Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition: Space isn’t black — it’s grey

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

It’s a policy paper episode! Laura Delgado López joins the show to break down “Clearing the Fog: The Grey Zones of Space Governance” by Jessica West and Jordan Miller. Grey zones are harmful or disruptive space activities that fall short of provoking a military response — ideally. But the ambiguity, by its nature, could generate unplanned escalation and conflict. What are these grey zones, and why do they exist? What are their consequences to humanity, even for those in nations not actively pursuing spaceflight? And by what means can we reduce the uncertainty and, therefore the risk to space operations at Earth and beyond? Laura Delgado López has worked in space policy in the Washington, D.C., area for nearly 15 years and is currently a visiting fellow with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she researches and writes on international space cooperation in Latin America. She selected this episode’s paper, which can be accessed for free at the Centre for International Governance Innovation’s website.Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/grey-zones-in-space-governance See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello and welcome to the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, the monthly show where we explore the politics and processes that enable space exploration. I'm joined by my colleague, the Director of Government Relations here at the Planetary Society, Jack Kyrilley. Hey, Jack. Hey, Casey. It's great to be on. As always, great to have you. Jack, this is another episode dedicated to a single space policy paper. The first one that we did was really fun, got a lot of great response,

so we're going to be doing this on a regular basis every couple of episodes. And we're going to choose from a list. And again, I encourage our members to keep sending us paper ideas. This month, though, I reached out to Laura Delgado Lopez. She's a longtime space policy expert in Washington, D.C., currently at the Center for Strategic and International Studies there. And I raised, I gave her some options, and she actually proposed the paper we're going to talk about today. And this paper is called Clearing the Fog, the Gray Zones of Space Governance, written by Dr. Jessica West and Jordan Miller. Jack, this paper is kind of a departure for us. It's going to be much more focused on space

governance and immediate issues facing global, in a sense, peaceful operations of outer space, identifying gaps that are there in terms of, you know, identifying potential problems that can come from these uncertainties in space activities. It's really interesting to me, and I found it really a fascinating paper. Jack, how does this paper kind of fit into your scope of work and what we think about here at the Planetary Society? Well, I see it as a natural evolution from what we normally talk about, which are the exploration missions, human and robotic, into space. And governance is that evolution of capability, right? When you only have a few objects in the solar system, it's very easy to keep them apart. You know, conjunctions are very rare, but the more congested and contested that space becomes, the more you need

to be talking about governance. And now that it's going to be, you know, the next decade and longer and into the future, we'll see thousands of more satellites and exploration vehicles, including those crewed by humans. Governance is going to be a key factor to keeping space safe and accessible. Yeah, it's almost like the foundation is we have to be able to get through Earth orbit to do the types of missions that we here at the Society are super interested in, right? And making sure that we have a global agreement for peaceful use of outer space and that we're enabling new nations. And also, I think, and what Laura really brought up with this paper that we will talk about, is the impact of these types of gray zone activities to a variety of nations and people who may or may not even really be invested in space exploration, that these are really global issues. So it was a really fascinating perspective.

It's, again, it's a bit of a departure for us, but a really important one, probably some of the most important work going on right now. It ties into work going on at the United Nations, ties into work going on at the White House, regardless of which administration is in power, these types of activities in space and managing them. This paper is free to access, so no one has to pay for it. So I recommend if anyone is interested after this discussion, you can find it online. You can Google it. And of course, we will link to it on our show notes here at planetary.org slash radio. And Jack, before we go into this discussion, let's actually bring up another really fundamental, important issue related to space policy, which is, of course, supporting the Planetary Society. It's central. If you want to see a future where humans and our robot companions are exploring

the solar system, you got to become a member. It's an organization built for that purpose, to advance our understanding of the cosmos and our place within it. advance our understanding of the cosmos and our place within it. Well put, Jack. Yeah, it's something that we, you and I, literally work on every single day, even most weekends, not just work hours. You're out there all over Washington, D.C., pushing forward our agenda, and we're working really hard to establish the society, not just as a source, a credible source of information for policymakers, but as a way to channel the society, not just as a source, a credible source of information for policymakers, but as a way to channel the energy of our membership. And this is what I think is always worth reminding people that as a member, whether you take part directly, which is obviously

our preferred path, or you support our activities, we're channeling ourselves as a society, as a group, to take grassroots action in support of space exploration activities, to support NASA's budget, to support smart policies in space, to lower costs and get us more places in the solar system and beyond. This is something really unique in the sphere of space policy activities, and it's obviously an honor for us to do it. But it works best when we have our members, which is our primary source of resources here at the society. We literally depend on our members. So if you're interested in joining us, it starts at four bucks a month. That's planetary.org slash join. If you're already a member first, thank you so much. And if you are able to, and would consider it, please think about upping

your membership level to increase your support. There's many options for that. So that's our plug. Oh, and Jack, we have one more plug, don't we? In addition, we sure do. We sure do. What's that? So how about if you're listening to this, and this episode really gets you excited about space exploration, or any of the episodes on planetaryary Radio and you want to make a difference, I'm inviting you to join me and Casey in Washington, D.C. for our annual Day of Action. We are back in person. We had a huge successful event last year in September and we're coming back to coming back to DC April 29th, training on April 28th. Registration is open now. This is the most direct way that you can make an impact on the federal budget, on national space policy. Please consider joining us April 29th here in Washington, D.C. In the year 2024. In the year 2024.

