 My name is Victoria Samson. I'm the Washington office director of the Secure World Foundation. I'm really excited about this panel. Why should America engage in space arms control? Question mark. We had a big discussion about whether or not there should be a question mark there and we felt it initially, it should because it's a conversation that needs to be had. Arms control has traditionally been the main way of controlling and mitigating security challenges on Earth. Yet poses significant challenges for dealing with the proliferation of counter space capabilities. For much of the last 40 years, the United States has either refused to consider space arms control measures or criticized existing proposals without offering any of its own. This discussion will focus on the merits and drawbacks to U.S. engagement and potential leadership on space arms control and discuss pragmatic proposals that could be advanced. We are trying to sidestep the binary treaty, no treaty discussion that international bodies tend to fall into when looking at arms control for space. There are tangible reasonable efforts that the United States could be supporting or promoting to ensure the stability and security of space that fall various places on the spectrum of arms control initiatives, but stop short of a legally binding treaty. I'm hoping that this panel will discuss some of those options. Over the past two years, three different island bodies tried and failed to move very far on space security issues. The competence and disarmament in February 2018 tasked subsidiary body three with looking at a prevention of arms race in outer space for Peros. It was unable to adopt a final report to send on to the UN General Assembly. The United Nations Disarmament Commission made a working group, too, to find ways in which the recommendations of 2013 Supergovernal Experts of the GGE on space transparency and competence building letters could be extended. There were disputes in spring 2019 where visa issues for some of the delegates, the UNDC was unable to meet. And, of course, the UNDC was unable to meet in 2020 for different reasons entirely. And then in 2018 and 2019, there were discussions of a group of governmental experts to further practical measures on Peros, or promotion of arms race in outer space. I'm going to go to the detail about that because about the page right on our panel is the chair that we're conducting a whole lot to say, but I will say at the end, the states weren't able to reach consensus and no formal document was finalized. Part of the problem is that multilateral boards dealing with security issues tend to want to ban technology to concern via treaties. However, space capabilities are in largely dual use, so it rests not so much on the technology as to the intent of the user of whether it'll be threatening or not. How can that be determined at the international level, particularly when so much of that is shaped by views of how the countries are actors in question, deal with each other in all aspects, not just space? Furthermore, the multilateral community dealing with space security issues arose from the arms control and disarmament sector. So they tend to continue to think about weapons as the biggest threat to the space environment and not disruptions to the stability of the domain, whether or not those are military in origin. Additionally, the international community does not agree as to what the biggest threat to space security is. The United States and its allies has a view it is almost an environmental issue. Clutter, both physical and only electrical, magnetic spectrum, and congestion. Meanwhile, Russia and China and their allies tend to focus on banning actual weapons on orbit. What we've been doing both in the multilateral for and the US approach to it has not been working. If we want to continue to receive the benefits from the US space, we must change how we approach space governance and diplomacy. And that's where our fantastic panel today comes in. I will quickly go over introductions. Of course, they are longer bios on our website. First off, we have Pete Hayes. He supports the Office of Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, and is an adjunct professor at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute. Next, we have David Koppelau, Professor Koppelau specializes in the areas of public international law and national security law. He joined the Georgetown Law Faculty in 1981. And then we have Ambassador Jim Petriota. He was the chair of the Group of General Experts on further effective measures for the prevention of an arms race in outer space, a pair of us. And finally, we have Jessica West, who is a senior researcher at the Canadian Peace Research Institute. Project Cloud Shares and managing editor of the International Space Security Index Project. Like our other panel so far for the summit, we will have questions being submitted via Zoom Q&A. And both the ones you think are exciting. I'll try and keep an eye on that. And I'll be selected and asked by me. I'm going to ask again, please don't put any questions in the chat. Questions should go in the Q&A key only. So with that, I'd like to start taking your thoughts from our panelists. And David, I'm going to start with you. What's the case for space arms control? What can you tell us about that? Well, first of all, Victoria, thank you so much for organizing this program and for assembling this panel. I'm delighted to participate and look forward to an interesting discussion. I'll kick things off by making two points, the first of which might be relatively more well known to this group. And that has the need to do something to enhance the security of outer space. There is today a widely shared perception that the security situation in space is deteriorating, that numerous countries are undertaking threatening or provocative activities in outer space. Russia, China and the United States and others are undertaking programs, are nervously watching what the others are doing, are criticizing what the others are doing. And putting it all together, there's a wide apprehension that the security and stability of space operations are impaired on. And this we look at now what the countries are doing in space with at least ambiguous, if not directly threatening activities. We look at the rise in Bellicose rhetoric emanating from all three countries and more to the effect that space is just another domain, just another location where arms races and perhaps armed conflict are inevitable, sooner or later. And we look at the creation of new bureaucratic units, such as the US Space Force, that are dedicated to the concept of space control or space dominance, all of which creates a very dangerous situation today. And the current legal environment principally reflected in the outer space treaty, especially its Article 4, is quite permissive. And inadequate to deal with these rising threats. As I said, the audience is probably pretty familiar with that first point, the need to do something about security and space. We can pursue that further if you're interested. The second point is the role that arms control in particular can play in contributing to a solution or at least the amelioration of these problems. And here I don't want to over promise. I don't want to say that arms control is the one solution that can fix everything, just that it can make a contribution. And we would need to pair arms control with the wide array of other tools of national security policy, including the rest of diplomatic initiatives, methods to increase the resiliency of the entire space architecture, improve space situational awareness, improve responsive launch capability. There's a lot of things that should be done, but arms control, I submit, is