outer space office that's merely an information sharing entity and you could imagine and so the icg for gnss has met for years and years and has been a source of increasing transparency among operators of satellite navigation systems one could imagine a similar sort of structure information only sharing no authority but where states at the state party level would come to discuss information about say lunar operations be very careful not to cross streams with geneva and open-ended working group and conference on disarmament but there's a number of fairly imminent decisions that we need to make if we're going to be on the south pole of the moon chinese is going to be on the south pole of the moon how big is your landing zone what's guard frequency uh we have positive commitments under for the rescue and return of astronauts how do we carry out our space safety sort of obligations uh so there are plenty of things i think to discuss in a purely civil international even commercial kind of activity that we could do in a multilateral forum that would not necessarily have to implicate you know a us china security dialogue worthwhile as that is i don't think we can wait for it because there is other operations that are going to be going on fairly soon now at the final two comments a lot of discussion about norms of behavior sometimes give the idea that norms are a thing that there are a rule that others are then obligated to follow it's like saying what because i have a stop sign there won't be somebody running through the stop sign having a stop sign is really important not because it stops the speeder but because it's a signal to the community that established the stop sign as to what they value so i would argue that norms are more for our friends than they are for our adversaries they're more for here's what responsible behavior looks like and here's people who share that and we want that to be as broad as possible and as many people as possible to share in that but the idea is when bad things happen we want to be able to turn to our friends and allies and go we all agree that was bad right and now what do we how do we respond to that so it's a different way of looking at norms and then finally maybe perhaps on a on a maybe on a pessimistic note and maybe carl push back on me on this one it really doesn't have to be this way with china you know it was certainly it's certainly it's certainly been a history that asia has done better as as china has grown and become become wealthy and positive one can certainly look at where taiwan is today you can look at what hong kong used to be and say that you know that chinese culture chinese people the chinese economies and history all have very very positive contributions to make to the world the problem is the chinese communist party and we've seen many of my china scholar friends you know are kind of depressed um because they had seen what they thought was a progression since mao with dung shea ping and jang zim in hu xin tao and now we come to shijin ping who has taken the party in a very very different direction um and some extent be internally criticized for maybe making too many enemies on too many fronts at once but his behavior is one that looks pretty much like a very committed marxist lennonist a lennonist party which suborns other things in society to that again doesn't mean we can't deal with it and find ways to peacefully coexist as the old phrase goes but china has made a choice politically and it didn't need to be that way but it is what it is and so at the end of the day when we think about our common interest in space it's not going to be enough to get agreement with fellow space people that we all kind of know and like and appreciate fundamentally there's going to be a political decisions in how china relates to the rest of the world of which space is sort of just is going to be a symptom i'll stop there let me turn and go to um sort of the uh the moderated uh kind of questions and i kind of threw this out to begin with is what is trice's stability in space uh mean in context in terms of the report in terms of um what you think we ought to be focused on and how does that differ between the us view and say a china view in talking about crisis stability over to anyone i can comment on on that a little bit um and this ties back to what you mentioned about norms um most people are familiar with finna more and seeker seminal work on on international norms and the norms cascade and the tipping point and reaching critical mass um but also in that same report um finna more and seeker talk about what they refer to as how interdiscursivity leads to intersubjectivity in other words the more you talk the more you understand each other and the the inter being the point you can have different conversations um about the same thing because they're in different contexts but the inter implies that there is some kind of connection across those two contexts that bridge that bridge them i think that helps to understand that sometimes um i see the subtitles as pathways to peace in an era of us and china strategic competition sometimes it's more about the pathway than than it is about peace and i think in that context through constructive engagement which finna more as a constructivist um i think that's a clue that points to that pathway simply having those conversations i think uh isn't it is an important thing to help ameliorate those differences of of mindset um point one of you a friend of mine um all you probably know rose godamiller who is the negotiator you know and sort of new start uh she wrote a wonderful book about her experience you know doing sort of negotiation one of her you know end points was her stress of the importance of maintaining and continuing strategic dialogue not because you think you're gonna get a product next week but to make sure that you had least an understanding of you know so the worldviews that are so that if you do have an opportunity to do something you're not starting from scratch and and so i think she was successful in part because she was well known they knew