CFR Task Force Report: Securing Space—A Plan for U.S. Action

 

FROMAN: Well, good morning everybody, and welcome. It is great to see you all here. We have a full room here. I understand we have about 200 additional people who registered on Zoom. And this is being livestreamed. So thank you all for participating and for joining us for this launch of our latest task force report, Securing Space: A Plan for U.S. Action. Now, more than sixty years ago with the launch of Sputnik 1, it created that so-called Sputnik moment where the U.S., then under John Kennedy, came together to say we want to put—we want to go to the moon in this decade. And we not only planted a flag on the moon before the end of that decade, but we took the steps necessary to make sure that the U.S. would be the world’s preeminent space power.

The task force starts by recognizing that the space domain that John F Kennedy faced is much different than the one that we face today. Since that time, we now have ninety countries that are space powers, thanks in large part to the private sector that have accelerated innovation and opened the door for more governments to send assets into space, including satellites. Needless to say, space is becoming crowded, particularly low earth orbit, LEO, where we have the proliferation not only of satellites but of space junk, or I guess, the more accurate term is space debris, which raises the risk of debris hitting debris, hitting satellites, and destroying a lot of those assets. There is something like 40,000 items in that low earth orbit all sharing that kind of space. And that means that collisions between the assets of China, Russia, the U.S., and others, is ever more likely.

At the same time, China and Russia have shown interest in expanding their anti-satellite capabilities, which, if used, would threaten us security and economic interests. Now, just to think about how much—not only is there more activity in space, but how much more dependent we are on space for our daily lives. Everything from driving cars and GPS systems to, obviously, our high-stake national security operations allowing our military forces and our intelligence capabilities to talk to each other and to coordinate activity. So space is strategically vital for all of those reasons. And that’s why the Council convened this task force to explore how best to close the governance gap around space, how to preserve the United States’ status as the leading space power, and how to ensure that space can be a peaceful and sustainable domain for all.

This report is a culmination of nearly a year’s worth of work, of hard work and dedication from our cochairs, our project director, task force members and observers, as well as our staff here at CFR. And task forces are really one of the preeminent products of the Council. I have to say I directed a task force a long time ago. I think probably thirty people read it. (Laughter.) It had almost no impact on the broader—but it was an interesting process to go through. It was about economic development in the Balkans at the end of the ’90s. This one promises to be much more significant, I believe, in both its timeliness, you know, and its impact, because to bring together a bipartisan group of task force members from across multiple domains—government, private sector, academia, think tanks, and the like—to reach consensus on both a number of observations but also recommendations about U.S. leadership in this domain and the benefits that come with it.

I want to commend the task force for their commitment in forging this way forward. I want to thank the cochairs, former Congresswoman Jane Harman and retired Lieutenant General Nina Armagno. Want to very much thank CFR’s own Esther Brimmer, who directed the task force and held the pen on the report; Anya Schmemann, who shepherded the process and made sure there was discipline in everything that that we did; as well as the task force team, Chelie Setzer and Kat Viyella, for their support and management of the report. There are some task force members here in the room and some more on Zoom. I want to recognize Steve Hadley in particular, who may not remember it but I think it was his idea in the first place for us to do a Space task force. So he planted the seed and was good enough to serve on the task force, and contributed in very significant ways.

This is a whole of CFR effort, bringing together scholars, members, the broader community. It sort of represents, in many ways, the best of what CFR has to offer. And today we’ll have two sessions for you, a session on the report’s findings and recommendations with our cochairs and a session on current policy challenges in space. In a moment, we’ll go to a video that explains our task force and then I’ll turn it over to the first session’s moderator, Nick Schifrin. Thank you. (Applause.)

(A video presentation begins.)

BRIMMER: In February 2024, NASA’s TIMED spacecraft, on a mission since 2001 to study the Earth’s atmosphere, narrowly missed colliding with a dormant Russian satellite. The two crafts were just thirty feet apart, about the length of a school bus. NASA called the encounter shocking. Had the two assets collided, a storm of hyper velocity shrapnel would have spread hundreds of miles, tearing through everything in its path, endangering the lives of astronauts and wreaking havoc on the billions of dollars of technology humans rely on for daily life. This near hit is a chilling reminder that the rules of space have become far more complex.

Since the days of the Apollo moon missions, the United States has enjoyed seventy years of dominance in space. We have come to depend on space-based technologies. These include everything from weather forecast to GPS-powered apps like Google Maps and, perhaps most importantly, the internet, which has become an essential part of modern life. But in many ways, the United States has begun to lag behind its competitors, risking serious consequences. In the past five years alone, China has launched more than 500 objects into space and has also built its own orbiting space station and remains the only country to have placed not just one but two landers on the far side of the Moon.

China is not alone in its acceleration. The number of countries with at least one object in space has doubled since 2010. Today, more than ninety nations together possess over 13,000 satellites, and those are just the active ones. Governments are no longer driving the technological advances in space. Private companies are now leading the way. With so many assets in space, space traffic management has become a looming challenge that must be solved. No single international organization governs space flight safety or dispute resolution, like the agencies that manage civil air traffic or international shipping. In fact, each country assigns its own orbital position before a launch into low earth orbit and no international rules exist to resolve overlapping paths.

This threat is compounded by the sheer amount of infrastructure already floating in space. Simply put, more stuff in space means more space junk, and more space junk means more chance for collision. Look no further than what happened when a small metal fragment, thinner than a human hair, hit a window on the International Space Station. If the station’s windows weren’t reinforced with silica, or the debris was just a bit bigger, it could have spelled disaster for the crew members’ lives. Satellites are also essential to U.S. national security, enabling the United States to communicate with its military forces, gather intelligence, and even warn of a potential nuclear attack.

Because the United States maintains more strategic assets in space than any other country, its space infrastructure is uniquely vulnerable. U.S. space assets are increasingly at risk from attacks by China, Russia, and other potential adversaries that could come from the ground, from the air, or from space itself. For instance, Russia is developing so-called direct ascent ASAT, or anti-satellite, missiles, which would have the ability to destroy a satellite in space. Although current international treaties prohibit governments from placing nuclear weapons in space, U.S. adversaries have moved closer and closer to breaking international norms on Earth and in orbit.

A lot is at stake. We must make space leadership a national priority and help set the agenda for international cooperation. Even potential adversaries will need to work together to ensure traffic safety in space. And the expertise and the perspective of the private sector will be critical to effective space traffic management. Our actions now will shape human activity in space for decades. Much like the high seas, space is beyond national jurisdiction. All countries must work together to maintain open access. The United States has long been a leader in space. It’s time to make sure we don’t fall behind.

(Video presentation ends.)

SCHIFRIN: Welcome, everyone. Welcome everyone here, welcome everyone online to today’s first session on Securing Space: A Plan for U.S. Action, an event that we’re going to introduce CFR’s Task Force on Space Management Policy. You’ve already heard the primer a little bit, but I am thrilled to be able to have my esteemed guests here to go through the strategic environment that we’re talking about and the solutions that they’ve written about in their report. I’m Nick Schifrin. I’m the foreign affairs correspondent for PBS NewsHour. And quickly let me just mention who we have up here.

I think we already know who all of them are, but Esther Brimmer, the James H. Binger senior fellow in global governance at CFR. And I’ll mention, because this is going to come up, the former assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs. We’re going to be talking about that quite a bit. Lieutenant General Nina Armagno was the staff director of the U.S. Space Force from August 2020 to August 2023, which really meant she orchestrated the establishment of the sixth branch of the armed forces. And Jane Harman served nine terms in Congress, was ranking member of the Intelligence Committee after 9/11, currently a member of the NASA DHS Advisory Council, recent chair in the Commission of the National Defense Strategy. And she urged me to tell you all that the best part of her bio is that she’s the grandmother of nine, so. (Laughter.)

Thank you all very much. And, Jane, let me start with you. I think we got a very good primer there on the strategic environment, but we hear a lot about why space is important—GPS, military, communication, intelligence. Why should we understand that this moment in space and for space is so vital for the United States?

HARMAN: Well, hello, everybody. And thank you, CFR. I actually became a member of CFR in 1992. And the relevance of that is I was also elected to the U.S. Congress in 1992. I’m not sure which one was more significant. (Laughter.) But 1992 was a thousand years ago, and it relates to this conversation. I became a member of the Space Subcommittee in the Congress. I was elected to represent what was then called, and still may be called, The Aerospace Center of Los Angeles, where there was, still is, the Aerospace Corporation, which is an FFRDC, and what was then called the L.A. Air Force Base, now renamed. And Nina can tell you all about it. It has to do with Space Force.

But the reason I’m telling this story from another century is that I thought, geez, this space stuff is really interesting, and it matters. But thirty-three years later, the entire landscape has changed. I think the movie was great, Esther, congrats, in telling a story of the space explosion. I don’t mean just explosion in terms of space junk, but I mean the enormous growth of space, most of it since 2019. And just, you know, a few little tidbits here. We have I don’t know how many times more the number of satellites. You just heard from the movie what China is doing. We have a chart that’s going to come out in the report, which is not yet published in final form, but if you can see here this is all the growth since 2019. And that’s when Jane got elected to Congress. (Laughter.) So it’s pretty flat. Hurts my feelings, but it’s pretty flat. (Laughter.)

But I do want to commend the Trump one administration for a lot of this growth in space. Did you know that Mike Pence, then the vice president, was the one who revived the Space Council? Did you know that the Artemis Accords, which are a major tool of U.S. soft power—fifty-three countries belong to these things, and many more want to get in the door—were started in 2020, before Trump left office? And so forth. So I just want to make a point that I hope Trump two will continue to focus on this. And we make some recommendations in our report that I think matter a lot in terms of making space a priority in the United States and maintaining U.S. leadership. I think we’ll go into this further, and I’ve hogged a bunch of time.

But one of the things we are urging is that the Trump two administration convene a space summit and declare space, through our Department of Homeland Security, a part of our critical infrastructure. We talk a lot about AI. Even Mike Froman’s CFR talks a lot about AI. But I want to say how honored I am—was to cochair this, and that CFR has talked about space policy as a major focus for this organization.

SCHIFRIN: So, Nina, before we get to the recommendations I want you to go into a little bit more depth on the vulnerability of U.S. assets in space. We heard a lot about space junk, but I want you to also engage with what Jane just mentioned, Chinese, Russian capacity, including anti-satellite capacity.