the one tool that makes a unique contribution. It is the only way of directly reducing the numbers and quality of weapons that are pointed out to the United States in all the other realms, whether it's nuclear, conventional, chemical, biological, in all the other realms, the US and global security posture has been to use measures of arm control combined with other tools of diplomacy to try to deal with the international threats. Only in space has arms control been off the table. And I'd argue that this is a criticism, not just of the Trump administration. The Obama administration and its predecessors also failed to take the initiative to apply arms control in space in a parallel manner to the way they've used arms control with other tools in the entire other realms of national security. In addition to arms control, measures of weapons programs, deterrence, can play an important role as well. But deterrence is fundamentally a psychological phenomenon. It's an effort to try to persuade an adversary not to use their weapons against us to affect their choices. Arms control, in contrast, is a physical manifestation. It directly reduces the weapons that the opposing state has at its disposal. It is the only peaceful way of limiting the capability of an opposing country to use force against the United States. Let me wrap up this initial round just by saying I'm not arguing that arms control in space would be easy. There are lots of problems, lots of difficulties to overcome in developing a successful arm control regime. But arms control was not easy in the other realms either. By sticking with it, the world was able to produce nuclear arms control treaties, chemical weapons treaties, biological weapons treaties. The same kind of efforts can be done in outer space as well. The feeble initiatives that have been proposed by others, Russia and China, have a proposed treaty. The European Union has taken some initiatives. These initiatives are, in my view, weak and unsatisfactory. But it's hard to beat something with nothing. And that's what the United States and the rest of the world have been doing so far with arms control in outer space. I'll get it there for now. Thank you, David. Hard to beat something with nothing, absolutely. Actually, Pete, I would like to hear your thoughts on that. Where are the pros and cons of the U.S. starting to take leadership in space arms control? What are your thoughts on that? Well, first, let me thank you very much for letting me in on this very interesting session. I appreciate it. I need to highlight that I'm speaking just on my own behalf and not on the part of any official body. So I think David did an outstanding job of outlining the current situation. The one thing I might emphasize, though, is that the position in the United States government is that the outer space treaty is completely sufficient and viable going forward. So my hat's off to all the great work that the people did in 10 short years from Sputnik until when the outer space treaty was put in place. I mean, that's an incredible achievement. And they moved the ball a long ways downfield and we should all be grateful to them. But we should also recognize that today, almost every major space security issue is not sufficiently addressed in that regime. It's frankly silent on a lot of the most important things. And I would also highlight that. I mean, when states are serious about moving forward within a treaty regime, they have several measures that are lacking in the outer space treaty regime. So there is no verification mechanism to speak of. So when states get serious about doing arms control, they have serious verification measures so that they can ensure that the other parties are complying with their obligations under that treaty. So there's essentially nothing there. It's also very telling that even after things like the 2007 Chinese ASAP tests, states did not call out that highly irresponsible behavior that added 25 percent to the total debris count in low earth orbit by citing the outer space treaty. But if that is an irresponsible behavior or something that's going to cause harmful interference to others, I really don't know what is. So, you know, that's that's very telling. Maybe a final thing is that there is no standing body associated with the outer space treaty regime that helps states interpret and comply with their obligations under the terms of the treaty. And that's usually something that's included in other treaty regimes. So to me, it's very telling to contrast the outer space treaty regime with the nonproliferation treaty. That's only a year later. You have the IAEA to enforce compliance by states parties with that regime. You have also built into that regime five year review conferences. So, I mean, again, I'm not trying to trash the outer space treaty regime. That was it was a significant achievement in international law, but we need to recognize that it really doesn't address the most significant security challenges today. So just going back to, you know, what's the position of the United States government? I can understand that they want to say that it's all questions are answered. This is sufficient. It's viable forever and ever. Amen. I don't I think that's short-sighted, though. And frankly, my judgment, we will never move to a more robust, fulsome, higher fidelity type of arms control regime unless the United States leads that effort. So there are consequences for the United States taking that position. A final thing I'll just mention is that for almost all treaty regimes of this type to go forward, really one of the main things that the leading practitioners in whatever that thing is that we're trying to control, they have to decide what it is that they're willing to forego. So there are let's just say offensive biological weapons. The United States unilaterally decided that, hey, you know, we could build fantastic offensive biological weapons. I have no doubt about that. But the United States, then this is actually back during, you know, the Nixon administration, the United States decided that, hey, we could do that, but it's not good for our security. We don't believe that these things are needed. And so we even unilaterally decided that and that got put into some arms control subsequently. So I mean, that's really the key thing that the United States government needs to be deciding today. What are those things that it can forego? It cannot preserve all options open and hope to achieve a more robust and higher fidelity arms control regime going forward. And I'll just second David's point that this is likely to be long and hard to actually nail something together. But again, until the United States reaches a better conclusion on those two points about what it's willing to give up and decide to be the leader in actually negotiating such a thing, it ain't going to happen. It did. There's I think there's, you know, never say never. But I would say it's close to a zero percent probability that, you know, either someone else could lead this or that it could go forward without the United States deciding and transparently discussing what it is that it's decided to forego. So I hope that's helpful. OK, thank you, Pete. That was great. Next, I'd like to hear from Ambassador Patriota. Can you guys hear me OK? Yes. OK, good. Ambassador Patriota, in your role as a chair of the Group of Governments on Peros, what can you talk a little bit about the process we can speak about, about how it went, what were the bumps in the negotiations and maybe more importantly, looking ahead. What lessons could be learned that could be used to make progress in future discussions of potential space arms control options? Thank you. First of all, thank you, Victoria and the Secure Wolf