her russians knew her she knew them there was no fooling around uh and getting to know you and so so you're preparing maybe for a future opportunity if not one today but bruce instability yeah uh i think you've been stability in a classic almost physics sort of way and i don't for those who are not physicists in the audience i don't want you to be turned off by that uh the idea of stability is that if there's a small if you have a system and you perturb it a little bit that it is in the natural inclination of that system to when i return to a stable point again a little bit like if you had a pendulum you you diverted a little bit and it goes back and forth and it stabilizes an unstable or instability is where you have a a perturbation and it just gets worse and worse and worse you have in the nuclear realm escalation and so when i think about uh stability in space which oh my god gives me a chance to plug a recent publication and i had on crisis stability in space uh but uh i think of it in terms of that you have a system that is set up so that you are as impervious as you can be to destabilizing actions which i think of it also in in the way that was described by general heightened uh as your adversary wakes up and says nah not today it's it isn't going to work out well for me if i do this that's why although i voiced concern about these mega constellations that uh the one the one thing that's very appealing about them is that they make it almost impossible to uh to negate your adversary's uh uh system that and you and you can't do you can't negate his and he can't negate yours so that you have no incentive to want to attack whereas in the way we used to monitor we're in the process of transitioning away from uh we used to have just a few detection satellites for icbm launches and so that there aren't many targets to take out and if you can successfully attack just a few you can deal uh you can deal a really harsh blow to your to your adversary and that's a very destabilizing uh situation where there are advantages to going first whereas when you have a whole big constellation of satellites which it's hard to negate the the impact of the entire system and so it that's a more stabilized situation the problem comes by having unregulated growth or uncontrolled growth in that so to me you there are various techniques you want to develop to which could build stability into the system by the way that your system is set up um price of stability from a chinese viewpoint maybe space or generally i'm not sure i can uh answer that question clearly i mean i i china is uh is both strategic and has a a an approach where it takes it is very iterative and uh takes moves forward with policy by testing and then reassessing and then moving forward again so i i think uh china is right now viewing space as a as i suggested a strategic new frontier which is language that's used in some draft law uh law legal language that is in a new national security law and china is looking at every possible opportunity in space what i think china would like to see is more governance of the kind of un un-centered governance that reflects china's preferences in all facets of of the on all domains in space all all uses whether commercial or or military and and it's not getting much traction in its initiatives and and so is very frustrated by that so i think has sort of taken itself out of the game except to continuously propose with russia the same uh treaty legislation uh sorry treaty uh language uh and that sort of thing but i think china sees uh a un or centrally governed space regime that protects its interests its commercial interests its sovereign interests in space uh as the key to uh crisis stability in space it's it's interesting because in other sort of like you know domains beyond earth uh including the oceans but also thinking about cyberspace and thinking about space you know the tendency internationally seems to be more toward multi-stakeholder kind of analysis and the russian and chinese tendency to say that only state parties are really legitimate actors and everybody else is there by sufferance you know is really not the way uh that certainly the internet developed certainly not the way space is developing in many other areas so i i hear that chinese position uh just as i hear the russian position that only state actors were legitimate actors which is why we got article six at the end of the day um and uh and how they're going to adapt to that you know reality um when there is more than that but to the point of of of adapting um i mean we go it's maybe one of the larger objects in the room is the idea of a space race you know so we spend lots of lectures talking about the old soviet us space race there's a lot of talk today about a space race my former boss talked about a space race uh you know sort of with with with china uh how is leaving aside the question that should be characterized as a race uh or how should we say how is the race or competition today different than what it was in the past and i want to put bobby on the hot seat because her boss also uses as soon as the phrase so what can you tell us about that absolutely so so so when administrator nelson talks about the space race he isn't talking about apollo times he isn't talking about a one-time landing on the moon we won that race more than 50 years ago right uh the space race the administrator is talking about is a strategic competition with multifaceted outcomes including sustained presence of the moon mars and beyond for national economic advantage for supporting our industry but but just as importantly it as a net benefit to humanity such as things things like increased knowledge so that's not how we spoke about space race space race in earlier days and again i just want to remind folks that this strategic competition isn't just about space it's it's you know present biden talk has called you know china america's most consequential geopolitical challenge so there is this whole of government strategic competition with china and space is an element of that and and it's it's uh the