What we do is we schedule meetings for you when you come to Washington, D.C. We will schedule with your representatives. You will be in a group. You will meet with other representatives. You will have opportunities to drop into congressional offices all over the Hill. We give you expert training. We give you talking points. We give you all the tools you need to be an effective, persuasive advocate. And it really is, as Jack says, literally the best and most effective thing you can do. It's not just us saying that. There's actual research demonstrating this to be the case. It's doing the hard, true work of space advocacy. And I really hope you consider joining us if you haven't before. Most people, I say half of every year, I think,

is new people joining us. So you won't be alone. You won't be alone. And people tend to have an amazing time. People have a lot of fun. It can be intimidating at first. It can be big-seeming or hard, but really at the end of the day, people want to hear what you have to say. And you get to talk about space and what a privilege that is.

So if you want to find more about the Day of Action for 2024, that's at planetary.org slash dayofaction. Information, videos, testimonials, registration, all the good stuff is there. Planetary.org slash day of action. Jack and I both really hope to see you there this year. Okay. So I think that's the end of our plugs, Jack.

For now. The two most important ones. But again, I'm really excited for this conversation. Laura Delgado-Lopez, a longtime space policy expert, brings in really excellent, interesting opinions and perspectives to this paper. This paper, again, is called Clearing the Fog, the Gray Zones of Space Governance. It is available online for free, and we will link to it. You can find that at planetary.org slash radio. And just one thing before we go into this discussion, which I'm super excited to share with you. I just wanted to find in advance gray zones. It's coming from a kind of

military strategic term. And it's helpful just to keep in mind as we go into it, because gray zones are basically activities that nation states or others can do in contested domains that can be irritating, can be harmful, but generally fall below triggering a full scale response. So examples, Jack, that I can think of, and please that anymore would be like hacking ground stations for satellite communications networks, temporarily blinding, or they call dazzling, spy satellites with lasers. So you're not causing permanent damage to them, but you just, you block their ability to see. Things like close proximity operations to other spacecrafts. So basically getting real uncomfortably close, but not then doing anything more than that to other nations.

I think these can all be considered provocative things, but generally what would fall into this gray zone of activity. And these are largely tolerated. But the point of this paper, I think, is to call out that these are a problem that can be addressed not through military solutions, but through governance and through peaceful processes globally or even bilaterally. Jack, does that pretty much cover it? Do you think that's the important thing to keep in mind as we go into this? I think that is because it is a very confusing, can be a very confusing topic. And yeah, the idea of gray zones, a lot of space you will notice comes from, our terminology comes from military vernacular. So this is, again, that evolution, right, of our understanding of space operations. And I think it really opens

the door to a very nuanced and interesting conversation that we'll have with Laura. Perfect. And let's not wait, keep them waiting anymore. Here is our conversation with Laura Delgado-Lopez from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, talking about the paper, Clearing the Fog, the Gray Zones of Space Governance. studies talking about the paper clearing the fog the gray zones of space governance Laura welcome to this episode of the space policy edition Jack and I are really excited to have you here thank you so much for having me so before we go on to this paper that I am very excited to talk about with you I wanted to give you a second to accurately

represent what your current status is. You have been working for NASA, but you are not at the moment. And I'd like to give you an opportunity to share not just what you're doing, but what's really occupying your attention these days. Sure. Well, hi, everyone. This is Laura Delgado-Lopez. This year, I am a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic International Studies. That's a think tank in Washington, D.C., and I am supporting the Americas program. I am here thanks to a fellowship of the Council on Foreign Relations called the International Affairs Fellowship, and I am focused on studying

Latin American space programs and international space cooperation in the region. So I'm taking a sabbatical, so to speak, to have time to read and think and write and really draw attention to this topic. I think some of you who I'm sure listen to the show know that when I'm back very back when we were in grad school, I graduated in 2011 from the Space Policy Institute. I started doing research on Latin American space programs, looked at the time at Chinese International Space Corporation in the region, and it's been a topic that I've just been dying to get back to for a long time. And I think the time is really ripe. There's a lot going on, and there's also a lot of

gaps in our understanding. And so part of what I'm doing, and I've had a lot of success so far, I'm just excited to keep doing it for the next few months, is meeting and drawing attention to the work of just great experts in the region who are thinking about a lot of the same issues that we're concerned about. That sounds really interesting. And I'll direct readers to you recently had an op-ed in Space News touching on some of these issues. We will link to it in our show notes. But also just congratulations on the fellowship. That sounds like a really fun opportunity to dive back into this stuff. And you said a wonderful time to do it is very germane to this. So when we reached out to you with this idea, the second episode of our series of space policy papers that we will go through, I presented you with some