Foundation for inviting me to this panel. Very honored. I'm not speaking on any official capacity for Brazil, but other than having been the chair of the GGE on the prevention of an arm race in outer space. It was a fascinating experience. I'm not an outer space expert, but I am a multilateral diplomat for over 35 years. So it's an expertise that you acquire for negotiating difficult things. In the GGE, we had a particular mandate. The mandate, of course, was a little bit of an issue. It was voted. It was not a consensual mandate. So we had reluctant participants in the group. It was a bit of an original sin, let's say, because there were no prior negotiations of the mandate. The mandate was drawn by those, basically by the supporters of the treaty approach. And then those other countries that did not favor a treaty at that point had to think whether they would or would not participate in engaging the GGE that decided to participate. But it wasn't easy because of the split. This I was also Brazil's representative to the Conference on Disarmament. This matter has been an important item on the agenda for many, many years. The treaty that is backed by Russian China, which is a treaty to prevent the placement of weapons in outer space, it's more of a narrowly focused treaty and a typical arms control or disarmament treaty in the way it's structured, hasn't been met with acceptance by the West, the US in particular. So there's been this sort of standstill for over a decade over there because what you have on the table is this sort of Sino-Russian formal treaty proposition. And then on the other side, you have the US and other West countries not willing to undergo the typical negotiation of the Disarmament Treaty for outer space. Now I'm also the chair of the GGE, which is currently going on, moving forward on cyber security. And a lot of the same discrepancies or divergences of view apply because there are two frontier issues. There are two unregulated areas for multilateral diplomacy that are beginning to pick up as extremely important areas for the future of mankind. And as any important area, they can be used for peaceful purposes, but they can also be instruments of warfare or warfare domains, as you would say. So what to do about these new trends? I think in the GGE, we tried our best to bridge huge differences in approaches. Between on the one hand, a more narrowly focused treaty, typical of the old Disarmament types of treaties and arms control treaties, but directly addressing the placement of weapons in outer space and not much else. And then on the other side, you had partners reluctant to engage on that particular track because they claim that now outer space is a different matter. It is not easily, you cannot easily deal with it under rigid international legally binding instruments that focus only on this, that treat objects in space as if you could easily define them as weapons or no weapons because first there's the issue of dual yields. So it's hard to tell what's a weapon, what isn't a weapon. Civilian satellite can be used to knock out someone else's satellite. So it can all of a sudden become a weapon depending on the trajectory. So all these issues, there's the issues of verification, the issues of monitoring, the fact that the space situational awareness still does not provide countries a real time picture of what's going on. So there's a margin of delay for decisions to be taken. All these issues were brought up in an argument that would say, listen, now in this century, we think that the road ahead does not, would not involve a typical legally binding treaty of the kinds that we've seen in the past. So we have to do something different. The same argument applies in cyberspace. We face the same kind of arguments, but cyberspace doesn't have former treaties like outer space does. Outer space has the treaties coming from the 60s like the outer space treaty. So there was an effort before because outer space already existed at that time and people were already sending rockets up to outer space and placing objects up there. Whereas in cyber security, well, the cyberspace didn't really exist in those days. But in any case, it's both challenging. We did our best to try to find a way and the mandate, of course, for the, we call it PAROS, the prevention of an arm based in outer space. It's called PAROS in UN language. We tried to, we had a mandate that was very hard because it told us, it guided us to find elements of an international, for an international instrument. So if you're trying to find elements for an instrument, you're actually practically designing an instrument. And there are a group of countries who were against an instrument. So the mandate itself was slightly self-defeating because, you know, you were forcing reluctant countries to give the chair, you know, the elements of a possible international instrument and they would have to take into account a proposal coming from only one side of the argument which was the Russian-Chinese PPWT draft. That was, you know, you were meant to take into consideration that draft and to draw from it elements that would feed into some sort of diplomatic negotiations, right, immediately, subsequently of a treaty. And there were countries that didn't want to negotiate a treaty. So we tried our best, we tried to create a matrix of elements that would not be, that would distance ourselves a little bit from that more narrow approach of the PPWT, the Russian and Chinese proposal of 2008 and then it was revised in 2014 and to try to get a new beginning, a new starting point for this discussion, you know. We did our best. I think we had a great discussion. It was two sessions of two weeks each. And we started drafting this sort of wonderful draft report with a lot of good content and mostly a clean text, which proves that from a diplomatic standpoint, it's possible to bridge a lot of differences through language. But in the end, you couldn't get a consensus because I cannot speak for any of the members but in my interpretation as the chair was a bit frustrating at the end because we managed to go so far with that. But I think in the end, partners were not ready to adopt a report that would contain such a reasonable number of well-defined and formulated elements for an international instrument because they were not ready to take the step to start and to engage in an international instrument. But I think it was not a waste of time because we did get to the bottom of many things and all of the important spacefaring countries were present with the right people there. They're the competent negotiators who deal with this. And my hope was that even though at the end there was no agreement, so you GGs either produce a report or they don't and it's by consensus. So if one member raises their hand and says, we don't agree, that's it, it falls apart. And then you report back saying that there's nothing to report back. There's no recommendations to be made. But the body of work goes back to all the capitals and people can use that for many other efforts if they want to. I think the Europeans took it back, the Chinese took it back, the Russians, the Americans. And I think it was a moment that allowed us to have a real discussion and there hasn't been many of those. Other bodies of the UN don't really deal with peace and security aspects. You have the peaceful uses of outer space, copious, but they can only go so far because they are about peaceful uses in cooperation. They don't really have a concern for, they don't have a mandate to discuss arms race and strategic competition of great military powers regarding exploiting outer space for military dominance of others. They don't have that mandate. So I think it was incredibly useful, a learning experience. It