race is the investment in r&d in technology and the next generation of workers um uh so last but last point so the space race administrator talks about is about supporting us values such as broad international participation scientific data sharing openness and transparency of motivations and a focus on a civilian-led space exploration program as opposed to a military-led one so so that's a space race that's how we think about the space race at nasa and that's the one we intend to win scott could i jump in here please um so i often get asked you know is the u.s in a space race with china and i don't think that's helpful because as bobby said it's that's not the case but i think that kind of phrasing does put it in an adversarial sort of way which you know again the u.s doesn't know what to do about china i think it's there we have a difficult relationship with them in many different circumstances not just space but um i think it's it's not helpful because it automatically basically rules out any option for any kind of engagement and you know whether or not we like it china is there in space and they are a major actor they've got a heat they've got humans up in orbit frankly their space station is going to outlast the iss the international space station is going to be you know at some point it's going to be done whether it's next year or 2030 whereas the the chinese tiangong just became operational last year um and then looking at the moon i mean i think it's where you know again you do not want to automatically replicate um the power you know scares an orbit on the moon i mean i think yes definitely there's competition and that's and i think that there's um that's where you even need more engagement because as was mentioned earlier if you have a common moon landing spots you want to be able to discuss things you want to make sure you're not accidentally kicking dust up over each other you're not going to be going into each other's zones um and so you need to be able to speak to each other and have these conversations again whether or not your partners whether or not you're working with each other you're still actors and you're still in an extremely hostile environment there's no need to make a more hostile by having these um inadvertent you know vocabulary choices that lead you to have an automatic adversarial role that's right so i'd like to also add um dr namratta gaswami and and pete garrison's book scramble for the skies you know they look at it rather than a race more like a scramble like the scramble for africa like the uh the gold rush um era with the potential economic global economic uh you know opportunities with these untapped resources um as a scramble it becomes more of a business case no one no one nation's tax revenue base can can financially support the infrastructure that's going to be required uh to continue a viable um space exploration and and lunar resource mining celestial mining uh mars business is going to have to get involved and in order for business to get involved it's going to come down to revenue right so there has to be a viable business case in order to do that you're going to have to have infrastructure and they're going to have to we're going to have to have uh um sustainability assurances to support that infrastructure so that that stability is created for that business um globally really well let me um reminded to uh audience to hand in uh note cards um let's come down and collect those and also for people who've made comments online um i can be uh sort of uh looking at them uh looking at them here and uh and pull that up um one of the uh one of the questions already here is that you know appears a single bad actor can make leo and maybe meo unusable with relatively lower technology capabilities and that they're you know unstoppable uh is a solution partial mandatory sanctions for developing such capability i feel like i'm i'm hearing a non-proliferation argument how far did we go i can take first crack at that i mean i know the outer space treaty allows for countries to have access to space for peaceful use and that's the issue is that you cannot say most technology you cannot say definitively this is meant for peace is meant for war when it comes to space a lot of issues dual purpose it depends on what you do with it's your intention and so when that's the problem right into when the international community talks about like non-proliferation issues for space is that you can't do we do another thing you know for example if you don't want countries have nuclear weapons what do you do you prevent them from finding fissile material but you can't do that with space because so much of the technology just depends on what you want to do with it depends on your intentions and so that is not a helpful way of looking at it what is helpful as having an idea of establishing okay what is considered responsible behavior what is considered a norm so you can call out bad actors so you can point fingers and say okay you actually did a bad thing as opposed to just saying well you don't like my country so you're going to criticize anything i do um and it's no it's not going to solve every issue but i think it's going to help really establish the practices that make space more stable and predictable over the long term which is really important i think that's right you know i would say that keying off the question about a race one among one of the other reasons why today is not a race in the same way that it might have been in the past not only is there not a fixed end line and so forth and it's just you know two parties but the the competition in the 60s was about you know look how cool i am i can do something nobody else can don't you want to hang out with me and so it was in the context of decolonialization you know new independent states that were coming into the un bidding for you know hearts and minds and all that so today with space much more accessible to people both commercially and many more countries participating in it leadership is very different it's not look how cool i am it's like look at all the