options and asked if you had any recommendations. And you came back to us with this paper, which is called Clearing the Fog, the Gray Zones of Space Governance by Jessica West and Jordan Miller. What made you choose this paper? Why was this something you wanted to talk about today? One of the things I'm trying to do in my work, like I said, is really understand the other perspective, understand how a country like Costa Rica thinks about certain issues or Argentina, etc. How experts in those countries, right? Not just necessarily the government, right? And one area where you see this really nice and really interesting confluence of perspectives is space governance. And so it's been one of these rabbit holes, so to speak, that I've been following as part of this work

to understand how some of these emerging space nations are kind of coming to the table. And I started reading it, I think, for my own edification of, okay, I want to make sure I'm using the term gray zone usefully, or correctly, I should say. But I found it useful. So that was the lapsus there. I found it a really useful way to talk about, okay, on the one hand, the space lawyers and the academics are having these fascinating discussions over the definition

of peaceful use, for example, that we will get into. That's all great. But in terms of the sort of practical and the why does this matter, there's very few, I think, items of literature of this length, I think, and as you pointed out before we started, are openly accessible, that I think draw those connections so succinctly, and I think so expertly. It was a discovery for me. And so I had just read it maybe three weeks before you reached out. So I think it needed to happen. Well, it's a great example because some of the papers that we have proposed to people before are historical.

And this is very much of the here and now, as you point out. This is very relevant and will be relevant for a while, I think, given what we're seeing more globally. So let's get into it. So, I mean, let's big picture. So, you know, if you haven't, you, the listener, haven't read this paper yet, that's fine. We will go through this here in order. We will link to it. As Laura said, it is a freely accessible peer-reviewed paper, which is a wonderful

opportunity for people just to read. But Laura, summarize this paper. If you had to say what this paper is about, what is this really hitting at here for us today? Sure. So, the elevator speech is that you might run into this term of gray zone in space governance as part of your work as a space reader, right? And usually it refers to a type of activity that occurs kind of in this nebulous space of, you know, it's not obviously a peaceful activity, you know, like a scientific thing that we might do, but it's also not necessarily something that occurs in wartime, right? An example, again, at a very high level, sometimes we think of hacking or jamming a satellite or something that, you know, you shouldn't do it, but it's not necessarily illegal

or it's not necessarily causing harm. And so that has a lot of implications to how, you know, states interact with each other and all that. And so they, in the paper, they talk about what that means from a bigger picture standpoint than that, how it's not just about tactics, but it's really indicating where there are gaps in governance, right? In governance, you can define as simply as just saying what's right and wrong, right? What are the rules of the road or the rules of engagement in a certain area, right? So those gaps show up in these gray zones, but as the authors point out, with implications and risks that are very real and that are very current, as you were saying, and that impact users, even people who may not be following the space conversation, right? And so they point to the overlap with other areas of the law and other types of activities that are important in our

day-to-day society. So it's a really good, you know, it's kind of a lengthy paper, but it really focuses on what this is and why it matters. And I like at the end, they give some proposals for how to resolve some of these gray zone ambiguities to improve it, which I think we'll touch on here. So we'll go through this paper by its major sections. But I'll just add to that. That's a wonderful summary. And what I really liked about it is that this idea that gray zones are, in a sense, a symptom of a failure of governance. They're basically taking like this kind of military strategic term and shifting it into more of a governance issue of saying, oh, OK, this is telling us something, as you were saying. And I was almost thinking of gray zones. You know, we see, as you pointed out, hacking, what they call dazzling or blocking satellites, things that aren't like physically destructive,

but disruptive. And in my head, it was like, it's like when a mosquito is buzzing around in your ear. It's really irritating, but it's not sucking blood yet. It hasn't landed on you. You can kind of swat it away and it can come back.

And that's... Yeah, so you may not declare war against a mosquito, but you really want it to stop. Yeah. It's super irritating. And so this idea of governance, and I think really in the context here of an increasing number of actors in space and an increasing amount of, let's say, national security or military activity in space and being, you know, seen now as this domain of a potential conflict, this starts to become really, really important to identify gray zones in advance. And I think at the end of the day, this idea of this ambiguity of a gray zone activity

to what they point out in the paper, one nation's idea of a gray zone activity to the, to what they point out in the paper, one nation's idea of a gray zone activity may not be shared by someone, some other nation. And what type of response you get from that is inherently unpredictable by definition, which could lead to significant trouble, as you point out, not just to us, but the fact that space is so integrated into our lives. So it's a, again, very valuable thing to start thinking about. And I'd say a little more down to earth, in a sense, for what we tend to talk about here on the Planetary Society. But again, I think this space policy right now is this is probably one of the biggest issues, would you say, going on at the moment? I think so.