put all the major powers together in the same dialogue because prior to that for some 15 years that there hadn't been any dialogue really come. There was some conversation on TCBMs, transparency and confidence building measures. That was in the nature of the report from back in 2013, I think, I don't know anymore. And that's what the United Nations Committee on Disarmament was supposed to discuss, but they haven't been able to move forward in their tri-annual on their tri-annual agenda. I'm very hopeful that we contributed to giving new ideas. And just to finalize because I've been speaking for too long, but the alternative approach to a treaty which I didn't really discuss is the approach of responsible state behavior through a set of norms that are non-binding, that are not inserted into a treaty, but that have the power of consensus because the norms would be agreed to by the international community. And the fact that they are agreeable to all countries would give them some power to be a guidance, at least give guidance as to what would be responsible behavior in an area that is developing so quickly. Thank you. Thank you, Ambassador Petriota. And you actually keyed up our next speaker really well. Jessica West did a study on mapping out norms that are emerging for space and responsible behavior. Jessica, maybe you could talk a little bit about your findings, what were the key results, themes that emerged, and maybe a couple of things that surprised you about what you learned. Yeah, I would love to. As you know, I'm a fan and advocate of arms control, but the way we've been approaching arms control and outer space, as you noted, hasn't been working. And we've been stuck for a long time and it's very frustrating for those of us who are working in the field and dedicated to the field. So I've been doing some work with a colleague, Jill Doucette, to, I'm gonna frame it as a backdoor approach to doing security and space by starting with the openings that we've had recently on safety and sustainability guidelines. And our thinking is that we could build on the momentum that commercial and civilian actors have been developing to enhance rules of good behavior and outer space that improve safety and improve sustainability and think about how those might inform specific military and security activities in a way that would also improve security. And to get started on that, we've been doing essentially a taking stock project. I like to call it mapping the existing normative terrain. I'm still working on exactly what the map looks like, but I have a lot of data. And I've spent a lot of time doing content coding of all of the existing documents that I contract out that are related to activities in outer space and how they should be conducted and what values we bring to the table when we talk about those. And we also did a survey of global space experts. And I think some people in the audience probably participated in that. And I just wanna thank you for taking the time. And so in recent weeks, I've been sitting back and trying to put that together. And I have to say there's a few surprises that stand out that challenge some of the assumptions that I had going into this study. And I think they're worth pointing out. One of them relates to values. And we were talking about this yesterday when we talked about, how do we develop norms on the moon? Well, values are important. And by setting social expectations in a sense of oddness, norms of behavior are really tied up in core values and principles. And so going into the project, my goal and my assumption was that I would be coding a whole lot of documents related to safety and sustainability and that those would really be core values that would be reflected in the body of rules and agreements that we've developed over the last 60 years in outer space. And what happened when I started to code for this is yes, those were present, but I was really surprised by how consistently conflict prevention and arms control emerged as a core purpose and principle of activities in outer space and in our agreement surrounding those activities. And this is clearly a priority for the international community and it has been for a long time. So it's reinforcing, but also challenges, some of the ways I was thinking about the work. I think a second surprise that stands out is just how much work the project would be. I think we all have that experience when you think, oh, this will be easy. It's less easy than I anticipated. I didn't expect to find such an extensive array of documentation linked to space-related behaviors and practices and norms. I'm part of this global refrain that calls for more governance, better governance, new rules, new norms of behavior. And what I'm realizing is that we do have a pretty solid baseline to work with and I think that gives us an opportunity to think more creatively about how we use what's already in place to do better. And when we're talking about arms control or conflict prevention to make outer space more secure. Really importantly, I've been pleasantly surprised to discover that I think there really are a lot of very practical steps that are already embedded in our existing practices that we can use to enhance security and outer space. Most of these are not a stretch by any means. There are a few that are already specifically related to military activities that I think we could do a better job of articulating and reinforcing. And I think it's important to remember that there is already some forms of arms control and outer space. And so that can help us get away from this mindset of thinking there is no arms control and outer space and we can't do arms control and outer space. That's not true. Weapons of mass destruction are banned from orbit. That's a form of arms control. That's possibly difficult to verify but we don't question that as an objective or a principle in the way that we do activities and outer space. And so this realization that we have a lot to work with is really refreshing and I think can help change some of the conversations we're having. And then the last surprise was kind of a negative surprise. I've had to grapple with the reality that not all norms are good norms. And I suppose that's where the good behaviors part of norms comes in. And on this really came out in the comments from the survey that we did. People were keen to point out that norms can also serve to legitimize bad behaviors or to make good behaviors or good enough behavior acceptable. And so Pete mentioned this but the testing of anti-satellite weapons and other examples of poor compliance with debris mitigation stand out as areas where maybe the international community is accepting standards that might be considered bad or suboptimal and that's a worry. And I think this challenge of negative norms is really important to keep in mind when we're thinking about international engagement and this question should the United States engage on arms control? And to me it's key to keep in mind that the impact of doing nothing is not nothing. The things that we fail to do and our silences also become norms. They shape expectations and they influence future behavior and this can be really difficult to challenge later on. So I think we should keep that in mind when we're thinking about whether or not we engage and doing nothing really doesn't seem like an option. Great, thank you, Jessica. Now we've had our opening comments from our panelists. I'd like to have a question that any of the panelists can answer. In terms of things that change, I think people recognize that the situation of the main has changed. Specifically, what has been made different? For the United States it might be an option to think about space arms control. Is it geopolitical