people who want to work with me you know and so it has much more i think of an inherently cooperative end to it and i would submit that russian and chinese behavior so far has actually been counterproductive to their own interests because people are more reluctant to work with them yes they're important yes and we should be thinking about how to engage or deal with but i think for a lot of developing countries they're looking at where are our opportunities and who's going to protect our interests with infrastructure we're against conflict in space not just because we don't like conflict but because we don't want to risk the infrastructure that we're all dependent on so i think there's in this competition there's a lot more areas of think of common interest that we have for and a really good example of that scott is the number of countries that have signed on to artemist accords and the number that we think are going to be signing in the near future and the chinese are welcome to sign at any time absolutely and china not a joke not a joke they and china has not won over as many hearts and minds as we have if there's a race if there is a race for hearts and minds the united states is doing as you're pointing out scott a whole lot better than russia and china are and that is it's one thing i'm mentioning the the vote uh in the in the united nations about the direct descent asa testing ban uh if it were a close vote that would be that might say something but the vote was 155 to 9 uh it sounds like a cricket score or something i mean i did you don't very often see votes that are that lopsided and if i were china it would be making me say maybe i need to take a second look at my approach because you're not you're not doing very well and and uh the hearts on the hearts and minds issue in space united states appears to have a big lead and i would say it's not as if this has to be a zero sum game if the international lunar facility that the chinese and russians you know want to want to do uh comes together i think it's reasonable to ask well by what principles you govern are you committed to international law are you committed to safe and sustainable operations and so forth and if they did something even semi reasonable i think you could argue for cross recognition you know you guys recognize what we're doing with artemis we'll recognize what you're doing uh there uh we'll have some multilateral channels to discuss operational issues for safe and responsible operations and and i think the area to be hopeful um and again it could always go bad but in comparison to say the south china sea so i've had friends who uh in dialogue with the pl a navy talking about safe and responsible operations and frankly they were told you american want this because you want to feel safe out here you don't belong here you should go home pretty much cuts the conversation off that's not the case in space that's not the case in operations you know on the moon so we don't necessarily we're not doomed to take what happens on earth in space but we should be paying attention to the political leadership their behavior in other areas all that is relevant but it's it's not fate that it has to be like that sorry any editorial but god if i could just one point i'd like to make um for the artemis accords um you know there's actually one country that has signed the artemis accords and also signed in to participate in the russia china international lunar research station that's the idea of emirates so i think it's really interesting to see like those are not necessarily competitive maybe they're complementary who knows um the international lunar research station is a mou the the russia and china signed a couple years ago prior to russia's invasion of ukraine and since then china has kind of got quietly stepped back on it so it's hard to say um but you know it's possible that they could work together um and the other point i'd like to make as well so i think oftentimes in the united states we tend to say that russia and china boom same team same thoughts same they're not they have different interests they have different investments frankly russia um has proven definitely they're willing to be a prior state internationally they have no commercial space system uh their civil space program is in tatters um they do not have a way in which to build their own space station as much as they say they're going to do want to replace national space station um and not many no countries really want to work with them you know you saw many countries pulled out um over the past year in terms of you know working with isa and ars program and things like that whereas china has been able to effectively use their space program as a software outreach in terms of launching other country's satellites and you know into getting more countries on board for their cooperation so i think it's important to make the distinction that one does not necessarily have the same ends and goals as the other because again china has a commercial space program uh sector that's really burgeoning it's surprising it really is so i think it's important to really you know look at them separately to figure out what their interests are and what their goals are because that's the only way you can make good policy is having a a clear i'd look at the situation as it exists not as would help from political circumstance a question uh here interesting it says the uh the by administration talks about the importance of allies in us china competition so what role can allies play in space and who are the key allies you know given their space capabilities you know this is not just about the us and and china it's really the rest of the world as we've been sort of talking to but can we drill that down a little a little deeper who's the most important ally if you want to make uh make somebody unhappy what should we what should be priorities for uh for allies and i would argue that if i may that uh i think our most important ally is the european union so that as a as a grouping uh there is so much expertise there uh you know the the small