ARMAGNO: Absolutely. Thank you all for being here, and those online as well. It was my honor to cochair this task force with Congresswoman Harman and with Esther Brimmer’s pen. This has been fantastic. CFR putting a fine point on space—or, a flashlight on the issues around the space domain, the challenges that we’re facing, is more important now than ever. What I see is a train wreck coming. We enjoy the benefits of space each and every day, mostly from that GPS timing signal. That timing signal runs so many critical aspects of our lives that, without it, we could quite literally be lost. The American economy is booming because mostly American companies are just doing phenomenal things, cutting-edge technologies, making access to space easier and then putting commercial capabilities where only governments prevailed in the past. And so the promise of space for Americans and for the world is absolutely incredible. And it’s only going to continue as long as the president and our nation declare space a national priority.

What the vulnerabilities are, really, it’s this confluence of issues—our reliance on space, but the threats from Russia, and China, and others. Russia and China for years have been studying U.S. space capabilities, mostly in terms of how our militaries use space on the battlefield. Communications, position, navigation and timing, weather predictions, missile warning satellite predictions. And those vulnerability—or, those capabilities have been the envy of Russia and China. So before they actually started using space for the benefits of their societies, they schemed ways on how to highlight the vulnerabilities for American Space Systems. They have come up with ground-based missiles or anti-satellite weapons, ASATs, that can launch into low earth orbit, actually all the way up to geosynchronous earth orbit. Geosynchronous earth orbit is where we have our strategic eyes and ears, our missile warning, and our strategic communications satellites.

They have ground-based lasers and dazzlers that can reach low earth orbit and interrupt operations of our most sensitive systems, our intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance satellites. They have space-based capabilities, space-based assets, such as robotic arms. And they’re working on systems that can jam and blind and destroy our systems in all—on all—in all orbits. You compound all of this by the fact that there are more and more objects in space, as Jane showed you in that chart, more and more countries involved in space, more debris. And the cherry on the top of all this? No rules. There are no rules of the road in the space domain. There’s no governance. And space policy needs to really tackle this problem from all aspects. And you’ll see in our report—which I love because it’s so digestible. You can, you know, read the executive summary and see here’s the situation, here’s our findings, here’s our recommendations. I’m very proud to have been part of this organization and this team. We had, you know, twenty amazing experts helping us write this report and it’s truly been a phenomenal experience.

SCHIFRIN: And, Esther, stay on the strategic environment before we go to the actual recommendations of the report, and jump on what Nina was saying at the—at the end there. No rules. And to the point, no organization even capable of writing those rules, as we have this rise of not only Chinese and Russian assets, especially Chinese, but also the commercial rise.

BRIMMER: Right. Certainly. First, I’d like to say it has been an honor to be project director for this report. This is a team effort. We were led by our dynamic cochairs. There is a team across the Council on Foreign Relations that worked with our experts on the task force, who devoted their time and expertise. Especially to say to Esther, page whatever, get—you know, fix that. Make sure it’s right. So I want to thank the people across this institution, across this community, that supported this report. We know how important space is. And it’s great to see the whole—this whole community in this room and beyond saying this is where we need to focus in order to have a coherent strategy. I think the key word here is policy, as the co-chairs have indicated, which suggests an integrated approach.

I will comment in particular on this lack of governance. When we think about major domains in the world we think about oceans, we think about air—think about airspace. You know, many of you flew here to get here today. You know, you got on an aircraft. You get on an aircraft if you have to fly anywhere in the world. And the rural rules are governed by the International Civil Aviation Organization. The International Maritime Organization looks after some of the rules for shipping, that we have some agreements on managing and human operations in these spaces. It’s very different in space because at first that, when we saw the iconic landing of U.S. astronauts on the moon and planting the flag for all mankind—all humanity we’d say now. But we did not, you know, envision a world where you had important space companies, where you see this expansion of human activity.

So in a sense, this is a classic question of international relations. Is when you have more people in the space but no one authority, what do you do? You need to set some rules. And so we’re talking about rules of the road, which would work on communications, would work on how we actually interact with others. And so that’s the underlying—the underlying question. And then, as we say, that we then look at the fact that we will have to work with everybody in this area, including our adversaries. You know, both—you know, if you land in Beijing or you land in Dulles Airport in Washington, you’re covered by the international rules about civil aviation. Similarly for space, we will have to work with the other spacefaring countries, which include good friends and adversaries. But we suggest that we have the right tools to do it, but we will have to work with what we have.

If you were starting with a clean slate, you might create a new organization. That’s not going to happen. We are unlikely—if you wanted to create a new organization, you’d need a treaty, you’d need to get that passed. That’s not happening. But there are practical things we can do with the existing institutions that will make the situation better for human operations in space.

SCHIFRIN: So that’s the strategic environment. For the next twenty minutes or so we’ll go through all the recommendations. I’ll try and split it up into about six or seven questions. And we might—might, might maybe mention a certain senior advisor to the president who happens to run a space company at the same time. But, Jane, let’s start with what you mentioned before. Number-one recommendation in this report is to make space a priority. That’s the phrase you used before. And you used a space summit. What is a space summit? And why is that the first, most important recommendation in this report?

HARMAN: Well, if I just might start with that unmentioned person, to tell one more story. Which is that in the ’90s, while I was in my early terms in Congress, I got a call from somebody in El Segundo, California. That is where the Aerospace Corporation is. And the now new-named—name of—

ARMAGNO: It hasn’t changed yet, Jane. (Laughter.)

HARMAN: Oh, it hasn’t changed? The now old-named L.A. Air Force Base is. And this person was in a rental facility with sawdust on the floor. I am not making this up. And I met this person. And there were these large rockets on the floor. And this person told me that he was using some Russian technology in these large rockets, and thought he could make them much more inexpensively than some of the large primes who were then making rockets for the United States military, and could I help him get some contracts with DOD? Well, I’m not sure I was much help, but he sure moved along. And now we know who this unnamed person was—is. And his company, SpaceX, is outside my old congressional district. In fact, it’s taken over the entire contour of what is called Hawthorne Airport, east of LAX, for those who haven’t visited it. And it’s an amazing, state-of-the-art facility. And he has other facilities too. But just stunningly impressive what he has built. OK. That’s my shill for him. (Laughter.)

Space summit. You’ve heard both from Nina and Esther about the growth of space, both as a military tool and a commercial tool. And there are many companies that play in this space. So what would a space summit be? For starters, it would be a showcase of where we are and where we’re going. And I showed you the chart of this gigantic growth. But then it would be, one hopes, a showcase for continued U.S. leadership. The movie talked about the Sputnik moment. Some of us were alive then. This grandmother of nine. They weren’t alive, but I was, in 1957—’57? ’59?

SCHIFRIN: ’57.

HARMAN: Come on, people. Mike? ’57. OK. I knew he would know the answer. (Laughter.) When we were totally surprised. Well, this is another Sputnik moment. We could be totally surprised again by the advances in China and Russia. So what would a space summit do? It would marshal the tools that we have and demonstrate why U.S. leadership is continuing and will continue.

And let me just close with one thing I said before, Nick. Which is, I think—and this is certainly amplified by my recent experience on the NASA Advisory Council—that space power is our best soft power tool. It is how the U.S. showcases our support for the rest of the world. The Artemis Accords, which fifty-three nations belong to so far, are a way that developing countries all over the world, certainly in the Global South, can develop their space programs and let their kids dream about futures for them and their countries. And I can’t think of anything as important now, in a—at a time when we are sadly, in my view, defunding things like USAID and some of our development programs. I can’t think of a thing that would be at least a worthy fly to flag more important than our space leadership.

SCHIFRIN: We do still use the phrase, “reach for the stars, kid,” after all. Nina, one of the next main recommendations that you make—and this is a little complicated, so I’m going to give you some time—on deterrence. So how do we deter? But, first, I think the main point that you make in the next recommendation is hardening. So how do we harden our own assets to make it more difficult for our adversaries to attack?

ARMAGNO: We do recommend, as part of the summit, or very soon thereafter, to do a full national inventory of our current capabilities in space. Who’s doing what? We have commercial companies, civil, military, and then even within military it’s not just the Space Force that has assets in space. And our intelligence community has, you know, several different agencies with assets in space. And so an inventory to understand, you know, basically what we’re looking at. And then a vulnerability assessment of those capabilities there are—well, no satellite on orbit has any protection at all, period. No satellite has any protection. They are launched. They, you know, are launched into their operational orbit. They go through a test period. They start operating. And there is nothing to stop some of those threatening capabilities I talked about with Russia and China.

If Russia proceeds with what we’ve heard them threaten, to put a nuclear capability in space, the devastation would be enormous. There’s no way to protect against a nuclear detonation in space except to nuclear-harden every single item up there. And that is just untenable. It would be very, very expensive and simply untenable. But even for some of these other threats I was talking about, there are—there are no current defenses. So this capability gap needs to be analyzed. Defenses need to be put in place. We know the Space Force is already proliferating low earth orbit to try to enhance the capabilities they have in other orbits. And that could serve as actually a deterrent as well. So, you know, vulnerability, capability gap assessment.

And now to talk about how to deter. I mean, that is—that could be another report. I would love for a volunteer. We could write an entire report about how to deter in the space domain or using the space domain. But part of it is, because deterrence is in the mind of the adversary, hardening something, an adversary would think twice about attacking a hardened system. Proliferated systems. An adversary would think twice about how many shots he would have to take to take out that proliferated capability. Those are the kinds of things that are already in work across our government, but not funded to the right capability. So if the Trump administration declares space as a national priority and puts the resources behind that statement, through the summit and through our vulnerability assessment, that’s what this report recommends we do.

SCHIFRIN: Esther, I wonder if you could explain how the report explains how space needs to be treated as global commons. How do we best do that? And something that we’ve talked about, not only with SpaceX but with other commercial companies, the report specifically says coordinate with commercial companies. How do we best do that?

BRIMMER: Certainly. So I’ll do a mini version of the lecture I used to do when I was director. (Laughs.) The question is, how do we think about those areas that are beyond national jurisdiction? And there are multiple concepts here. But I would say the important thing, first, to note is that, of course, in our fundamental, foundational international treaty, the Outer Space Treaty—it has a long name; I’ll call it the Outer Space Treaty—that it does talk about areas that are the common heritage of mankind. We’d say common heritage of humanity now, so that the idea is that there are areas where—to which we all have access, we would all be able to use, but none of us would own it. So if you look at the Outer Space Treaty it both talks about these areas, and also talks about that no one country would have sovereignty over these areas.

Now, how do we think about that? There is a larger concept of global commons. Not everyone uses that term. Officially the United States doesn’t use that term. But scholars do. And what we’re trying to get at is this idea of spaces which, if overused, are then no longer useful for everybody. Irrespective of what term you want to go into—and lots of really great graduate theses and great books have been written on this point—but the fundamental point here is that for us, in the United States, where we’re always used to being the first one there, that some people might say that, you know, as long as we’re first we’ll get to claim what we want to do. We may not always be first. So you might argue it’s the right thing to do. You might argue it’s the practical thing to do. But I think we do need to open up to recognize that, OK, how do we think about how we want to operate in those areas beyond national jurisdiction, where we may or may not be the first ones there? And so that that idea gives us—gives us some power there as well.