considerations? Are there technical concerns? Are there technical progress? Are there new uses of space? Like what is making this conversation different now than perhaps it was 10 years ago? Any of you guys want to respond? Refounding, Jessica. Sure, so I guess picking up on some of the work we've been doing, we like to talk about low hanging fruit. What are the low hanging fruits that we can grab at? And I think focusing on the link between security and sustainability, the purpose of this panel is a good one. So making efforts to come to an agreement that would restrict debris causing anti-satellite tests. I think that is a low hanging technical fruit that we can grab. And actually from the work I'm doing, I would even argue that the basis of that already exists. We've collected bits and pieces of this fruit already and we just need to make fruit salad by putting it together in a formal agreement. Over and over and over in the documents I'm reading, no intentional distraction, minimize debris. Over and over and over. And I think those are really core norms of behavior that we've agreed to and we can really make some forward momentum in the security arena by rearticulating that and maybe specifying the way diplomats are so good at like Ambassador Patriota in language that people could take home to their states and we finally have some progress in something. Thank you, other thoughts, Pete? Yeah, so that's a really interesting issue, what's changed and what's driving any kind of change. So a couple of points to make there. So one of the most specific drivers right now is whatever bad stuff the Russians are doing to some of our high value assets and US Space Force wants to have a way to communicate that more clearly publicly. So that's a real specific driver for the United States right now. The other thing I would just offer up, which is to me really an interesting dynamic is when I think about the difference between the reaction of the world community to the Chinese ASAT test in 2007 and I'll also add in how much response there was to the USA 193 shoot down in February of 2008 and contrast that with the world's response to whatever was even said about the Indian ASAT test last spring, it's very telling. And I'll go back to Jessica's point about, norms aren't necessarily just good things, they could be bad things. So to me, the international community is kind of setting a norm that destructive ASAT tests, we don't really like them, but we're hardly even gonna comment on them. That's not helpful in my judgment. And I'll just throw something else in there because I think it's been going on for decades is there's a lot of radio frequency interference, purposeful interference on the part of the Iranians and lots of other people because they don't like what's being broadcast. So at some level, a norm has been established there that it's kind of okay, we don't like it, but we're gonna live with it. So in my judgment, the international community needs to find a multi-dimensional way to get after these things. And for that radio frequency interference, one of the things I'd really like to see the International Telecommunications Union do is the next time the Iranians have a satellite that's up for being licensed to say, well, we looked at your behavior when you're not supposed to be causing harmful interference and all these instances that have been geo-located and attributed to you. So you're gonna be denied that license or delayed or whatever. I mean, in my opinion, we have to go after these things in multi-dimensional ways. And it's not helpful to look at them and still piped UN or other forums. I mean, unless the world community can figure out a way to go after these things in a more holistic way, we're going to continue setting these negative norms that Jessica just talked about. And I don't wanna leave this like the glasses half empty. I mean, I'm actually cautiously optimistic about moving forward just because there is more focus on this. You can say, why does the space force want to have those points to communicate and what are they up to? But I think it's always good to have more public dialogue about this stuff because the more people that know about this and understand the specifics and really the change strategic environment of space that the United States now describes it as a war fighting domain. So that's kind of antithetical to what the writers of the outer space treaty regime envisioned that would be just for peaceful purposes. So all that's good. I think we do have some opportunities to move forward and arms control needs to be a part of that. Great, thank you. So you're definitely, you're saying there's a lot of tools on our toolkit that need to be more open-minded in how we apply them. David, did you wanna jump in here? So first of all, I agree with what's been said so far but I highlight three particular things that have changed in the last several years that have made this issue even more timely than it would have been previously. The first is the increased use of space for civilian economy and for military in the United States and elsewhere. This has always been a factor, is long been a factor but the democratization of space, the increased access to space by the private sector is revolutionized the field and there are now so many more players who have a stake in the security and stability of outer space. We all use space all the time for things like this very conference but in every aspect of daily life and the military dependence upon space has become even more profound. Second thing that's changed is the threat to outer space. The fact that modern society depends so much upon satellite services has been noticed and that militaries have taken on the challenge of being able to jeopardize, to intercept their adversaries use of outer space and that has led to a much more vulnerable situation situation for all players. And then the third factor that I mentioned is the increased sensitivity to the importance of and the fragility of the modern international legal regime. The Trump administration's challenge to the existing legal structures across an entire array of international behaviors has made people appreciate even more I think the necessity for having reliable legal regimes and the necessity of having non-legal regimes, norms of international behavior that ameliorate the tensions between them. So those are factors I think are things that have changed in an important way in the last several years. Thanks, David. And back to Petruyada, did you wanna add something here? Yeah, I agree with everybody. I think there's an additional element is in addition to dependency on space for everything today. The fact that the major powers already developing capabilities that could be offensive towards space objects or coming from space objects or in between space objects. So it's the sort of space, space, earth, earth, space kind of scenarios that we actually discussed during the GGE. And the fact that so much depends on space now for military and civilian uses, but at the same time, things are very vulnerable and exposed in space. So there's a vulnerability that grows with increasing dependency on the space environment. So what to do about it? I mean, if you seek dominance through developing all these offensive capabilities that are space related, on the other hand, most of your assets are also exposed to the possibility of being shot down in ways that are not that inaccessible to other players, because it's not as expensive to shoot something down from space than it is to put things up there. So there's this reality of vulnerability and at the same time, greater reliance on space for everything, including military projection of force. So I think the discussion is needed. And again, the