satellite revolution got started by uh uh who's at surrey and for in in england now that they can say with given brexit what we could say there but but anyway that but that the the nice thing is you don't have to pick among among your friends you there we're all we're all working together and we get a lot of benefit there's a lot of cross fertilization these conferences and so forth and one of the sad things sad for for russia is that they have isolated themselves and china has not completely isolated itself but its behavior uh is uh is sort of walling itself off a little bit and that's that can't be to their advantage i mean the the chinese like to speak about win-win situations we don't have to agree on everything but there are areas in space common interests that we have where we can make progress it seems to me uh and that maybe that can form a basis to try to reach out a little bit more but uh it's not easy given the current uh chinese attitudes i would build on what what bruce said and say you know we as a country should be part one wanting to partner and and having as allies countries that share our same values of transparency and peaceful exploration timely release of scientific data and and and you know get in the context of of of debris you know planning for safe disposal of of debris so so we shouldn't be picking and choosing but you know but you know going forward with countries that share values thoughts i was just going to say i think uh japan has been a an important partner in space for the united states and values very much align with uh to my little limited understanding but i think uh in in even in asia uh japan's uh role in in uh in space cooperation has been very important and i think the u.s. has benefited from that it depends on what your allies are for you know are you talking for civil space i mean i would say obviously it's international space station which is two sides the russian side and the the u.s. side as the u.s. japan european and canada let's not forget them they built the arm they're very proud of it um so i mean i think those are definitely allies for future space cooperation but then there's also okay what are you looking at for security issues are you looking maybe the five eyes are going to be important that sort of thing um are you going to be looking at you know the quad in order to counter um try that just i think it really depends on what your priorities are and where you want to go and i think they do not necessarily preclude each other so if we look at the competition you know with uh and uh emerging you know mega constellations and and launch and so forth uh not only is there some maybe some resiliency benefits or certainly some commercial benefits we're seeing things play out of course in ukraine uh with sort of starlink um can there be or what conditions might be imposed on cooperation between the united states and china on the regulation of of these things you know would we imagine regulators or regulator dialogues between the fcc and china that must terrify some people um you know what role should the itu play uh you know in in this situation um i mean you when you list the other many potential candidate constellations you know many of them will probably not be built but the ones that probably will be built will be sort of probably the us or chinese ones so if you're looking who's going to be doing that is that something that only can occur within a multilateral dialogue or can it occur in in a bilateral structure what might be the basis for discussion so here's where i think systems can come into play and architecture can come into play in existing regulating without regulating okay so the creation of a space information sharing ecosystem for example provides an opportunity to automatically detect anomalous behavior all right so that that level of transparency contributes to uh the opportunity to self regulate based on aspirational politics and legitimacy like we saw last year with the declarative propositional slash declarative norms of anti uh satellite testing that was a phenomenal success the cascade happened within months and then 155 nations vote that is a bona fide norm and anything other than uh that at this point is considered deviant behavior if you look at the definition of of of that particular norm so i think that the contribution from the disciplines of systems engineering can contribute to providing information that can connects treaties and policies to observe behavior in transparent ways that can that can be almost as beneficial as regulations themselves but we do need to go beyond um technology so so for example i started in my remarks i talked about um you know chinese companies that i knew about us u.s. commercial satellite coming to close and the u.s. government and the private company not thinking that so clearly we have different different protocols and what we judge a safe distance so we do need to have discussions on on how we think about that we have no idea of what chinese for their constellations what their post mission disposal plans are um obviously ss space situation awareness you know we do need better data sharing so so we do i mean i think we can do get a lot done with technology but we need to go beyond that and i think we also need to look at okay what are we trying to regulate um one of the things that comes up a lot we talk about these very large constellations is is there a certain point where you reach carrying capacity in these orbits you know if you have tens of thousands of satellites in a single orbital shell maybe yeah but no one really knows um and so there's you know investigation and research going into that but it's really hard to say well we're going to you know do some sort of legislation or do some regulation we don't even know what is our end goal um one thing that i think probably is changing pretty quickly um is the idea you know the end of life 25 years after the life you have to dispose of your satellite within the united states there's discussion making a lot shorter i honestly don't know actually i know the chinese