And it's a perfect encapsulation of the evolution of the last, you know, 50, 60 years, because I think it matters a lot to different actors, like you were saying, you know, to companies that are making sure that their satellites deorbit on time so that they can launch the next tranche of, you know, 100, 200, to emerging nations, to established actors, to, you know, university students that are really excited about their first mission. I think it matters to all of them for different reasons. And as a result, I think it's worth our time to understand how are they approaching it and what are their priorities, because I think we risk coming to the table, assuming everybody approaches it the same way, defines it the same way, et cetera. And then I think we're surprised that the conversation doesn't go in the direction we thought it would. Yeah. Governance is at the end of the day, just a bunch of people deciding to agree on something or not. And I think as we've been seeing very visibly globally lately, but just historically, it's hard to get people to agree on things without having something against their back, right? Or some exogenous event to drive it

forward. And so this is a difficult and ongoing work that is going to identify these. And ultimately, is it fair to say that in a sense, governance is voluntary restrictions on behaviors? Is that an accurate way? So it's like nations are voluntarily deciding to say, this is not allowed and I could do it, but we won't. And a broad consensus around it. to say this is not allowed and I could do it, but we won't. I think that's fair.

And a broad consensus around it. So it necessarily requires stopping activities or slowing down activities or just removing a tool from a potential tool belt at the end of the day. So it's a restrictive process with the idea that it enables other activities. Is that too abstract of a definition of this that's it seems like that's the inherent that's why people don't like to do it that's why it's hard if i can abstractify it even more it's almost and this maybe jumps a little bit ahead in the paper but it's not so much the stopping of activities but the perceived stopping and the perception of your intent behind those

activities that also matters and, or as part of this discussion. And I think broadly, this paper does a very good job of defining maybe the borders of this very nebulous topic, right? I mean, you can only do so much in 20 pages, but this does a very good job of, I think, yeah, really kind of trying to define what that abstraction is. It offers solutions or maybe a way to think about those solutions, but illustrates that we are at an inflection point with the number of emerging actors, both state and non-state actors who are involved in space. actors who are involved in space. The sheer, almost exponential jump in the number of objects in orbit is illustrative of the growing need to address this concern. And just to pick up on something Jack raised, because I think it's really important, intent, right? Intent is at the root of space governance. And so I think we'll get to in the paper why trying to address space issues from a very siloed perspective is not going to be useful and hasn't been useful.

And I'm a big proponent on that. That's why I'm in a program focused on regional expertise of the region. They don't know anything about space. I'm bringing that perspective. But where space is unique is where, and they touch on it in the paper, we often say, space people, we say, oh, satellites and space technology are dual use and all that. Well, it's not as easy to identify as, say, a gun as an item that in itself you can say is fit for a specific purpose. And so how for space, then you really need to look beyond the technology at intent, at you need to establish trust. And so you, I know we'll talk a little bit about transparency and all that. And where these discussions happen matters so much because of that. Because if they're happening in the back alley, and it's only a few people, then even if the outcomes are agreeable, even if the content of what took place is agreeable, the fact that not everyone felt included

is going to make them question the success of that effort because of that point of intent. Wonderful point, both of you. I think that's really fascinating. And again, this sounds more pejorative than it is, but in a sense, governing is high school cafeteria, but with real consequences. and people feel excluded and included really changes the outcome of that. Because at the end of the day, I think that was my point. It's just people. And with all the inherent weaknesses and predilections we have as individuals, all those play out writ large.

Let's actually start at the paper because, Laura, you brought up something about space, in a sense, how it intersects all these other policy issues and has been siloed, in a sense. the paper makes this argument in the past. But let's just start at a great place, the beginning, the introduction of this paper. So we're going to walk through this paper, major section, just, and that's how we would approach this, just obviously reading it. And the intent of these, I think, is a little bit, is valuable to talk about why they're including and approaching, maybe structuring the way this is. It's a pretty straightforward structure of a paper, but the introduction is interesting to me. We've all tried to write papers in place to start,

so I appreciate the introduction of outer spaces everywhere. It's like, good point. Yes. Excellent point. Where do you begin? Yeah. Where do you begin with this? But it actually raises something to me.

So I mean, the introduction goes through and starts to outline the idea of both why this is, I mean, this classic, like, why is space relevant? And they talk about the growing economy and the number of people participating in this, the increasing national defense and strategic role of it, and then defines things like gray zones and this military background. But this idea of space being everywhere, I think is actually hiding, the simplicity of that statement hides a deeper point that, Laura, is what you brought up made me think about this, which is how we approach space policy can sometimes seem strange to me. So this is my simplistic, uneducated background. And I'll let you, both of you, correct me on this.

But it seems hard. It's like saying, like, we need an air policy for all things that are air that have air in it and it seems to be like seeing it that way because it's just a it's just a physically distinct domain can you have a policy just of that and you then have these frictions of like what about the things that intersect with that policy so i mean the point of this paper laura i'll even let you say i mean what's the what's the siloing issue because space isn't just in space space and space is fine but that's not where we live as humans we're on earth so like the process of getting one information or things the other we're necessarily crossing domains from space into earth right and i think even more bluntly space doesn't matter because of space. Space only matters on Earth.

Right. Right. So both the benefits, the risks, the consequences are all, even looking at something like a near-Earth object that is a result of a natural phenomena, the consequences and risks and what we would do about it all happens here on Earth. And so to me, that means when you look at the realm of international politics, you need to understand what a country representative is bringing, that they bring into every single interaction that they have. Because they have their country's priorities.