perception that space is not an infinite resource, because right now I think orbits are finite. The best orbits are occupied, they are not available forever for everyone. And then you have also the issue of long-term sustainability because of the debris and the number of assets that are being placed abroad. And then you have huge investments from public and now more and more private sector in terms of space exploration. I think also the private sector wants to know a little bit better, what are the rules that apply if someone decides to damage and produce a loss to my huge investment all of a sudden? Who's responsible? How can I recover my loss and things like that? So I think there are lots of question marks that will make countries probably move in some direction pretty soon. Thank you, Ambassador. Moving on to kind of building off that conversation that we've had, I'm looking at the Q&A and there's a lot of them that are focused on some sort of connect energy or KE anti-satellite ban or ASAT ban. I'm curious to know, what does the panel think? Would it be in the US interest to join either a moratorium or perhaps join a ban on KE ASAT testing or at least ban ASAT testing that limits long lived debris, something like that. What do you guys just thought about this? Anyone, Jessica? Yeah, that's exactly the kind of agreement that I was referring to as fruit salad where we just got to take those pieces and maybe put them together and rearticulate them in a way that is specific to a security or military or weapons setting. And from an American perspective, my understanding is that KE ASATs are not something that the United States is particularly keen on using. The United States has been a leader on degree mitigation in outer space. It's been a very positive player on the global stage on that issue. And I don't think there's a lot to lose by engaging, at least starting that conversation with others. Other thoughts, I mean, I guess the question is, is it to the US benefit to do a trade-off here in terms of freedom of action, but also the security you get from having those other thoughts? So this really is a key issue. I will opine that the United States has never come to grips with what it is that it's willing to give up with respect to particular options that it might pursue. And there's also a huge overlap between kinetic energy, anti-satellite weapons, and ballistic missile defense systems, particularly those that might be stationed in space like the brilliant Pebbles concept. So because of those reasons, this, which might be labeled kind of low hanging fruit with respect to what could be more easily pursued that being a kinetic energy ban, ban on testing kinetic energy, anti-satellite weapons, that hasn't been pursued in any rigorous way. And there's lots of proposals out there, people have been talking about it for decades. I mean, I wrote about that in 2002 that this was a missed opportunity. But again, it just to me goes back to the point that until the United States decides what it is that it's willing to give up, it can't have kind of a linear path forward to what it's willing to negotiate. And we keep kind of circling around that. So I am hopeful that as the space environment becomes increasingly contested and now describing it as a war fighting domain, the United States will be more willing to engage with those kinds of issues. I mean, you don't get something for nothing. David mentioned you don't beat something with nothing. Well, to establish our negotiating position, we have to again decide what it is that we can live without. And we for decades have, the United States has wanted to have all its options open. And particularly it doesn't want to stifle ballistic missile defense efforts because of some space arms control regime. So those are difficult issues. There's a lot of overlap there. But again, unless the United States government can come to a better place on that, I see that as a significant impediment. Thank you, Pete. David, did you want to give us your thoughts on this? Sure. For me, the subject of a kinetic energy ASAP ban is a really good illustration of how when it comes to arms control, even the simple obvious steps can be made very complicated. The starting point for this is that nobody has an interest in fighting a war in space that creates large amounts of long lasting debris. Every country that's interested in outer space has a shared interest in avoiding the generation of debris and therefore a treaty that limits the testing or use of kinetic energy anti-satellite systems should be the most obvious thing. But as Pete has identified, there are some complications when you start to negotiate this. There are questions of where do you draw the line? How do you define what should be restricted? How do you define what should be allowed? And therefore it's not quite so easy to draft it to negotiate an effective treaty. My argument is just we should start the process, get moving in that direction and see what you can come up with. Don't delay forever the process of taking step one because you have some doubts about what step nine might ultimately look like. In all the other worlds of arms control, the process has started with quite modest, with very modest initiatives that have over time been improved, refined and strengthened and expanded. We should do the same thing with outer space. Thank you, David. And I feel like I should point out in this discussion about threats to space capabilities, a secure role to put together an annual counter space threat assessment that is available on our website. And it might be of interest, a thumbs up from Jessica, so that's good. We also have some back sheets that spell ANNP. There we go. We have back sheets that spell out a lot of the tests themselves that's also available on our website. And I also direct people to CSIS. They do an excellent annual counter space threat assessment too. I believe the two documents are really complimentary and get full open source assessment in terms of what do we know and what don't we know about this. There's an interesting question in the chat basically talking about the US political process. Perhaps a reluctance to bring on the domestic level, reluctance to bring on limitations to behavior, whether it's legally binding treaties or more terms or what have you. I mean, what does the panel think about that? Is the US political scene ready to start discussing this? I'm thinking back to five, six years ago when we were discussing the draft European Union Code of Conduct, it was perceived as a space treaty in disguise. And if people knew about it in Congress and DC, they did not care for it. So I mean, because it's seen as limiting US options. So how do we deal with that sort of mentality here in the United States? Any thoughts on the panel? Thank you, Jessica. Yeah, I think it's a comment more on arms control in general. And there's sort of been a noted movement away from the concept of arms control. It's not a popular topic anymore. It's not even a popular topic academically anymore. And so I think changing the narrative around what arms control involves and why we do it is really important. Pete's been talking a lot about concessions and what we're willing to give up. And I think that is probably part of arms control negotiations. I think it's really important to keep in mind that because you agree to restrictions or limitations or rules or behaviors that you're not going to engage in doesn't mean that you're conceding. Arms control is a security tool. I learned about it by studying security, not in my peace classes. And keeping that in mind is really important. There are practical reasons why we limit the things that we do when it comes to warfare. We want to avoid the most heinous activities