And then you want to talk about the other issue, which was the question of how do we engage commercial entities in these governance issues? Typically, governance is an issue for national governments. And they send diplomats and experts who work on these topics. Interestingly enough, of course, is that space, as we’ve indicated, is being driven by a dynamic private sector. This we see in several areas. Colleagues who work on cybersecurity would say, yeah, we see dynamic areas that are changing governance. So in this case we say that, although we can’t create a new organization, we could borrow ideas from other entities, other international organizations that might help us.

So, for example, the International Civil Aviation Organization which handles air traffic, they have both an Air Navigation Commission, which is made up of experts—nominated by national governments, but they serve as experts. Another model is to create a companion organization. Indeed, there’s something called International Air Traffic Association, IATA. It’s actually headquartered in Montreal, same city where ICAO is. And it’s actually a body of, basically, the airlines. Now, they’ve spent a lot of decades on fares, but back in the 1940s and early ’50s, they worked on air safety issues. So there are some models because we know there’s expertise in the private sector, with a variety of nongovernmental experts that need to be part of space governance. We need to be creative in how we bring them in and bring that expertise into space governance.

SCHIFRIN: Jane, you wanted to jump in? But also mention—

HARMAN: I just wanted to add something there. First of all, our all-woman group went to Europe to see the U.N. agencies in Vienna. Mike, sorry, we didn’t invite you, Mike. But we also went to Brussels to meet with NATO. And space is a huge interest of NATO, think military, and of many countries in Europe. Even a little country like Monaco is so eager to join Artemis Accords and has set up a space agency of its own. So this is—this is just, you know, very dynamic stuff. But the other point I wanted to make was that space doesn’t respect national boundaries. Climate doesn’t either. Terrorism doesn’t either. And there’s an overlap here, space as a tool to understand climate. And it is being used as that tool in many places. Space as a tool to find bad guys. And so—and I guess girls, I have to admit.

But just saying that there are parts of this—the fact that it is not yet regulated—that are opportunities. And at these U.N. agencies—last comment—the Russians and the Chinese were there. Which does not mean we should put the Chinese on the International Space Station tomorrow. That’s not what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about is we should use opportunities, especially in the dangers of space debris and so forth, to have a conversation with everyone about what to do. And just maybe some good relations, in a limited sphere, will break out, and the world will be a bit safer.

SCHIFRIN: And that leads, Nina, to the next recommendation that we’ve talked about, China and Russia in the context of deterrence and hardening. But the report makes a specific point. Explain what sharpening policy on China means. And explain what creating the rules of the road with China and everyone else would mean.

ARMAGNO: Sharpening the policy on China is so important for our nation to be looking at. Like it or not, they operate in space. And, as you saw in the video and as we know by facts, in the last five years they’ve launched 500 satellites. They too are working on a mega constellation like Starlink. They too have ambitions in space, as you see with their own space station, their taikonauts. They have landed on the moon not once, but twice, on the far side of the moon. And there are reports that they are actively communicating from the moon. Of course, not manned right now, but those are definitely some of their ambitions. And so sharpening this policy to us meant somehow figuring out how to still have American leadership, but bring China to the table so that they can be part of the solution.

So we recommended two very specific areas to look at. Number one, space traffic management. Space traffic management is currently done by a unit in the United States Space Force. It’s a military operation. And the way they communicate with China on a potential collision path that they identify, they communicate by email. And this email never gets answered. This email goes to, well, the other side of the world. And there is—there is no—there’s no set correspondence or communication. There’s no hotline, like we do have with Russia for operations, like we do have with Russia for nuclear—you know, potential nuclear situations. We have nothing like that with China. So part of the sharpening is bring them to the table.

There was another kind of hook we talked about. Because we are all becoming more spacefaring nations with humans in space, don’t you think astronauts are going to be stranded more often than they currently are, potentially? (Laughter.) There could be an emergency on the ISS that we need help with. There could be an emergency on the Chinese space station, or on the moon. Wouldn’t it be great to expand our current astronaut rescue plan, to broaden it, right? Today Russia has, and China, have signed off on it. And it’s, you know, discussing plucking astronauts out of the ocean or off the Earth’s surface. We need to expand it to now on orbit or other bodies types of rescue missions. And so those are the kinds of things that this report explored to sharpen that policy.

SCHIFRIN: And, Esther, wrap us up on the recommendations. You know, we’ve talked a lot about U.S. leadership, but Jane mentioned U.S. Space Council. Why is that so important? And what would you recommend, if you were inside the Trump administration, of how to operationalize everything we’ve said in terms of U.S. leadership?

BRIMMER: Our main message is that space needs to be a coherent, leading policy in the United States government. This is a major national priority. We need to organize in order to make it a priority. Therefore, we need to look at how—the relationship between agencies and with the executive authority. So usually the National Security Council performs that role in the national security side. In this case, we also have the National Space Council, which could be the right vehicle. The administration will decide what the vehicle needs to be. But we think it is important that there is a coherent process for bringing together the assets and expertise across the federal government to work with the private sector and experts to make space a priority and make sure the United States continues to lead in space.

HARMAN: I would just add to that that it was the Trump administration that revived the Space Council in the Office of the Vice President. And we’re not saying it has to be there, but it should certainly be a function of the National Security Council to focus on space. So it should be somewhere there. And the space summit would nail the fact that the administration is committed to making space a priority.

SCHIFRIN: We’re almost at a time, in terms of our section up here before we go to the members. And we got one Elon Musk story, so far. And I do want to ask Nina, and full disclosure she knows this is coming, what should we understand about Elon Musk’s role in what has been—in terms of his role in SpaceX, and how he operates?

ARMAGNO: The reason Nick is asking me is because I was the commander of the 45^th Space Wing, which is at Patrick Space Force Base, now, in Cape Canaveral. Just prior to that I was at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Both of my roles as wing commander were launching rockets for our nation. And SpaceX was on the move. I mean, they were really growing at the time. And they had huge ambitions, of course, for, well, making access to space cheaper, and going to Mars. That is the vision. You walk into that Hawthorne headquarters, there’s a huge picture, and maybe even a banner, of Mars. You walk into other companies and, you know, you look around for the mission and vision statements. That’s all SpaceX needs, it’s a picture of Mars, to motivate and focus their employees every day.

So in working with SpaceX, and particularly Elon, we were, at the time, really trying to help with licenses, and leasing, environmental inspections, safety concerns. Are you kidding me? They want to bring a rocket back to Cape Canaveral? (Laughter.) That’s impossible. But we worked through all of these issues, really leaning forward. At the time it was the Air Force. And what we noticed in working with SpaceX, one anecdote within my story here, I had gone out to see the landing pad that they had taken a Space Launch Complex 13 and created—through our help with leases, and licensing, and environmental—created landing pad number one.

And I went out to look at the pad. And they were boasting about the concrete and how flat it was, and maybe it’s going to get in the world record book. And I said, wow, that’s really cool. A couple weeks later, they had destroyed—(laughs)—that pad because they realized they’re going to—they’re going to land multiple boosters, not just one booster. They’re going to land multiple boosters. And today they do land two at a time. And if you’ve never seen it, wow, it’s absolutely stunning. So he moves fast. He really moves fast. He’s got vision. He hires the—you know, the smartest people, works them very hard, presses rules and regulations, and the outcomes are truly amazing.

HARMAN: And he’s not afraid of failure, which is a huge part of innovation. And sadly, as this Commission on National Defense Strategy, which I recently chaired, said in a unanimous bipartisan report: Our government has become risk averse. And what Elon Musk and SpaceX have shown is that this is how you make progress in this domain that is so crucial across everything.

SCHIFRIN: So I hope that was a good introduction to the strategic environment, the report, and its recommendations. At this time we’re going to turn it over to the members, both in the room and online. And we’ve got about half an hour. So we’ve got plenty of time for all questions. And reminder this is all on the record. So with that, we’ve got one question right in the middle. We’ll go to her first, and then we’ll move back around the room.

Q: Thank you. Good morning. Hi. My name is Theresa Lou. And I was, up till recently, the senior policy advisor at the U.S. mission to the United Nations for Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Esther, congratulations on another great report. I was proud to support you for the Arctic one. And it’s a bit of a full-circle moment for me here today. So congratulations, again, to you and to the Council, and its team.

My question pertains to the global governance aspect of this. As I’m sure you and the task force members know very, very well, in April and May of 2024 the U.N. Security Council, which is the only real body that, you know, supposedly has binding mechanisms, failed to adopt twice in a row, a U.N. security resolution governing—or, attempting to govern the use of even weapons of mass destruction in outer space. And so given the importance of global governance and working multilaterally through a lot of these important challenges, to what extent do you all believe that we’re actually able to divorce some of the geopolitical competition and challenges, and some of the very sticky conversations with Russia and China, and to be able to actually work together on governance in this space? And if you believe that there is actually a path forward in cooperating in this concrete area, how would you recommend that this administration approach that challenge? Thanks.

SCHIFRIN: Esther, do you want to take that?

BRIMMER: Yes. First, Theresa, thank you for that question. And it’s great to see you. She’s one of our bright next generation of people who’ve worked here at CFR and are going on to be part of governance in the future. So great to see it as you cross here. And I’ll give a good shoutout also for our Term Member Program, which also supports the intellectual growth of the next generation, who will be part of solving these problems.

So, of course, you’ve posed a challenging question. (Laughs.) So I would—I would say—let me just give a little background on the example that Theresa just shared with you. That if you read the report, you will see that we talk about the Russian action in 2021 involving anti-satellite—and this is now a concern there—that created a large amount of debris. The United States then took a leadership role and said: We, the United States, will not use direct ascent anti-satellite missiles, and led an international effort in this area. Now the first place, of course, to go for these sorts of issues is the Security Council.

ARMAGNO: We wouldn’t test.

BRIMMER: To test. To test.

ARMAGNO: We would not test.

BRIMMER: Would not test. We would not test. We would not test. And you would go to the Security Council in order to try to bring about further countries adopting this approach of not testing anti-satellite missiles. That said, of course, that, obviously, Russia vetoed it. So then the effort moved to the General Assembly, where there is no veto. There was eventually a resolution passed, which, of course, does not have the same effect. But it raises this issue of where are you going to get that type of cooperation? I would suggest, as the report does, that we’d have to look at very focused, narrow situations. And it probably won’t get resolved tomorrow. But the idea, as countries realize that they do need to cooperate in these narrow areas, that’s where we can see some ability to move forward. And that’s why, in particular if you look at things like rescue and return, that is one of our oldest principles, is rescue. And there, if we need to expand a bit the ability to save each other, maybe that’s where we can start. But you’re right. This is not going to be easy and it’s not going to be fast.