They have their concerns. They have, you know, I'll give you an example. have their concerns. They have, you know, I'll give you an example. When Costa Rica signed on to the moratorium against testing anti-satellite weapons, as part of its statement, it mentioned, it talked about gender equity and kind of lamenting that the policy and governance discussions tends to be primarily led by men and how that impacts the conversation. Now, primarily led by men and how that impacts the conversation. Now, if I just look at space, that statement means little to me. But if I look at, you know, gender equity as a priority of the Costa Rican government, then that bleeding through of the issue into this, you know, supposedly siloed realm makes sense to me. So where the challenge is, though, the way we train our experts,

right, does tend to be pretty siloed. And so, you know, I had to take advantage of this, you know, really, I'm really thankful of this opportunity and be able to sort of expose myself in this different realm. But I could have continued my career in the US government, not necessarily exposed to some of these other issues, right? So I think there's some issues related to that, but to your point, how you approach the conversation really, I think, benefits from recognizing that outer space is everywhere. And touches everything, right? In some way, shape, or form, you can't walk down the street without interacting with something that involves space. And does that mean that you need to care about space? No. You as a citizen of the world, as a voter in your district or country, don't need to know everything or know even anything about the space domain.

the space domain, but you interact with it, right? And so then the decision makers, the people that represent you, whether it's in your state government, your national government on the international stage, need to know that the values that you hold, I think this is maybe one of the underpinnings of the even need for norms and procedures and standards and the, as the paper calls it, the coloring of the gray zone is that you need to be able to say these are our values as a civilization, as a nation, as a group of nations. And it's vitally important because there are 8 billion people on earth that all rely on space in some way, shape, or form. The introduction, again, classically goes on to just outline what they're going to do in the paper, which is always helpful to get that primer. And again, highlights this idea that we talked about at the very beginning of that they're shifting this idea of gray zone from a matter of military tactics to governance.

matter of military tactics to governance. And what I really liked about that shift, and this is where I don't have a ton of background in military strategy or policy, frankly. And so this is new to me, but what I found useful about this reframing is that it made it more relevant by that shift. And to then say that then solutions aren't military solutions, right? They don't require conflict to resolve them. That by putting this into a governance domain, then the solutions themselves are a function of ideally peaceful governance. And through this process, Laura, of what you were saying of this broad consensus making effort that can include a variety of perspectives and inputs from ideally a more representative

part of the globe. And I think that to me is almost like one of the core ideas of this paper is this reframing from a strategic conflict to peaceful governance. And saying that is within reach that I think, yeah, the second point being where they explain it is a problem of governance, but a problem for governance. I like that for means you can address it. You can begin to color in the gray as Jack was pointing through governance. And, you know, that's frankly, I feel we're at a relatively cynical point in, I would say, maybe even a global approach to democratic governance ideas that it's either seen as ineffective or feckless or pointless, even in the worst case. and this is a very non-cynical paper which is what i i liked about it as well that it's really building upon some experiences that can still be frustrating at the un lara is that you were going to jump in and say something no i'm sorry i'm agreeing i i it's it's very i'm a cynical person

my nature i think our policy people pretty cynical but in some it's a weird tension right yeah um the ebb and flow of getting your hopes up and dashed yeah right dashed without being too idealistic you know because i do still read there's certainly people out there writing about let's create a say an international space treaty and a new international organization all the countries of the world join and we all agree we are do, you know, prevent war and do all these things that are, you know, I think we should still aim in that direction. But I am definitely of the opinion that we will fail along the way. Now we will end up in a better place than if we hadn't started. But to me, this paper is a good, it speaks to people like me who are like, I want to be hopeful, but I need to know that there's little steps I can take in that direction that aren't necessarily

one day claiming that there's never going to be conflict in space. Yeah. I mean, you can see Dr. West seems to base a lot of this from her experience on one of the UN working groups that has gone through this process. And you can see that it didn't necessarily resolve to a particular outcome, but I always get, you know, that it's the action and process of doing it, even if it doesn't necessarily resolve, it's still really valuable, right? It's almost the activity itself, the means are itself inherently valuable, even if the outcome is less than ideal. It's a frustrating process. I think readers will look at it and there's so many acronyms and there's group of governmental experts and there's things and there's open and there are working groups and

there's all this terminology that just feels like you went off of it soup. So there is a little bit of that. So again, if you want to join us in it, it's a bit hard not to get frustrated. It is frustrating. But then when you look, when you take three steps back, and they do a little bit of this, and you see, okay, where did we start? Where has there been way more open. It's been able to incorporate the views of civil society and the private sector, which are part of that explosion of activity that we've been seeing that we talked about in the beginning. And so how that is kind of really helping build momentum. And me pointing Costa Rica out, I think that's so significant. They only had their first CubeSats launched a couple of years ago, right? And so I think the paper helps make a point that I'm trying to make through my work too, that there's a bit of pushback sometimes on, oh, okay, country X or Y, don't they have bigger problems? They shouldn't be looking at space, right? Outside observer who knows better. But I