from happening. We want to avoid doing things that cause indiscriminate harm to the environment or to other people. And we want to avoid those things from happening to us as well. So I think at least starting, and not just in the United States, but globally on reframing how we talk about arms control and why we do it and the benefits of it is really important. It's not a weakness to engage and it's not a weakness to agree. And in many cases, we've been well-served. I can't imagine a world where we didn't have the minimum nuclear arms control that we have today. It would be a much worse world. So I guess thinking about what the alternative is, well, often the alternative is worse. So I guess I would start with that bigger picture approach and I'm Canadian. So I don't always get all the ins and outs of American politics. I think you're pretty on note there. Pete. Yeah, thanks. I agree with those points that Jessica just made. I would just also add though, in my opinion, space adds a difficult additional dimension in the sense that it's seldom a standalone topic for security and I'll go to the Indian ASAD tests on that because really what happened within the US internal deliberations was that our concerns about China and desire to keep good relations with India trumped the idea that this is a debris creating event. It's not an enormous long-term interest for space sustainability. So in contrast to nuclear stuff which really concentrates the mind and people can understand readily why you need to have arms control, it's a more difficult sell and it seldom a standalone topic when it comes to space security. So that's an additional reason why it's more difficult to reach these things. And I agree with Jessica's point that the domestic environment is not good for these things. So we have our work cut out for us. It ain't gonna happen in this administration for sure but hopefully going forward, there will be increasing understanding that these things have to be approached in some kind of holistic way and that arms control is one of the tools in the toolkit as David and others have said. And we ignore that or neglect it at our peril because it's going to come back and make it more difficult for the United States in the long run. Thanks Pete. Yeah, I think it's always been seen as something we're giving up as opposed to something we're getting in return. Dave, I interrupted you though. So this is absolutely a tough time for arms control. The national election season makes it difficult to engage in any coherent thinking about any topic let alone something as complicated as this and the leaders of both parties are engaging in a macho campaign to demonstrate which of them can be the toughest when it comes to dealing with Russia and China. So trying to achieve arms control in any venue right now is pushing a big rock up a steep hill but it's also noteworthy that arms control has succeeded in tough times before and in fact, it might be that during the toughest times of the Cold War that's the time when arms control was most successful because it concentrated people's attention on the dangers and enabled people to cut through some of the minutiae and appreciate the big picture of shared interests between the United States and the Soviet Union or others when it comes to nuclear and chemical and biological weapons as well. In fact, it's instructive to remember that the limited test ban treaty, limiting nuclear testing in the atmosphere of 1963 was concluded very shortly after the Bay of Pigs crisis, the Cuban Missile crisis, the Berlin Wall. Sometimes the distance between tough times for arms control and successes in arms control can be pretty quick. And I think it's incumbent upon us to help lay the conditions, do what we can to prepare the intellectual gong work so that when the political stars do align, we'll be able to move quickly to achieve something important with arms control and space. Thank you. One of the thoughts I have when we're talking about whether it's legally binding arms control or just you don't allow it to be imposed or moratoriums or just norms is that verification plays an extremely important role. Space attrition awareness, or as I say, is foundational to really having a concept of a stable predictable space environment. Are we at the point where we have the SSA that we need in order to verify activities up on orbit to be able to determine responsible behavior? I'm curious to know what the panel thinks about that. Ambassador Petrieta, did you wanna jump in here? Well, it was easier for me to talk about the previous issues than this one. We'll take that too. Well, I think space situational, we need one of the issues that keeps popping up again and again as a, let's say something that complicates everything, is this alleged difficulty in verifying things that happen in space, whether they are and the intentions behind actions in space or behaviors in space. So that's used as a reason for not committing to any process that generates legally binding commitments because you cannot verify any of the obligations that might come out for countries in this area. Hard to verify. So space situational awareness would be a tool to verify things in space and to monitor activities in space. But generally, people have different views but I think for the experts at least that participated in the GGE, they gave the impression to the members that it's still not developed to the point of providing a reliable tool to interpret intentions regarding behaviors in space because then you have the additional problem of the dual use, civilian satellites can be camouflaged and can do things that could upset other satellites even though they are not built as weapons. So it's hard to separate one thing from the other. But on the other questions, I think what needs to be done in terms of a process, I think you have to take into consideration the fears and priorities of the major spacefaring nations, the most capable military nations that are sort of, because the provision of an arms race is more or less already superseded by the reality of an arms race that is already ongoing and quite advanced. I mean, it's kind of no longer very useful to speak of preventing an arms race when countries are clearly developing hypersonic weapons and all sorts of things already happening and organizing themselves to treat space as a war fighting domain, as was mentioned here. So I think you have to bring to the table the different elements of fear and aspirations from the major players. So you have to put on the table the anti-satellite capabilities from ground to space. You have to also discuss at the same time, capabilities of weapons that can be placed in space. It started with Star Wars project, that also generated a kind of a fear amongst several of the governmental officials dealing with security in other countries. The capabilities of objects to hit each other or to destroy each other, all sorts of threats. I think the whole range of threats have to be brought to the table. You can't just discuss one particular aspect that's advantageous to one of the parties because they're very well developed in other areas. They don't want to tie their hands. Everyone wants to keep a free reign on the area that they are more capable of developing faster than their rivals. And the rivals want to commit on the areas that their competitors are developing at a faster pace. You need a notion of some sort of balanced approach. Traditional arms control really went furthest in the nuclear field. And it was fundamentally a bilateral process between the US and the Soviet Union. And then things trickle down from that bilateral discussion, especially for the really long-range strategic weapons, because there was a perception of neutral destruction