SCHIFRIN: Let’s stay in the room for the next one. Got a question up here, yeah. And then we’ll go online. Then we’ll come back.

Q: Yes. Good morning. First of all, thanks to the panel. Excellent discussion. The task force for the report. And, Stephen, thanks for the idea. That was—it’s great, timely. My name is Tim Persons. I’m a partner with Pricewaterhouse Coopers. I used to be the chief scientist at the GAO, and then prior to that national—time at national security.

So really wanted to ask about the space debris problem, right? So I know that NASA not too long ago did a report on the economics of trying to clean up. And it just struck me when Nina and Jane were talking about, like, the Musk-like thinking, what does the task force think about the cleanup problem? Are there options there that are reasonable, economic, and could be coordinated under this new regime? Thank you very much.

SCHIFRIN: Nina, you want to take that?

ARMAGNO: Thank you for your question. A little bit of a story here. When we first gathered to go down the path of writing this report in the first place, we were talking about rules of the road in low earth orbit. And then we—you know, our very smart task force members and we realized, why limit rules to one orbit? The threats are in all orbits. The orbital dynamics works in all orbits. So we needed to expand. And the reason I bring this up is debris is not only a problem in low earth orbit. It is magnified in low earth orbit, but it certainly could be a problem anywhere.

In low earth orbit—the Kessler effect is something that we bring up in our report, which is essentially debris, creates debris, creates debris, until it ruins the very domain. And I’m not trying to be alarmist. I don’t have the, you know, calculation of how bad this is or could be, because the other side of the coin is space is big, isn’t it? Space is large. But there is a potential, without rules of the road, without debris mitigation, without sitting down with all spacefaring nations and working out how to mitigate debris and how to manage the traffic, we could lose the very orbit that we enjoy today.

SCHIFRIN: Hmm. Question online, I think.

OPERATOR: Thank you. We’ll take our next question from Lyndsay Howard.

Q: Thank you. And thank you to this very distinguished panel.

My question is about the ring of Chinese satellites around our ring of satellites and the defense implications. That’s a very simple way to put it, but given that the Chinese and the Russians have been studying all of our maneuvers in electronic warfare, GPS, everything else, and now especially the Chinese have put a ring of satellites around our satellites, which theoretically could interrupt our own operations in battlefield conditions, what is our strategy and policy—and your policy prescriptions moving forward, given the enormous cost of dealing with and competing with such a reality? Thank you.

SCHIFRIN: Nina, is that—is that how you’d describe it?

ARMAGNO: Lyndsay, I think I hear your concern, writ large. I personally have not heard about—it termed a ring of satellites around our ring of satellites, because every orbit is different. And it’s very difficult to put a ring around something that’s actually moving but—and very fast, by the way, 17,000 miles per hour in low earth orbit. Not impossible, but, my gosh, it would—it would be extremely expensive for China to encompass every single object that we have in space. But your concern is very real. I definitely hear it. And our report recommends that these vulnerabilities be addressed, and quickly, because they are—they could be, you know, very detrimental to our military operations and our day-to-day life as Americans.

HARMAN: And if I could just add to that—hi, Lyndsay—but add to it that, as was mentioned, certainly the possibility of a nuclear weapon in space is enormously concerning. But the right answer isn’t just match the widget with the widget. The right answer is to think strategically, how do we deter the activity—prevent and deter? And it may not be a space-based answer. It may be a broader answer. And in that regard, the last questioner just gave a sort of subtle shout out to Steve Hadley, who’s sitting right here. And I think it was his idea to have this study. So thank you, Steve. He also, among the others on the—in the task force, was a major contributor. And he will be on the next panel. So a big thank you to you, Steve.

SCHIFRIN: And, Jane, to your point, when the Biden administration was—hand’s forced and they had to go public with the nuclear weapon in space because Turner, then the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, blurted it out—basically very purposely—in an email, the briefing, actually, I think, at the Munich Security Conference last year they gave us was essentially that, that they had no intention of countering this with their own version. It was very much threats or deterrence on how to prevent Russia from ever fielding it.

So let’s go back to the room. We’ll come back up here, but I heard—I saw a hand way in the back first. So let’s go back there. Thank you.

Q: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My name is Gabby Moran. And I work on AI integration for the Navy.

So thank you so much for the wonderful remarks so far. I have two really quick questions. And for the first one, I want to drill in on something that General Armagno said earlier about bringing the Chinese to the table. What would you say are the biggest barriers right now to facilitating that so, as you said, we can get an email back when we have that Space Force task force reaching out? Do we need another round of Sunnylands? Do we need something modeled after the Navy’s rules of engagement at sea? What formats do you think would work best? And then my second one was just a quick one. And forgive me, I haven’t read the report yet. But is there a particular entity within the federal government that you think would be best suited to lead that audit of our capabilities? Could it be, you know, a multitude of entities, or is there someone best suited? Thank you.

ARMAGNO: Actually, our report recommends the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, to lead certainly the inventory. And then it would be a collection of agencies—DOD, the intelligence community, NGA, NASA, to look at the vulnerability piece. Your first question, about bringing China to the table and how would that work, how likely is that, my goodness, the thing we need is trust. And since that seems like a distant pipe dream, the next thing would be leverage. Leverage comes in all forms. (Laughs.) But I would hope that that the leverage would be, look, we’re all trying to use this domain for the benefit of our societies. It’s crowded. It’s getting dangerous. Let’s come to the table and discuss how to, internationally and, you know, all of us agree on rules for space traffic management and rules for debris mitigation.

SCHIFRIN: Esther, you want to—

HARMAN: Well, search and rescue is an obvious area to pick. I mean, let’s look at how, not just in our country, but countries come together around natural disasters. And I would think both sides would have a huge potential political gain in trying to help with something like that, whether it’s a Chinese or U.S. problem, or a problem of some other participant in space.

SCHIFRIN: Esther, you want to?

BRIMMER: Just to add to this, that this is also an area where other countries can take leadership. And on some issues that the United States cares about, the United States doesn’t always have to actually be in the lead. And so that there are examples where you’ve had third parties, other countries, that have played an important role. Now just a little tiny, tiny microcosm of this, on our trip last year when we were in Vienna we went to the—there was a sort of special meeting just before the opening of the Committee on Peaceful Use of Outer Space.

But what was interesting was it was discussing how to look at issues related to the moon. But the lead country that was actually going to lead the task force was actually Romania, because they had a good diplomatic team on the ground and everybody was talking to them. And it was actually helpful that it was not one of the big powers. And so sometimes, in some of these international settings, having another country take the lead, then everyone else can kind of come in, you know, behind, can sometimes be a helpful—

SCHIFRIN: And certainly, that’s a role that India is trying to play. And Prime Minister Modi will talk about space with President Trump during this week’s visit.

Next hand I think I saw on this table. Yeah, right there. Thanks. Then we’ll go to the back. Oh, yeah, sorry, yeah.

Q: All right. Thank you. Thank you for hosting this. And it’s wonderful to hear your insights. My name is Alice Zhang. I am a China analyst, formerly with INDOPACOM. And right now I’m finishing my doctorate at SAIS, Johns Hopkins.

And so my question is kind of a follow up to what Gabby was talking about earlier on U.S.-China, and how to get China more engaged in having conversations and building hotlines, for example. And it’s been challenging, as we all know, to get China more open to have hotlines with our military, to just have more engagement at large. And without this rule, universal rule or world rule, potentially China can actually leverage and to develop further. And without our coherent national priority or leadership, other countries, not just China, can actually take advantage of the opportunity. So my question is, you know, how do we collaborate? What advice—specific advice that you would give on starting a hotline or, you know, developing collaborations for climate, or terrorism, you know, for issues with no boundary. On this type of—or starting some kind of organization to facilitate and to foster collaborations that will actually benefit to humanity? Thank you.

SCHIFRIN: Nina, you want to start?

ARMAGNO: Our report doesn’t dive into the details that you—that you’re talking about here. It actually sounds like something you could help us with—(laughter)—help our nation with. We lay out ideas, but we don’t prescribe exactly how to do it.

HARMAN: When President Biden and Xi Jinping met in San Francisco, I think it was, last year or the year before, one of the—one of the pieces of conversation was how to reestablish a mil-to-mil communication, military-to-military communication, because there is a huge danger of miscalculation, which everybody in this room fully—and listening in—fully understands. And this should be, in my view, a part of that. At first it did not restart. Then the last time I asked, it does exist again. And building into that should be the pieces of this that are low-hanging fruit, I mean, like search and rescue, and other things that have a common theme where everybody looks good and it’s not a zero-sum game. And I think that certainly the task force supports that. And I think that idea, if there is a space summit and if there is a revived Space Council, could be a huge priority.

ARMAGNO: Absolutely.

SCHIFRIN: Esther, anything to—

BRIMMER: No, I’m good.

SCHIFRIN: Yeah. All right. Another question, toward the back there against the door. Thank you.

Q: Thank you. Victoria Samson, Secure World Foundation.

I’m sorry; another China question. But I was really excited to hear you guys talking about the need to sharpen our relationship there, because that’s something my organization has long argued for. That there’s a need to coordinate with China. Like them or lump them, they’re in space. They’re going to be on the moon with us. We need to be able to do something, to be able to consult with them and coordinate issues. But one of the things that I’ve argued is a speed bump to that is the Wolf amendment, in terms of it sends a signal that China is not to be trusted. And if I were China, I’d be like, I’m not going to do anything with you guys. You guys have a whole legislative thing, you know, banning—putting speed bumps to working with China. So I’m curious to know if your task force has an opinion or talks about that in your report, about what to do, if we’re going to maintain the Wolf amendment, keep it, ignore it, lessen it, or something along those lines. Thank you.

SCHIFRIN: You’re smiling, so. (Laughter.)

BRIMMER: So, first, thank you for the question, and thank you for the work that you’ve done in this space for a long time. You know, and there are many people in this room have been part of—(inaudible)—knowledge on these areas.

I’ll just take us on a quick note, and in the presence of the congressman who will correct me, that—because I’m going to talk about position. In addition to the annual appropriations for NASA that many of you are familiar with, which was the—what’s called the Wolf amendment, named for Congressman Wolf, which—who was particularly interested in human rights and China issues, but saw an opportunity to make the case via having a measure within the annual appropriations that does not allow NASA nor the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to interact with their counterparts without actually notifying both Congress now the FBI.