follow the iadc need to bring mitigation guidelines in terms of that but i don't know if they've made any statements about well we needed to shorten the end of life so we don't just have satellites floating around up there for decades after they're over um and that would be helpful to have those kind of conversations quick comment please one thing i want to emphasize here is that we don't have a whole lot of time the the march of technology in space is exploding for a variety of reasons not the least of which is suddenly it's a whole lot cheaper to do all kinds of things that used to be not considered possible and we only have so much time left so it is serious as the problems are now they're probably going to be a lot more intense and potentially a lot more dangerous if we don't start cooperating in this uh or at least engaging to use the word of choice with china and other nations as well pretty soon that time is not on our side we may be overtaken by events so when people talk about conflict you know in space sometimes there's a tendency among space people to look at it in in isolation you know satellite asat and whatever but the reality is these things are all in some larger political context somebody is shooting at a satellite not because they don't like a satellite but because it's doing something they don't like or they feel threatening there's some other political or military context for it and of course the one that's most here is the issue of of of taiwan and what what might go on what role space you know might play and people are looking at lessons learned from the ukraine situation and other lessons learned for for sort of for for taiwan how important is sort of space security relative to sort of the taiwan scenario is it a sideshow is it a nice to have and really the real action is in landing craft and submarines and and air power projection in spaces you know kind of uh you know kind of it's cute it's there but uh it's not sort of central the issue of the centrality of of space to stability in the western pacific and and the indopacific you know generally how would you how would you characterize that let me let me share the this a little bit about what i what i know about this is of course the taiwan issues the core issue for china and having watched you know the us use its space based assets to fight effectively in the gulf war that really shifted china's military approach to focus on winning now in informatized local wars under informatized conditions and that local wars i presume really refers principally to taiwan so the the development of the capabilities to use space assets assets to fight a win a war in taiwan has been a key focus of of the chinese PLA for decades now so that's where it will have the most advanced capabilities of course we've we've heard now read now in the the paper today about balloons being floated toward taiwan but i assume that's partly to create additional resiliency in in these in these uh in these information gathering intelligence gathering systems so uh developing uh the capacity to use space assets has been a major focus of the chinese PLA and continues to be excellent so shifting from the security side to the then sort of the uh commercial side you know we've been mentioning the growing importance of private companies in space um and we certainly see uh private semi-private both state-owned enterprises as well as things that we might recognize as private companies you know in china and so forth um so how should the u.s think about cooperation and competition commercially with china in these areas we treat china like we would any other foreign country you know france and in japan and canada do we or um or india even or do we put it in a special category if so why and and for and for what purposes so as china itself develops its own non-state enterprise you know sort of entities uh what should the state department or commerce or us trade representative what should we be be thinking about here something to sort of encourage because it gives them maybe a a stake in a in a uh wealthier and stable environment or something to discourage because it simply builds dual use capability that under civil military fusion they'll exploit for nefarious purposes how do we balance that some questions are some questions are secrets some questions are mysteries you know uh i mean this is a really thorny issue this is the challenge especially given china's military civil fusion policy and in any case a lot of a lot of the technologies uh in space are dual use it or maybe more than dual use uh in any case so uh here uh finding a path through all of that is difficult but i think a number of you mentioned that you know in the in that it's not impossible uh so how do we we sort that out as far as whether companies are private or state owned uh you know that in a what is a matter of degree and i think uh the uh that governments play an important role in uh promoting innovation in the space arena all around the world so i i mean there there are certainly uh chinese companies that have much closer ties to the chinese military and we'd want to understand that very carefully and uh well they're also as you mentioned others that are are are really quite private a lot of the the new space launch companies for example some of the satellite companies uh and uh but you know as we learned in the balloon case again many of them may work closely with uh with china's PLA i mean we it's a it's a very complicated ecosystem and this is one of the challenges uh in uh dealing with china is that there's no clear separation yeah i mean i think in times past i mean i mean uh both in Xi Jinping's early days and uh and and before that i think the idea of there being a distinct sector uh was more plausible but since you know what's happened with jack ma and other people was happened with hong kong you know the idea of a private sector you know while plausible but while possible is not plausible i guess is what i'm trying to say because so we're keying off of what do we see as what the plA leadership has done in terms of even