behind this that made countries sit down and discuss it. But in space, maybe there's still not that perception of neutral destruction. Maybe some countries can feel that it's possible to have such, to develop capabilities that will protect you from attacks and give you advantages, geopolitical advantages over your competitors. Thank you, other thoughts on the panel. Jessica. Well, I think it's a conversation to, it's worth having. Usually the concept of verification is used to sort of shut down conversations related to arms control. I don't think it should be the case. I think it's easier to verify behavior. And so starting with things that make us feel less safe in outer space, starting with the kinds of behaviors that we don't want competitors to be engaging in and that make others feel threatened and monitoring that and making what's happening in space more transparent and more accessible is a conversation worth having. I found it really interesting that the assertion that by the US military that Russia had released a projectile, which I believe yesterday was called a torpedo in space was used or was made by using publicly accessible orbital information. That was fascinating how that process unfolded and how individuals like myself who are trying to follow what's happening and trying to be one of those voices that's bringing accountability to outer space activities, better able to engage in that. So I think any discussion where we can move forward on creating a more accessible and open awareness of what's happening in outer space and not just where things are, but also linking that to other initiatives that are already underway, such as having better global monitoring and access to natural hazards in outer space because those can interlink. And when something happens in space, we don't necessarily know if it's intentional or if it was caused by solar flanks. So just bringing that awareness in a more comprehensive way would be good. And maybe I'm dreaming that might be something that never happens, but using verification as a way to shut down a conversation. I don't think it's positive. I think lots of arms control agreements struggle with this. Space is not necessarily unique. It has its own challenges. And I'm not sure verifications ever 100% on anything, but behavior, making data more accessible and more transparent is at least one way to start. And I know that Daniel Porras has been talking about this. Unidire and Sikilov have been engaged in these conversations. I think they're really positive. Thank you, Jessica. And one thing I wanted to bring up just before we're getting very close to the end, but the commercial sector has a strong stake in making sure the space domain is not unstable. It's not littered by debris-created K-A-sat tests. I'm curious to know, do you guys think the commercial sector is willing to talk about this? Or is there still, in the past, I feel like there's been almost an allergic reaction where the commercial sector talk about national security issues, that it was not their thing, they're there to make money. They don't need to be part of this. But it seems like given how much of the commercial sector is involved in space stakeholders and such like that, it seems like they should be part of this conversation. And very quickly, I know we're getting very close in. What do you guys think about that? David. I can offer a brief analogy, and that is to the negotiation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, where the Chemical Manufacturers Association was able to play a decisive role in marshalling public opinion and in lobbying the Senate for endorsement of that treaty. The private sector has a big role to play in these cutting edge issues of national security. And I think it can be a powerful force in nudging the US government and others in the right direction. Thank you, David. Any other thoughts on the panel on this? Jessica. Well, just another great example on that is AI and the campaign to being killer robots. There's a lot of private sector engagement in that and interest in that because they want rules to be able to engage in their industries better. And just another example of why that's important. At the same time, I don't run a corporation. And I know that people who do are really focused on the day-to-day running of businesses. So I think they can be an important voice. I think there's a lot of technical information that they can provide an expertise. They should be pushing for greater security. But I think they also expect governments to do the heavy lifting and create an environment and outer space that is secure and safe for them. So engagement, yes, interest, yes. It's not their responsibility though. And I'm just always wary of passing the buck a little bit. And people not doing the heavy lifting that they really have to do and are responsible for. Thank you, Jessica. I know Peter and Ambassador Joe, if you guys have any last thoughts, 30, like 10, 15 seconds tops. It's not done. You're good? Okay, Pete. Yeah, sorry. I'm in trouble in muting. One of the main things I heard repeatedly is that we've got to go after this in a very multi-dimensional, holistic way. And states are not going to give up their security concerns just because it's in space. I mean, I think that's part of the misperception is that we've arrived at the millennium when we're in space and United Federation of Planets and we're going to work on the prime directive. No, no, we're not doing that. We're all seeking advantage. So that's the context in which this has to be done. I also bring up the Washington Naval Treaty 1922 as a cautionary tale because just like not all norms are good, maybe not all arms control is good. Why do the Americans and the Japanese concentrate on aircraft carriers which are a war-winning weapon in World War II and the Brits don't? Well, the Brits have a advantage built into their advantage in battleships in that treaty. So we weren't smart enough to limit the thing that was emerging as a war-winning weapon. What is that thing in space? I don't know. But we need to be thinking about this issue in those kind of terms because it's a long-term issue. It's a security issue. States are going to continue to seek advantages. We have the security dilemma, all those kind of enduring challenges. So this is a tough nut to crack. I think the other main point that was made is that the United States needs to get on board with this as one tool in the toolkit and stop ignoring it. Over. Thank you, Pete. Speaking of over, I think we've run over our time, but I just wanted to really quickly summarize some of the key thoughts in my takeaways from this. It seems that there's a cost-benefit analysis for the US participating in space arms control, but it seems like this panel overall agreed that this is an important discussion for the US to have and that in the end it was to be with benefit. I'm a national security standpoint to participate in it. Generally speaking, it seems that degree creation anti-salide tests are considered to be bad and that it would be to everyone's benefit to agree to it and that could be a low-hanging fruit to move ahead. Verification plays a crucial role in determining good behavior and following up on any agreements that come out of any kind of arms control discussions. And then finally, the commercial sector has a role, but not the ultimate responsibility for figuring this out. So with that, I'd like to thank my panelists and my seat has been a really, a lot of questions we weren't able to get to, which I think speaks to the fact that this is a hot topic. We look forward to continuing this conversation in the future and the chat was also very interesting to see the discussion points there. Thank you very much, my panelists.