So it’s a provision—so they can interact, but there is a process they have to go through. And one of the questions is that, is that actually inhibiting the ability for these certain parts of the civilian agencies to speak? Or is that just symbolic? You know, is it that it gives China, basically, political ammunition to say, ah, the United States doesn’t want to talk. I won’t talk about the legal issue, but we’re saying we think that you can work—that you can work around that—around that issue, and that that’s actually—

HARMAN: I served with Frank Wolf, who was an extremely—is—principled man, and who was responsible for numbers of pieces of legislation around topics like this. We gently suggest not repealing the Wolf amendment, but kind of nudging in a little bit to make it fit this modern problem. And I don’t know what Frank Wolf thinks of this, but I would like to think that if we had a conversation with him he would say, yeah. I mean, why would we not want China in the room when we’re dealing certainly with nonmilitary, commercial and human catastrophes in space?

SCHIFRIN: I like that, nudging. Definitely a legal term. (Laughter.) Mike.

FROMAN: Thanks very much. And, again, terrific, terrific panel.

I wanted to go back to the issue of deterrence, Nina, because you really focused on deterrence by denial, hardening our assets, things of that sort. But there’s also a role, potentially, for deterrence through punishment. And maybe, as a former general in Space Force, you’d like to share with us what our offensive capabilities are in space, or what—maybe more generally what role you see for offensive capabilities, maybe not tit for tat, nuclear weapon to nuclear weapon, but is there a role for us to play in establishing deterrence by punishment, either in the space domain or in an asymmetric way?

ARMAGNO: Michael, I don’t know if you’re trying to get me put in jail or not. (Laughter.)

SCHIFRIN: And also distinguish, you know, what has been communicated publicly, right, that’s one question, but also privately.

ARMAGNO: Oh. (Laughter.)

HARMAN: Hey, I’m a lawyer. I’ll defend you.

BRIMMER: There you go. (Laughter.)

ARMAGNO: I can neither confirm nor deny. No. Currently we have no—the United States has no weapons in space, has no offensive capabilities in space. I’m retired, you know, from the United States Space Force. You know, is our nation working on it? Sure. But currently they don’t exist. And so it was actually Secretary Austin that talked about integrated deterrence, which tells us that we can deter a negative situation happening in the space domain via another domain. And we can use all levers of power—diplomatic, information, military, economic—in many types of ways to impose punishment. So that’s—you know, in the future, you know, will there be some kind of capability that the U.S. has, where we can hold a valuable asset of another country in space at risk? Potentially. But today, since we don’t, we need to have an integrated deterrence approach. And we do.

SCHIFRIN: Time for a couple more questions, I think. Let me just scan the room quickly. All right, so let’s do right in front here, and then we’ll go in a kind of circle to get try and get everyone. Right up front, yeah. Thanks.

Q: Hi. I’m Lauryn Williams. Thank you very much for this panel and for CFR’s focus on this issue. I certainly agree, along with everyone else, I’m sure, in the room, that it’s incredibly important now and going forward.

Now, I spent several years in the White House leading our issues on cyber—leading our efforts on cybersecurity and space issues. And then before that, was in the Department of Defense working on space policy as well. And so I’m especially interested in the first recommendation, which is around—or, the final point of the first recommendation, which is around declaring space systems a critical infrastructure sector, which I’m sure, as you all are aware, was a big subject of policy debate in the previous administration. And as a cyber person, was very much an advocate for it, because, as you know, there are not rules of the road in pretty much any area of space policy. When it comes to cyber policy, there are lots of fragmented policy standards requirements. We have now as a result of a recent executive order new requirements, but there’s still a lot of work to do. So I’m curious your thoughts on how the Trump administration, per your recommendation, would go about implementing or declaring officially space systems as a critical infrastructure sector. Thank you.

SCHIFRIN: Esther or Nina, you want to do it quickly, and then—

ARMAGNO: Well, before we answer this I want to ask you, those new requirements that you just mentioned. Do you think they’re adding layers of bureaucracy or do you think they’re inhibiting cyber operations, either commercial sector, private sector, government sector?

Q: Thank you for the opportunity. They were very recently released in January of 2016. So one of the things that I was thinking about during your—this discussion, including around deterrence, is that—and many Space Force and Space Command leaders have noted that cybersecurity is the kind of soft underbelly of some of the counterspace threats that are out there. And it’s actually the most commonly used attack vector for our adversaries, particularly China and Russia. So the purpose of those requirements was really to distill down from the—you can read them. They’re thousands and thousands of pages of requirements across the U.S. government into, maybe, five to six core requirements that the U.S. government—and you can extrapolate toward the private sector—need to implement to raise our common level of cybersecurity. So that was the intent of them, to distill down from the fragmented landscape that we have and say: You got to do these five things or else we’re vulnerable.

ARMAGNO: All right.

HARMAN: Well, I was in Congress when the Department of Homeland Security was stood up, and strongly supported it, as—not that it was a perfect concept. I’m just like, perfection should not be the enemy of—the perfect should not be the enemy of the good in government. Let’s just hope we retain the good in government. But at any rate, the cyber capacity, CISA, that agency, was established later. And I don’t think it’s that hard politically, if there’s political will, to declare space a part of our critical infrastructure. The hard part is, what does it mean and are we really serious about it? And we’re all sitting up here saying we need to be really serious about the critical threats to and opportunities for space.

ARMAGNO: And consistent with our overall recommendations, we would like to see industry—commercial industry brought into the discussion this time.

HARMAN: Good point. Good point.

SCHIFRIN: Let’s try and get one more question in. Yeah, right in the middle there. Sorry for not getting to all of the questions.

Q: I’ll be brief. Jennifer Warren. And I lead global regulatory affairs at Lockheed Martin.

So I’d like to build on your comments about the lack of global governance and institutions that can do that. In the global context there’s the International Telecommunications Union, which does aggressively manage RF spectrum, which, as we all know, satellites, commercial or otherwise, military, are spectrum dependent. There’s an effort to destabilize satellite systems by taking spectrum away. So that’s where existing regulation is good. How do we prevent the destabilization of not just U.S., but NATO and other allied satellite capabilities, by losing spectrum for space-based capabilities? Thank you.

SCHIFRIN: Quick answers. Who wants to ask—Esther, you want to start?

BRIMMER: I’ll quickly say a little bit on ITU. But just say that, indeed, yes, there’s a lot of discussion of the International Telecommunications Union in the report. And to say that this is a—so we talk about different pillars. And we talk about—and one of the pillars is ITU. We talk about the important role it plays.

ARMAGNO: Instead of lawfare it sounds like spectrumfare, right? It just reminds me of that. And, yeah, our report does look at all the various institutions and respectfully looks at the ITU. But what you’re talking about is, you know, I guess, statecraft, almost, by other countries coming in to try to destabilize spectrum. And, again, another reason that we all need to get on the same page. I mean, really, we ignore space as a priority at our own peril in this country.

HARMAN: Correct.

SCHIFRIN: Well, that is a fitting way to end. Thank you for joining the meeting. Thank you, Nina, Esther, and Jane. Thank you so much. (Applause.) The transcript to this will be posted on the website. And Session Two, Current Policy Challenges in Space, will begin after your coffee break. So come back in here in ten minutes or so and the day will continue. So thank you all very much. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.

HADLEY: Well, welcome back, and welcome to the second and final session today about the current policy challenges in space. I’m Steve Hadley. I’m a principal of Rice, Hadley, Gates, and Manuel, and a member of CFR’s Board of Directors, and I’ll be presiding over this session today.

We have two—excuse me—participants. We are joined today, of course, by an audience here at CFR and online.

Our participants today are Charles F. Bolden Jr., who should be coming up virtually with us today. He is the founder and chief executive officer emeritus of the Charles F. Bolden Group. He’s a former administrator of NASA from 2009 to 2017. He’s a former astronaut and a CFR member. And he’ll be speaking virtually. There he is. Connected with him. Terrific. We going to put him up here? Terrific. Charles, welcome. Thanks for being with us today.

BOLDEN: Glad to be with you.

HADLEY: And secondly, we have Ezinne Uzo-Okoro, who is a senior fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard University, a venture partner in SineWave Ventures, a former assistant director for space policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. And welcome, and thanks for being with us here this afternoon.

So I’m going to begin with a couple questions, and then we will after about a half-hour go to questions from the audience. And I want to start with a fairly general question that is talked about in the report, and that is this: How should we think about space? Is it another domain like land, sea, air, and cyberspace where the major powers are going to compete diplomatically, economically, and militarily? Or should we, as it was suggested in the report, see it as part of the global commons that should somehow be shared free from great-power competition? And if it’s the latter, let’s be honest here: Is this really realistic to talk about space as a global commons given the level of competition between the United States and China and Russia?

And let me—Charles, if I may, let me start with you. How do you think about this idea of global commons? Is it just pie in the sky—

BOLDEN: No.

HADLEY: —or is there some potential here?

BOLDEN: No, I don’t think it’s pie in the sky at all. And I—you know, watching the first session, I think some people may have—may have gotten the impression that space is only for national security and the like, but my belief is that having opened up space to commercial entities, having one commercial entity in particular be the dominant player in space today in civil and commercial space, it’s got to be opened up to everybody. The problem, as we will—as Ezinne and I will probably discuss, is there is no governing body right now that—you know, that controls the global commons. So it’s almost like the Wild, Wild West in my opinion.

HADLEY: Ezinne, what do you think?

UZO-OKORO: Well, thank you, Steve, for having me. And I do agree it is a global commons, but I think that we have reason to be optimistic.

We have an agreement with Russia to manage and operate the International Space Station that has been going strong for decades, and this is through lots of sanctions that our country has placed onto Russia, and this partnership continues. And so if we can partner with a nation-state like Russia through all of these national security challenges and sanctions, then I think that there is room for us to—or, I believe there is room for us to share space and collaborate. There are lots of low-hanging fruit which I hope we get into in areas of debris management and astronaut exchanges and lunar study, but there are opportunities for us to work together while being a strong strategic competitor against other nations.

HADLEY: Let’s delve a little more deeply into that, and let me go back to Charles. Can you talk a little bit about how the cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union got started in the Cold War? How extensive has it been? And why has it endured and survived despite the remarkable tensions now in the relationship between Russia and the United States, and what lessons can we draw from that?

BOLDEN: Steve, you’re going to—

HADLEY: It’s what you call a compound question, Charles.

BOLDEN: Yeah, and you’re going to date me here. And I’m going to—some of it’s going to be from memory and the other is going to be from conjecture.

But the collaboration between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, as Russia used to be, began in earnest with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. You know, we were looking for a way to see if we could work collaboratively with our other—back then—peer competitor, if you will, in space, and we put together the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project where an Apollo spacecraft carrying three of our crewmembers and a Soyuz spacecraft carrying General Alexei Leonov and his crew linked up on orbit and became lifetime friends. We decided later on, after the fall of the Berlin Wall—President Clinton actually decided that we had—we were working on this thing called the International Space Station. And Russia was not a part of the organization of the International Space Station at the time, but in my opinion he was smart enough to know that if we let them—left them to their designs their scientists and engineers would go all over the place and probably to some pretty bad places, so we were instructed to open up—reopen the negotiations on the International Space Station and make the Russians a partner, which we did. And that’s what Ezinne is talking about.