allowing entities uh you know sort of to exist and maybe that's self-defeating that they will simply limit their competitiveness you know by that heavy handedness they might be doing more economic damage uh as a result of that political requirement there's a lot of speculation about about the pattern of the chinese state absorbing some of china's most innovative companies and what that will do for chinese innovation uh long term uh something to to watch closely and space is is uh you know Xi Jinping has uh has uh sing has singled it out as as a key arena for chinese innovation putting a lot of resources into uh promoting uh space including military civil cooperation so we've been making um progress as bruce mentioned in soft power with diplomatic initiatives and the direct descent asat ban and so forth uh gaining um gaining uh support norms of behavior i think gaining gaining support uh do we risk undercutting that or just or china risk undercutting that and both of us being uh condemned by developing countries in the mega constellation world it's certainly it's certainly a hot topic if you're inside of you know u n and co-pushing you hear a lot of countries doing that so it's mega constellation something that since both china and and the us are doing it uh there's no comparative advantage uh between the two uh or um are there ways that we can handle mega constellation in a way that either supports or doesn't undercut you know our soft power and uh advances in other areas convincing people that we're the wonderful people to hang out with this is where you have a situation i think where uh and hopefully the united states continues to pursue it where if you have technologists and diplomats working together to have a to craft a coherent policy it doesn't have to be somebody wins and somebody loses uh there he gains out there for china as well as for the united states and our our allies uh if we can work together when you say what you how do we handle that that kind of a situation about uh interaction with uh private private chinese companies the first thought that came to my mind was very carefully very carefully yeah i would i would take uh uh i'll object to the premise that there's something inherently wrong with mega mega constellations i mean they are providing space-based internet to indigenous communities to to remote areas to countries which otherwise wouldn't have internet so they're serving a global good obviously they are you know they're expanding our economy right we have now a new sector where we can get high paying jobs so that's really important and so far uh you know i mentioned sort of two major companies that have constellations they are being very responsible right so one of the companies is working closely with this ground-based astronomy community to make sure that they don't uh you know interfere with astronomy astronomical observations the other one is being very careful about uh you know removing their satellites from orbit in a safe way so i i so far i do not see any indication that you know we are i mean we obviously have to talk we have to have good ssa all of that but but i don't think that has mega constellations are an inherently bad idea oh i i would agree with you about that it's sort of but you can you can go too far if as long as companies and entities behave responsibly with the recognition of what their larger responsibilities are uh i it's certainly in the national security field um constellations are a great way to deal with with the security threats my only concern on and the reason why we raise it here is the potential that were unchecked completely unregulated behavior could lead to bad outcomes multiple i mean 25 000 uh close warnings per day i'm not i that makes me feel uneasy that's been projected where the where you might have uh uh satellites coming to uh close enough that there's a possibility of a collision so i i'm on your side on on mega constellations just we need to be careful i would say that there's a there's a linkage here in that uh one analogy that's been proffered to me is that uh yes there's lots of these things up there uh but if they're under control big if under control and manage it's like having you know the usc marching band it does all kinds of complicated things uh but but perfectly safe and and the the link in that analogy is information that is if we don't really know what's up there or if the error bubbles around our satellites are really large and we have to be really conservative and we don't know where these things are so the issue of carrying capacity is in turn linked to the issue of well how much information do you have if you have very little information about the space environment if you have to say is really bad you don't have access or whatever uh then your carrying capacity is probably going to be pretty low uh because you don't know where things are on what risk you're running if your information is very high high resolution broadly available trusted things are under control your carrying capacity may be gigantic um and so again there's this sort of linkage it's not merely the matter of do i have rules and somebody in charge it's what information do those people have and what decisions can people make based upon trusting that if you got to remember that analogy of mega constellations the usc march not stanford not stanford that's wonderful that's wonderful that again underlines the importance of engaging between the us and china to be able to get that information so you can have that you know ability to make informed decisions and trying to get good policies again whether or not you like china they are there and you just have to figure out a way in which to engage with them in order to ensure sustainable use of outer space very good and i think with that we're a little over past the hour i need to conclude the session but i'm here to remind the audience you're welcome to join us for for coffee and further conversation and i thank you for all being here today and and taking part in the discussion and thanks for some of the really great questions thank you