think to the point that Jack was making earlier, they see space as a way to address those real pressing needs that they have. And so that's why they're investing limited resources in showing up into these conversations, even though they're frustrating, even though they're lengthy. So I think that that's really important to keep in mind. Yeah. And by even giving the opportunity, it almost works the other way too, or giving them the opportunity to participate starts to make it relevant and provides that relevance itself. So it's a two-way street on that, I would think. And otherwise, just coordinating it off to who has endogenous launch capabilities

would make it absolutely irrelevant for a large swath of the globe, at least seemingly, and create that kind of distrust that we mentioned earlier. We've kind of zoomed or merged into the main section of this, which is fine. The gray zones as a governance challenge where the authors make the argument of what we were just kind of taking them at their assertion, that this is a governance challenge and not just a piece of military strategy. I was going to actually pose Jack to you as a, as a thought, what did you think about their argument in this section, just as a, as a how they constructed it and why they included this here?

Was it valuable and did it succeed in what it was trying to do in, in making this argument successfully to you? I feel like it did. I mean, I feel like it did, right? I mean, it really took, as Laura, you were saying, the very like clunky, acronym filled, militarized vernacular and strategy, and applied it to something that is universal, right? And really defines this not just as, hey, here's this problem. There's umpteen thousand papers

and opinions out there talking about the problem, but defining that problem in a way that is addressable by governments. And I just want to go back like a little bit to Laura. One of the things you said is, you know, about countries

that are spending their resources and being involved in space, that it is seen wherever you go on the globe. Space is seen as that next step for your nation, for your community, for your society to advance economically, to advance scientifically, to advance militarily, prestige-wise, that you don't want to be left behind. So you want to be a part of these conversations. And the only way to be a part of the conversation is to show up. And that, I think, goes to the argument made in this paper that governance is decided by those that show up and by those that buy into the overall strategy for it, right? If you don't see that there's a problem, why would you want to talk about it?

Only because there is this problem does it offer this opportunity. And this opportunity has come up quick. I think as we've alluded to that with the explosion in commercial participation, in non-traditional actor participation, I mean, just as an aside, we've almost doubled the number of nations that have landed on the moon successfully in the last

365 days. And that's only going to become more active. The cislunar space, low Earth orbit, geo are all going to become more active. So defining this now, it's almost like the burden of being right, right? Like talking about it early and carrying this with you saying we need to solve this problem. We need to solve this problem when nobody else might be listening initially is important because now we need to be listening and deciding on what norms and procedures and standards we need to set in space. Yeah, absolutely. And I think this relevancy, what they try to make this argument for in this section, and Laura, I was going to ask you about this. They make a few claims about kind of the concept,

why this is important even. I like this structure. They quote a few other authors on this, the idea that it's exploiting uncertainty and it's exploiting ambiguity. But something also really resonated with me. It was exploiting, in a sense, exploiting ambiguity, but something also really resonated with me was exploiting in a sense, unwillingness to enforce existing rules. And Laura, I was going to ask you if you think this is another aspect of its relevancy right now of, do we have an overall

kind of global situation where the rules-based order is under increasing challenge? And then we're seeing this as an expression of that just in the space domain itself. And they're just identifying a larger trend where we, I don't know what you would even say is we in this case, the UN or broader rules-based kind of consensus order in the globe is unable to maintain that consensus. So I think there's two pieces to this. One is that, you know, sometimes I hear from some experts, we should start over because you're right. The rules-based

order is not being followed. We should start from zero, right? And create, let's go binding, right? In the paper, they go over, you know, the environment where we're in, where there's binding conversations going on, but there's actually a lot more progress in the non-binding side of things and how, you know, they could, and I think they will intersect eventually. But there's a camp that thinks that creating, defining even more strictly binding rules, it's what's going to assure success here. And the cynic in me will point out, as kind of you're saying, if you just open the news, you will see that just having the laws, having the rules of warfare, et cetera, it's not necessarily preventing some actors from violating those rules, right? So that's why I believe in sort of the framework and the approach that is more participatory, creating trust, pulling in, creating all these invisible threads that I think increase the costs of actors to not follow the rules.

Or even better, increase the benefits to them for actually following it, right? It's creating those incentives that I think it's less going to be about whether someone follows the law or not, but what are those incentives in that path that we created so that there's responsible behavior at the end of the day? But the other piece of this that I don't know the answer to and that I'm hoping to find out through my work is how much of the lack of those implementation mechanisms is lack of awareness? How much of it, for example, they point in the jumping very much ahead to the solutions, they talk about domestic measures and implementation. I think that's so critical. You know, in some other countries I'm

looking at, they could be very active in the international sphere, have signed on to all the treaties, etc. You look at their national frameworks, they don't have a national registry in place yet. They don't have a way for the private sector to, you know, oversee or supervise their activities, which, as you know, is an issue that we're dealing with here in the United States for some of the novel space activities. So it's certainly evolving, but they don't have interagency mechanisms for providers, operators, and users to talk to each other, right? And to make sure that they're on the same page. So I think those gaps threaten governance as well. And I don't know if that is, I don't think it's an intentional, oh, you know, we don't want to follow the rules. It may be a lack of awareness that you need that, right, for governance to be successful. So I don't have the right answer there, but I think there's a bit of that. We'll be right back with the rest of our Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio after this short break.