Now, that was, you know, quite some time ago, and we ended up flying a few shuttle missions. One in particular was my last mission, which was the flight one and phase A of the Shuttle-Mir Program, where we wanted to see if we could, in fact, work collaboratively with the—with the Russians. It turned out we did incredibly well. We moved from that to flying American astronauts on Mir six times. That worked out relatively well. And then we moved into the International Space Station, which is where we are today.

So I think we’ve demonstrated that we can work with just about anybody. We’ll talk more, hopefully, about the Wolf amendment because that’s the—that’s the fly in the ointment right now, and I think when we get to that we’ll understand a little bit about what can be done. I share Ezinne’s optimism. But I guess that’s enough for now.

HADLEY: Ezinne, do you draw any additional lessons from the cooperation with Russia that might apply to China?

UZO-OKORO: Yes, a few. And I think that we need to, unfortunately, separate national security space, commercial space, and civil space to get to the crux of this.

On the national security side of things, you know, we are asking the question about deterrence but we need also to be asking the question about de-escalation and what that looks like. And there is an opportunity to collaborate with the Chinese on de-escalation approaches and methods.

In the commercial space arena, we’ve got lots of examples in other sectors of the U.S.—U.S. companies collaborating or manufacturing in China: Our iPhones, some of our vehicles. And in space, we don’t necessarily need—the U.S. government does not necessarily need to determine what that collaboration looks like, but there needs to be some kind of opportunity for—to give U.S. commercial companies an edge, whether it’s in collaborative agreements that they see is necessary with the Chinese, or—and creating more business opportunity, creating value as they, for instance, supply things to the Chinese space station.

And then on the civil side of things, while we have a trust issue with China currently because of the Wolf amendment while leverage, as was mentioned in the last panel, is encouraged, we also need to talk about respect, because as the second-largest nation in the world or the second global power in the world, what does China deserve? And I can say this now being outside of government, but they deserve some amount of collaboration with us that is respectful. For instance, not just human-safety accomplishments we made in the last administration in communicating with the Chinese, but perhaps an earnest invitation to the International Space Station so that we may also receive an invitation to the Chinese space station. Perhaps it’s the respectful exchange of lunar data, because the Chinese have been to the far side of the Moon twice now and we have not, and our academics don’t have access to that data.

And it’s important in those three areas, you know, we have one space. And at the White House, as someone who went in being a civil space expert, I came out having spent most of my three years mostly on the national security side of things because of a lot of—a lot of scenarios that just really needed all hands on deck, and where we saw that what was happening in the civil space and the commercial space really needed to align with what was happening in the national security space.

So, as we move forward as one big sector that continues to grow and continues to mature, I think that we do need a new approach to—a new, bold approach to our relationship with China. I think it’s possible.

HADLEY: I think you—

BOLDEN: Steve, can I—Steve, can I have one to what Ezinne said? I—

HADLEY: Sorry. Yes, please, Charles. Yes.

BOLDEN: At the risk of starting a war here with—a verbal war with some of the audience, I hope Professor Scott Pace is either in the audience there with you or online or something, because he and I are friendly adversaries about engaging with China, and he will—I think Scott will say that China has to do something to earn our respect. Well, going back to what Ezinne said, the Russians didn’t do anything to gain our respect; we just needed their help. We needed—we wanted to keep their scientists and engineers from going to bad parts of the world, and so we found a way to bring them in. That’s the way that we were trying to do in the Obama administration to bring China in, but there were voices that said, but they haven’t done anything to earn their way in. We can continue with this argument if we want to in perpetuity, but we’re not going to get any closer to making space this common ground for everyone that’s relatively safe. We’ll never be safe-safe, but relatively safe for all to operate, particularly commercial entities.

HADLEY: It seems to me one of the issues that has surfaced is can we distinguish with respect to China between cooperation which would pose national security concerns and cooperation which would be purely civil and commercial, and I’ll give you two anecdotes.

On the Russia side, there was a time, I think—there’s someone here from Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin was buying RD-180 engines from Russia. That was going on our space vehicles. And after a while, the Congress of the United States in its wisdom thought that was a national security risk because it was a dependence that we should not brook, so we began to make this distinction between national security cooperation which we would rule out or national—things that put national security at risk, from cooperation on the space station was seen not to do so. The question is, can we do the same thing with China?

And I’ll give you one anecdote. Mike Griffin, who was then the NASA administrator when I was national security advisor, was going to China, and we coopered up a bold proposal for U.S.-China cooperation in space which we then ran through the interagency. And as you might expect, what got out of the Pentagon after the interagency process was about two very small and short paragraphs, because the argument was that manned exploration by the Chinese was part of their military structure and therefore cooperation—we could not assure ourselves that cooperation in this what seemed to manned space would not benefit them from a standpoint of national security and threats to the United States.

I think the challenge is, can we make that distinction with respect to China and identify things we could do with China in space that would not raise national security concerns? You’ve raised a couple very good ideas. The report talks about rescue of distressed astronauts on the Moon or in space, talks about space management, talked about risk mitigation, conflict and de-escalation measures. All that’s good. I want to see if we could talk about it a little bit more. You talked about cooperation in terms of data exchange. Can we think about joint non-manned exploration? It’s probably too late for a joint space station. It’s probably too late even to talk about cooperation for the Moon. But what about Mars? Do we go to Mars individually as nations or do we go to Mars as a whole humanity? Is this out of the realm of possibility, do you think? Ezinne, over to you.

UZO-OKORO: You know, it is—it is within the realm of possibility for us to collaborate in going to Mars. It depends on what you’re going there to do. We, obviously, have conducted some scientific experiments to date there. But as we’ve seen with the return to the Moon with the Artemis Program that NASA continues to develop, there was an appetite across the world not just to sit back and watch the U.S. return to the Moon and cheer us from the sidelines; they wanted to—other nations wanted to be part of the mission. So we chose a Canadian astronaut as one of the four in the last administration.

And perhaps the same is true for Mars. And other nations, as they continue to develop their space program, starting new ones, joining the Artemis Accords, may want to see the two largest powers of the world collaborate going to Mars together. But I bring it back to today and the opportunity that’s in front of us. And that opportunity is for commercial space and really opening space for business. And by that I mean ensuring that the Department of Defense is not the primary, or the largest customer or client in space. How do we do that in low earth orbit, which is closer to us, through space debris management? We could collaborate with them on—in space servicing technologies, on remediation technologies for debris, on robotics, docking missions to their space station.

So we may not be able to collaborate on a new space station, but why can’t an American company that has docking and capture capabilities provide that service to the Chinese space station? It increases—it increases their value creation. It grows the space asset class, as we know it. And then all of the dry powder, all the investments that are sitting on the side—the investors that are sitting on the sidelines will then have a reason to—or, have a greater reason to invest more in space, when they see more—and not just more, but more creative and more innovative approaches to value creation in space.

HADLEY: Charles, building on what Ezinne said, do you have to your own pet areas of potential cooperation?

BOLDEN: My—Ezinne’s smiling because she knows this really gets me excited. You know, we’re—I think we’re losing—we’re losing a great opportunity for commercialization of space if we choose to eliminate the large—I mean, how do you—going back to the Wolf Amendment. Congressman Wolf’s philosophy was we can isolate China, you know, until they come around to seeing human rights the way we do. He and I respectfully disagreed on that, and I disagree on it today with anyone who says we can isolate China from commercial interest in space. Their companies, their society in general, has—we need them to help us to do things like pharmaceuticals development, materials processing, the kinds of things that that we do right now on the International Space Station. We have a new Space Station that could be available for use in Tiangong. Heaven forbid we even give consideration, as Ezinne said, to putting American entities on Tiangong so that they can do micro gravity research.

We might be surprised at what opens up when we do that and build a sense of trust between the two nations outside of national security. We’ve got to have the ability to think in a nuanced way, where we can—we can divide national security—not divide it—but we can put national security in the back of our mind while we do commercial and civil development. We’ve worked with the Chinese in science. We continue to work with the Chinese in science, to a limited extent, because we always get back to this trust issue. Getting samples from—the Chinese samples that came back from, you know, an asteroid, or the Moon, or wherever, it’s encumbered by NASA and American—well, NASA and American scientists, through NASA, having to comply with the stipulations of the Wolf Amendment. Whereas other nations in the world just get stuff from China. They just get information and get samples. We’ve got to—we’ve got to change the way we operate there.

HADLEY: Let’s move a little bit from China to commercial operators and private parties active in space. We talked about the need for—and the report talks about the need for an international space traffic management system. Can that really be developed without the participation of the private sector? And how would the private sector then participate in the development of what a lot of people would think of as a governmental or international structure? Ezinne, you want to step up to that one?

UZO-OKORO: So that system is very important, for obvious reasons. But I think that we have multiple analogies in space of systems like that that are consequential, that are critical—like the International Space Station. It wasn’t all—at least the American portion, wasn’t all built at NASA, by NASA civil servants. We had a whole army of, you can call them primes, contractors, and commercial American companies, that contributed to the development of not just the International Space Station, but, frankly, every space system, both on the civil side of things and on the national security side of things. And there is an increasingly big push, I wouldn’t even call it a nudge but a big push, to integrate more commercial innovation into government.

And the government is willing and looking, not just on space security and civil space but even within the intelligence community. There is a friendliness and an openness towards commercial innovation. And I think that we all need to continue to develop that further, and continue to encourage that, and empower these companies to help us meet the mission. I don’t see us continue to develop our enduring capabilities without the commercial sector.

HADLEY: So you’re saying, in terms of the International Space Station, the private sector has already been involved substantially in the development and the construction of the space station? Are there other ways in which the private sector can be involved in the—particularly in writing the rules of the road in space that we talked about in the report, Charles?

BOLDEN: Yes. And I think, you know, if you look at the report we talk about several entities that are needed. And without—I think, when you look at—I’m not a fan of a National Space Council. However, comma, it can achieve some of the goals that are laid out in our report when we talk about bringing commercial industry, entrepreneurs, government together to decide what the rules are going to be for moving forward. You know, a frustration, if you talk to people who were on the National Space Council during the Biden administration, a frustration was, from the—from industry that there was a feeling that their inputs were not being heard, or were not being entertained appropriately.

Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, because, you know, I have fortunately never been in the White House or in OSTP, or anywhere else. I was peripherally involved as the NASA administrator, but I think, Steve, as you know, that is way outside the bubble that has great influence over the president. So I think you’ve got something like the National Space Council that can bring those groups in. The NSC is more along a national security need, so I would—I would try to avoid overloading them with trying to manage commercial space. I’ve not been in the NSC. You’ve been around it. Ezinne’s been around it. I just don’t—I think that’s a—that’s a bite—that’s one bite too many for something like the NSC.

HADLEY: I think that is a bit of an argument for the Space Council. I guess the worry I would have, and we’re going to go to questions from the audience now. The worry I would have is that the rules of the road, in fact, if not crafted carefully, will start impinging on the innovation and flexibility that has allowed the commercial space companies to really be the primary moving forward of our space activities. We don’t want to lose that under the name of creating government-centric rules of the road. So a real operational and implementation task that needs to be addressed as we go forward in this area.

UZO-OKORO: Steve, if I may add—

HADLEY: Yes, please.

UZO-OKORO: One of the difficulties and the beauty of intergovernmental policy creation, which I went through to OSTP—we had about ten policies on space over three years—is that it’s a shared responsibility across several departments and agencies. And while coming to consensus is difficult, there is—there really is an advantage to having that shared responsibility and shared interest across several departments and agencies. The FCC can tackle the spectrum access issue and bring insights that NASA isn’t thinking about. NASA doesn’t have to bear the weight of every civil and commercial space issue. The Office of Space Commerce can take up some of that within the Department of Commerce, the Space Force, the Air Force, you know, the FAA. So it just—I think that there is a lot of advantages to having multiple stakeholders across the government, and not just a small body within the executive office of the president.

HADLEY: A strong case for the interagency system, the much-maligned interagency system, I might add. Thank you, Ezinne.

I’d like to, at this time, invite participants from those here in the audience in Washington and also those online to join the conversation. I think the plan is to go two questions from the audience, one online, right? All right, so let’s begin. Yes, ma’am, right here in the center.

Q: Thank you very much. Melissa Dalton from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and former undersecretary of the Air Force.

I actually wanted to return to one of the important questions from the prior session, in terms of the role of counterspace capabilities when we think about deterrence, and in this broader policy conversation that we’re having in this session. Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall is on the record in December advocating for further investment in counterspace capabilities. We’ve also seen the Trump administration issue its executive order calling for the Iron Dome for America, to include space-based interceptors. There’s a clear bipartisan advocacy in terms of the need to invest in counterspace capabilities going forward.

And so the question that I’d like to invite our speakers to perhaps offer some thoughts on is, how do we need to provide policy parameters around the role of these weapons in terms of our deterrence objectives and outcomes that we’re trying to pursue as part of a whole of government or integrated deterrence approach, as was discussed in the last panel? What are the right questions that we should be asking in terms of how we should be employing these weapons? Can we? There are some important technical and sensitive details about the weapons specifically, that certainly we need to keep in appropriate classified channels. But I think there’s some really important questions that we need to feel comfortable putting on the table from a policy perspective, from a crisis communication perspective, and from an escalation management perspective. Thank you.

HADLEY: That’s a lot to chew on. Charles, you want to give a start, an initial chew if you will?

BOLDEN: My initial chew would be when we start talking about counterspace weapons, we’re talking about break—we are talking about our break-the-glass action. You know, it’s hinted in the report—well, it’s not hinted. We talk a lot about proliferation of debris in space. If we’re going to focus our efforts on counterspace weapons, we’re going to have to spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, at what point do we give up and we decide that we’re going to deploy a kinetic weapon, as an example, or a nuclear weapon? Because at that point we have now shut down this area that we so value and so want to use for commercial development, because it now becomes unusable by most people, particularly low earth orbit.

HADLEY: I’m old enough to remember the year of Brilliant Eyes and Brilliant Pebbles—

BOLDEN: Brilliant Pebbles, exactly. Yeah.

HADLEY: That was when space was relatively empty. It’s pretty crowded up there now. I’m not quite sure how this is all going to sort out. (Laughs.)

BOLDEN: It’s easy—it’s very easy to talk about counterspace, unless you’re somebody who wants to be able to travel in it.

HADLEY: Ezinne.

UZO-OKORO: I think that we have—I’ll start with the positive here. There is continuity in government across administrations in space. Trump one put out a vision for overall debris, for instance. Biden implemented that strategy, which resulted in, I think, a NASA economics report that isn’t mentioned. And Trump two looks to have a strong interest in space as well. And you could do this going back several administrations. So on the policy side—this is a brilliant question for a classified session, I have to say. (Laughter.)

But in this forum, I would say that, you know, the questions about a deterrent assessment, the questions about de-escalation approaches or methods, questions about how we continue to achieve our mission using enduring capabilities that either are developed or have yet to be developed. And then, most importantly, on the policy side, ensuring that the executive office of the president also shares the value surrounding how much is at stake, because I think that that really—that really helps to determine how high of a priority this is. Which is why we start our report with the recommendation to make space a top priority, because different presidents would have different approaches and different priority levels to different issues. And we’ll stop there for this session. (Laughs.) Great question.

HADLEY: Great question. Maybe subject for another task force report.

UZO-OKORO: That’s right.

HADLEY: I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to Michael. Other questions here? Yes, ma’am, front table here.

Q: Hi. Lauryn Williams, again.

A little bit of a comment and then mostly a question. But I wanted to go back to the point on private sector engagement, I think, and foot stomp Ezinne and Mr. Bolden points about engaging the private sector. But the point that I would make is that I think private sector has to be the leading edge of how we kind of think about, as government, as stakeholders, shaping policy on space. And I think maybe in recent decades we’ve thought the civil space or national security operators have a monopoly on those issues, but we’ve really got to engage.

And so the question would be how both of you might see the Trump administration demonstrating kind of the open door or open ear to the private sector to come in and, you know, provide their perspectives on shaping policy. One of the things that I learned in the White House, including as a contemporary of Ezinne’s there, is that the White House—and this kind of gets to the National Space Council, or whether National Security Council, or other policies—when they call CEOs or they call senior executives, they will come to the table.

And so that convening power is a really important kind of carrot that the White House does have. That said you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got the other governmental stakeholders in the rooms so that there can be staying power and not just kind of meetings, but that we’re driving toward policy outcomes. So I’m curious if either of you have ideas as to how the current administration can, kind of right out the gate, make sure that private sector stakeholders know that there’s an interest in in having private sector perspectives kind of be the leading edge of policy.

HADLEY: Ezinne.

UZO-OKORO: I mean, his choice in advisors has shown us that there is an interest in private sector support and private sector advancement. (Laughter.) And all I can—I will offer positively about that, as someone who was an ex-Navy official said to me, oh, a rising—you know, a rising tide lifts all ships. So we must look at the involvement of these external advisors positively. And these external advisors have interests in space. But they also have, at the end of the day, business interests, which take us back to how do we not only create more opportunity for these companies to have value creation and make money, but also how do we ensure more efficient government partnerships and commercial integration into government?

Our budget for this year, the federal budget for this year, 849 billion (dollars) has yet to be passed. And how we—and this is why our report highlights OMB as the source of—source of accountability and responsibility when it comes to, you know, determining where resources should go. But with that large defense budget that is likely to grow to a trillion in less than two years, it’s an opportunity. Well, one, it highlights one priority for the nation. But in terms of space, it really shows that we have—we have an opportunity to innovate. That the private sector really is getting closer to a point where we can—we can see leadership not just in innovation but in policy.

And, you know, I’d admit this, as an ex-policymaker, it’s OK not to have the answers. And it’s OK to convene CEOs to the White House. But more importantly, I think that it’s solutions that they bring to the table based on the hard work that these companies are doing, not just for their company but for the sector. And there were some examples of companies, space companies, who came to the White House and brought solutions that not only supported their company’s mission, but helped to elevate and grow the sector. And I think that that’s really important.

HADLEY: Under this administration I wonder whether the president is going to convene a meeting and invite various CEOs from private sector companies, or Elon Musk is going to convene a meeting and invite representatives of various government agencies. Either way, they both get in the room. Charles, how do you think this is going to sort out?

BOLDEN: I want to be careful. (Laughter.) You know, I have very strong feelings here. And having served as a member of the User Advisory Group of the National Space Council, recently de-convened, that was built for CEOs to have their say to contribute to the discussion. And it did not take very long for CEOs to stop coming because they—and I’m not—I am not in a position to speak for them, but my impression as an insider trying to be an outsider was they felt that nobody really wanted to listen, so why spend my time—my valuable time doing this?

If we’re going to convene such a group as Ezinne and I have been talking about, we also have to recognize the fact that many of the people who have some of the best ideas are not big companies. They’re entrepreneurial upstart companies that have incredible ideas about things like orbital debris remediation and removal, on orbit rescue, perhaps even some—have some ideas to help us in the area of crew rescue. Those ideas will probably come from some small, unknown company right now. But they’ve got to be given an equal opportunity at the table. And you cannot have a meeting convened, you know, with the president where it’s only—again, being careful here—it’s not only buddies or cronies or whatever. But it’s got to be the portion of industry and academia who have demonstrated, by their performance, that they have something to contribute.

HADLEY: Thank you. Good answer.

Yes, sir. OK.

Q: Good afternoon. Ché Bolden. I am the eldest offspring and the successor to one of your panelists. (Laughter.)

My question—

HADLEY: You recognize this guy? (Laughter.)

BOLDEN: I’m leaving.

Q: It’ll come as no surprise to one of your panelists, and probably not the other, because we’ve got these conversations as well. This conversation tends to be overcome by the national security piece. I was the one that chirped in his ear before he got on and mentioned that piece. Commerce has always been the unifying factor in America, for quite some time. It’s also the unifying factor of the world. What considerations did the task force take into the commerce side of matters, because space, like every other domain, is a dual-use domain. It’s not a domain of security. What kind of conversations did you all have around the commerce piece? And how do you get more small businesses, entrepreneurs, startups involved, like, say, maybe through a new form of a small business innovation research fund that is not limited to just American citizens or whatnot? Have you thought about that or did you talk about that at all?

UZO-OKORO: We did. I mean, one of the recommendations is about involving commercial companies and relevant nongovernment actors into not just policy discussions, but, again, in the growth of the sector. And we can’t streamline regulation without commercial companies, large and small. I will say, though, about visits to the White House, if you are a small startup—I was always surprised in my three years, when a small startup with three people, and, you know, they came over to the White House for a thirty minute meeting. OK, twenty minutes after pleasantries have been exchanged. And it’s a long way to travel. And it’s a lot of resources that these small companies don’t have.

However, given how small the sector is, I do think that we are still at a place where what most of the larger companies advocate for eventually benefit the smaller companies. Take the launch sector, for instance. Most of the innovations and the advances for commercial crew and cargo launches has really helped the small launch companies that launch smaller cargo. And there are other examples in robotics and advanced manufacturing in space.