Hi, I'm Kalisa with the Planetary Society. We've joined with the U.S. National Park Service to make sure everyone is ready for the 2024 North American Total Solar Eclipse. Together, we've created the new Junior Ranger Eclipse Explorer Activity Book, and it helps kids learn the science, history, and fun of eclipses. If you live in the United States, call your nearest national park and ask if they have the Eclipse Explorer Book. You can learn more at planetary.org slash eclipse. How much of that aspect in terms of domestic governance and structure do you think is just a function of space being relatively new?

And even I would say as a relevant force, right, I'd say that has changed even significantly for a lot of countries in the last 20 to 30 years. Is it just a function of, you know, suddenly being something to think about that it wasn't inherited? I mean, this is my whole thing, in a sense, is humans didn't evolve or develop society with space as an option. And so we have all these kind of inherited common law traditions of various countries being applied as a basis of global law or maritime, maritime law and other things, but there's no one intuitive space law that we have, right? We're,

we're kind of grafting on other domains onto the space domain as an example, because we don't, you know, we didn't have ancestors figuring that out through custom 10,000 years ago. necessarily, as you were pointing out, or the administrative process or bureaucratic process of these a variety of countries that don't inherently have that kind of superpower access to space that were developed in the mid-20th century. But it is relevant. I think that's what you're saying. It's actually quite relevant in this day and age. It is relevant and it's very much more interconnected. I think it's both a function of lack of awareness and also, you know, a point we were talking about earlier, the silos. You know, if you create a structure based on your understanding of the technology that day, for example, you know, we have in the United States, NOAA issues the licenses for commercial remote sensing satellites. And one of the questions that it's had to grapple with the last few years, you know, through the revised regulations is, okay, what about other types of satellites that might be sensing, but it's not imagery? We didn't, you know, signals intelligence or things like that, that suddenly are capable in the private sector. I don't think you could have envisioned that

necessarily, right? And so I think part of it is a function of just how fast these things have evolved and, you know, governments are slow to catch on. I think the other thing that I've seen, at least in some of the countries I'm looking at, is the expertise, again, is so contained in a few people that then when those people leave, the institutions have to start over. Sometimes, you know, you have to start over even to remind your president, you know, your newly elected leadership that this is something that you would do and that it's important, right? So that is certainly a challenge where, you know, institutionalization

is one of the things that helps something like a space program both be integrated into a country, but then also survive. Really good point. And there's one more aspect of this opening section on just establishing the relevancy of this, that something you highlighted and have already kind of mentioned, but I just want to bring back up again, this idea that the consequences of gray zone activities escalating negatively, or even the activities themselves and they highlight things that stop short of physical destruction of satellites in space can have wide-reaching ramifications and i'm quoting here including electric critical infrastructure electric electricity grids basically this idea that it has a broad impact particularly to civilian

populations and whether or not you if you're among those civilian populations and whether or not you, if you're among those civilian populations, have a notable space program or related to those, if you're depending on US GPS system for navigation or timing or a variety of other issues, if those go away, you suddenly have big problems, even if it seems otherwise irrelevant to you. Even if you don't know, exactly. So not knowing doesn't protect you. So I think we've seen this explosion. We've seen regions of the world like Latin America adopt the digital revolution at a pace that is just unbelievable. And so a cyber attack has particular implications there, maybe more, maybe not necessarily consistent with the infrastructure, you know, as you would think. But yes, one example that my colleague Victoria

Valbilla-Sarda, who I wrote that Space News article that you referenced, is she said, okay, let's imagine a situation where Country X is buying SATCOM from a company, that company's assets get attacked in conflict because they're also being used somewhere else. And the disruption impacts the ability of that country to respond to a disaster scenario and to be able to find people in that remote location that are in danger. They have nothing to do with the conflict. But it's an example of, I think, a very real scenario, given all the extreme events, weather events that we've been having, etc., that that could happen and that would have direct potential human loss, potential economic and other losses as a result of what i think we would all call

you know a space event and that to people on the ground they're not even thinking about space let's move on to the next section which is talks about identifying is building on basically what used as an example gray zones in space government so they they identify what i would say three major areas and even a few sub areas within those. But first, they start with this discussion, which I think may be on the minds of a lot of our listeners, which is don't we have governance in space through the Outer Space Treaty? And the various other they point out, I think UN Charter applies in space. And, you know, we have laws, and there's a space lawyers and things that we can and can't do in space. What are we missing here?