But we need to ensure that someone is at the table, someone from the commercial side is at the table, helping, because most of our policymakers, I think, would really benefit from the view of what innovation is at stake, what’s the budget required, and what does the private sector need from government to help push the innovation forward, for us to continue being that preeminent leader in space. And the report does go into these cooperative attempts, not just with the private sector but also with international bodies, as has been discussed in the previous panel.

HADLEY: Charles.

BOLDEN: I won’t—I don’t have anything to add to what Ezinne just said. I think that’s critically important. Everything she just said.

HADLEY: It seems to me we highlighted the importance of broad participation from small companies, startup companies, perhaps also the university sector. And in the report, that Nina talked about, to do an assessment of vulnerabilities and means of remediation. One of the things we did—tried to describe a broad participation in that study work that would not make it simply government, but would reach out to the private sector but also the university sector and other large companies, small companies. Really get a diverse mix in that assessment process. And that’s one of the ways in which we tried to address the issue you raised.

Other questions. Sir. And then you back there.

Q: Sam Visner with the Aerospace Corporation. I also serve as chair of the board of directors at Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center. And I was a member of the task force. Thank you very much, by the way, for your service on this.

I just wanted to swing back to the last question. There are some mechanisms by which the private sector, large companies and small companies, are working on some aspects of the problem. The space ISAC works on the security and resilience of space systems. And we have a large membership of both large and small companies, including startups. But from the beginning, we opened the ISAC to global partners, to U.S. allies and partners, countries that share our values. So Japan, the U.K., France, Israel, Taiwan, Greece, Germany, Australia, et cetera, have all partnered. And we have commercial members in several of those—several of those countries.

And I’m pleased to say that the U.S. government has been broadly, tacitly, and in some cases explicitly, supportive of the global aspect for at least space systems security. So there is, I think, an avenue to—you know, an avenue, a building block on which we can make further progress in building both international cooperation with countries that we regard as allies and partners, and bringing in the private sector, including smaller businesses and startups that have very innovative and very powerful ideas. Thank you.

HADLEY: Can you repeat the name of that organization?

Q: Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center. It’s one of the information sharing and analysis centers that were set up for critical infrastructure protection.

HADLEY: Thank you very much.

Yes, ma’am.

Q: Hi. Emily Matson, Georgetown University and George Washington University.

So my question related to the concept of frontiers in general and previous legislation regarding the polar regions, which is still an area of great contestation, as well as, you know, the sea. Whether it’s, you know, contestation over UNCLOS or the less-known governance of the deep sea. So I’m wondering if there are any areas of overlap or any areas of proceeding legislation that you have drawn on in considering the space region as, you know, an additional frontier. Thank you.

HADLEY: Charles, you want to take a crack at that?

BOLDEN: My memory is horrible, but we—you know, we talked considerably about other types of conventions, or treaties, or groups that might be applicable to the work that we were doing. But I don’t—I don’t have any specific ones that I would add at this particular time.

HADLEY: Ezinne.

UZO-OKORO: I would—I would say that Esther has her hand raised and she is better equipped to answer this on behalf of the team.

HADLEY: Esther, you’re on.

Q: Just to jump in on that point—(off mic)—yes, that as part of the research that we actually looked at other domains. And so that what we did—what we reached is actually the Treaty for Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction. It was the High Seas Treaty, which the United States has signed but not yet ratified. (Comes on mic.) You know, it was years in negotiation. And some of the terms in that, I think, are very interesting for space. And so as we look forward to the work at CFR, Mike—(laughs)—that one of the things I’ll be doing is actually a book that’s looking at some of the lunar issues and draws on some of these issues. So, great question. I think something where all—the expertise of many of the people who follow this and look at different domains will be relevant. Thanks for the question.

UZO-OKORO: We also—I have to add that we also went through the pros and cons of this approach, because, as you know, you could—you could lead with your own policy as a nation, you could lead bilaterally with another nation, and multilaterally. And some of these multilateral fora do take quite some time. The Outer Space Treaty, we discussed how, you know, some might use the term outdated, yet we need it. But how do we update it when it’s difficult to get consensus today? So it’s obviously a complex and nuanced topic, but we have found, thankfully, over other avenues, like with anti-satellite tests, to lead by example and bring other nations forward.

HADLEY: I’ve neglected our online audience, so if we have questions let’s take two questions online, and then we’ll take one from the audience, and wrap up.

OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Stephen Flanagan.

Q: Hi. Thank you all for a very interesting discussion. I’m Steve Flanagan, a senior fellow at RAND.

I wanted to offer a personal observation on the value of having separate streams of oversight and coordination at the White House for national security and civil and commercial space, separately. And in 2013 to ’15 I was senior director for defense policy at the NSC. We had responsibility chairing the Interagency Policy Committee on National Security Space. And we shared responsibility on some aspects of civil and commercial with the Office of Science and Technology Policy at that time. And I have to say, looking back on that, I think that synergy of having those two—and I—you know, of course, I was very fortunate to have my director for space the gentleman who became then the executive secretary of the National Space Council, Chirag Parikh. But I think we valued tremendously in the NSC dimension—I’m interested here in Ezinne’s perspectives—of having that additional perspectives working both ways.

Not only, you know, that we could bring in some national security considerations into some of the commercial issues, like space—some of these other civil issues, like space traffic management, commercial imagery regulation, et cetera. But also that we were getting, you know, perspective of the civil space considerations in some aspects of national security policy. So I think inevitably national security policy dominates. You know, and as was evident in some of the earlier discussion. But I think that you know that it was important to have the benefit of the civil oversight mechanism if you’re dealing with some issues like space traffic management and commercial imagery regulation, that otherwise would have slipped lower on the national security priorities. We were focused on counterspace. So thanks for that.

HADLEY: Thanks, Steve, very much. Next question from the online audience.

OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question from Caitlin Poling.

Q: Hi there. Caitlin Poling with the State Department’s Office of Space Affairs.

I have a question and a comment. And I’ll start with my comments. So our office leads the delegation to the U.N. Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. And I just wanted to flag, since the conversation was on global STM, that there is an ongoing effort to tackle this at U.N. COPUOS. And we definitely work to incorporate private sector advisors. We put out a Federal Register notice and we also do pre- and post-meeting briefs to make sure that we’re, you know, including the views of the private sector in the in the U.S. positions that we put forth at these meetings. We could definitely, probably, you know, do a better job in outreach, and certainly welcome any suggestions offline. UNOOSA is also trying to convene the private sector more. Director Aarti Holla Maini has started the U.N. Space Bridge events. That was, I believe, an event that Jane and Esther attended ahead of last year’s COPUOS. But one obstacle we do have is Russia and some other malign actors are working to prevent private sector involvement on a broader basis in U.N. COPUOS. So just wanted to share that context.

But my question is going back to China and the recommendation that Ezinne had. And I’m just curious, how do export controls and the protection of IP factor into your recommendations on China about cooperation on space stations or commercial ties? You had cited iPhone manufacturing components in China, but there are some national security concerns about that. So is it prudent to send American space companies into China? Thank you.

UZO-OKORO: No one advocated sending American space companies and Americans into China. We do have trade agreements in other sectors. And it would behoove us to consider what trade agreements in the area of space could look like. And it doesn’t mean that it’s not a complex issue and that there are nuances. We’re not going to resolve them all during this session. It behooves us to be open to cooperation in some areas.

HADLEY: And, in a way, I—Charles, please go ahead.

BOLDEN: I was just going to say, the agreement that we made with Congressman Wolf in the early days of the Wolf Amendment, that allowed us to work with China bilaterally, was, you know, that the intelligence community, we met with them to discuss everything we were going to discuss or have consultation. We listed every single participant from China by name, you know, so that the background investigations could be done. And then we went into consultation and came up with things like China’s involvement in SERVIR, a program, you know, mainly hosted by the U.S. Agency for International Development, but the data for that program—for disaster planning and relief, for water resources management—those kinds of things is provided by NASA. Or looking at geodetics, studying earthquakes, those kinds of areas we worked with, until we stopped. So, it can be done. We have to be nuanced. We can walk and chew gum.

HADLEY: At the same time.

BOLDEN: At the same time. (Laughter.)

HADLEY: Last question in the back here, please. We’ll take one more here after that.

Q: Hi. I haven’t heard—Matthew Mandelberg from U.S. Department of Justice.

We haven’t heard a lot this morning about the emergence of mega constellations or cheaper access to space. And specifically, I’m wondering how—you know, there’s not just the existing stock of assets that we have in space, and also thinking about this—the assets that China and Russia have. But also going forward, how quickly we could send up new things into space. So and how that affects the strategic thinking here in terms of whether it’s cooperating or wrecking space. If we’re able to, you know, repopulate our assets in space much more quickly than China or Russia, and they also have investments that they need to protect or that they’re investing for the future, how does—how do we think then about those strategic dimensions of cooperation or rivalry?

UZO-OKORO: You know, one thing—that’s a great question. One thing that I noticed happened, and the intelligence community was starting to do during my time at the White House, was what I will call threat education to commercial space. Because it’s difficult for you to innovate if you want to be—the government to be your customer and you have no idea what what’s really going on. And so do we need more of that? I’ll give a nuanced yes. What form and shape should that happen? I’m not entirely sure. We need to—we need to assess how to share information with commercial American companies to help them help the U.S. government meet its mission.

And, you know, none of these problems are—have straightforward solutions. But it’s—I think it’s important that we continue to move in the right direction, continue pushing, because we may not be able to—you know, a U.S. space company may not be able to receive satellite parts, for instance, you know, a guidance navigation system from a Chinese company. But there might be, you know, parts of another component that can be manufactured maybe not in China, but in other nations, that will give—just any and all ideas that give the U.S. government, the U.S. commercial ecosystem, and the entire space enterprise an edge, I think, should be explored.

HADLEY: Charles, anything to add?

BOLDEN: Just briefly, I would—you know, I give the example of orbital science. When it was—when it was founded by David Thompson, that brought us the current Cygnus cargo module that goes to—you know, goes to the International Space Station. His unique approach was Russian rocket engine, Ukrainian rocket body, and a pressurized vehicle built by Italy. And that has become incredibly successful, minus the Russian rocket engines now. But still, you know it—again, it can be done and comply with regulations and requirements of confidential—not confidentiality, but classification, and the like. It can and has been done.

HADLEY: We’ve come to the end of our session. I want to thank you all for attending today, both online and in person. Please join me in thanking Charles and Ezinne for being part of this panel.

UZO-OKORO: Thank you. (Applause.)

HADLEY: And as mentioned before, the video and transcript of today’s meeting will be posted on the CFR website. And thank you all for coming.

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.