Why do we have, you know, why is that not good enough? Can we talk about some of the ideas of particularly the Outer Space Treaty? What is it not doing that we need it to be doing, I guess, in this situation? I think part of it just boils down to any instrument of this nature is going to reflect the time it was created in, right? And so this was the Cold War. And so one of the biggest concerns was nuclear warfare. So you will notice that nuclear weapons are one of the few things that are expressly called out as you shall not do, right? And the fact that so many countries, including the two superpowers engaged in the middle of the Cold

War, could agree to that. It was a big win, but they weren't necessarily thinking about, oh, what about this other type, right? And what about ground-based anti-satellite weapons that are not violating the treaty because they're not in orbit and they're not weapons of mass destruction, right? So I think some of it is we have reached a point where we are able to do things in space that our predecessors could just not have imagined. So I think we owe them a little bit of grace. It isn't just, you know, evil superpowers trying to find loopholes. It's also, I think, just that we could not have envisioned that. But I think that's my way of saying some of the

issues that we have today are the lack of specificity and language that, yes, is part of law. It's not a wild, wild west. But there's so many scenarios we can think of that are way more complicated and that are just not envisioned in that original language. Yeah, something that was a good reminder for me in this paper, they point out that the definition of peaceful use is never made in the Outer Space Treaty. And it's left up to signatories to define that themselves, much less, of course, there's no real enforcement mechanism broadly for the treaty as well. The idea here that you're bringing up this, you know, I think that's a good point we

can give them a little grace when they put this together in 1967 yeah right in 1967 when i was just like i think apollo computer had just been finished and that was like a 10 billion dollar crash project to make a computer that could fit into a telephone booth and obviously now we've made a few strides in that area. And also just the number of participants in space and companies and also the deployment of, as you were using as an example earlier, these assets for communication and navigation that are just integrated in our pockets. They clearly couldn't, you know, even Star Trek thought that

these tricorders were these big clunky things. They identify, again, I would talk about these kind of thought that these these tricorders were these big clunky things they identify again i would talk about these kind of three major gray zone areas because i think we we've been acknowledging them a little bit but let's just let's list them out that they talk about that they identify one as the earth space continuum which we've acknowledged a little earlier the idea that anything in space has to get to earth somehow whether it's through computers right so you open up cyber warfare issues data and data spoofing uh which i thought was i hadn't thought about that before manipulating data that is otherwise used for ai training or geographic analysis and then

strategic early warning and nuclear weapons which is always a good chill down one's spine of what uh identifies that so this in this intersection and i think this is what you were you've been talking about a lot lara this space is this cross-domain issue and that's what i'm trying to say very inelegantly this idea that we've we've cordoned off space as this separate thing in a way that that doesn't really acknowledge how it's used. And they raise, and this is what I found interesting, several instances in this paper about finding pushback from various nations within the UN structure of trying to talk about space cross-sectional issues like this within areas not classically associated like cyber warfare because it's, quote, you know, not a space domain.

Do you think that's a purposeful convenience or just a genuine misunderstanding about how space is relevant? So maybe that's too broad of an ask for you to make, but it could be maybe both. Because I'm going to punt and I'm going to say both. I think in some cases, you know, some actors are going to benefit from saying, nope, we're not going to talk about that here, right? You know, I think one example is even in the UN, where a lot of this comes together, one of the debates has been, okay, COPIA is the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. It's in the title, should only be for the peaceful uses of outer space. And then it's in the Conference on Disarmament that you're going to address security issues. And then it's been years of the conversation trying to point out, well,

but, but it's not clear. And then also these issues are impinging on peaceful uses. So, so you can't just let something like, like scope defined in a very particular time in history kind of inhibit where you need to take the conversation today. Right. Yeah. So I think it's both. It's probably both. Yeah. I mean,

and it's just also this reminder that these are not, we're drawing these borders around these topics for discussion. They're, they're all very porous into each other and the interfaces into them are constantly changing. And I think that's the essence of if you, if you limit your policymaking to cyber warfare without the acknowledgement of what satellites in space are doing, and whether

you define that or clarify acceptable and unacceptable activities, that's, I think, that absence of governance that they're highlighting. And that's functionally then a choice of how we as people, our governance structures themselves, choose to engage on these issues. And that's where, again, this overall outer space is everywhere starts to really have that deeper meaning to it, I think, as we look at this. I'm going to move forward a little bit. Is there any really other important aspects of this particular section just of identifying these gray zones that are worth discussing? particular section just of identifying these gray zones that are worth discussing. Because I think we can intuitively mention that maybe the last bit, the humans in the loop, which I found kind of interesting, this idea. I mean, at the end of the day,

kind of what you said earlier, Laura, nothing means anything without someone to perceive it, which is an interesting solipsistic philosophy, I think, but valuable for someone needs to be worried. The tree falls in the forest. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's a little bit of that for sure. But no, I think that's a really important point just because, you know, I think back to some of the other topics that you all talk about more frequently in planetary science world. Some of the issues that we had with some of the major NASA programs were down to human error, So removing humans out of that loop just seems bizarre, right? But we do.

And so I found it really valuable that they point that out, that even in our standard definition of a space system, we think very much of the hardware and the, you know, the communications pieces and the data flowing and all that. We don't think of humans in that loop, but they absolutely are. And they really, again, kind of go on to this more discussion of the human protection, particularly for civilians.

I like this point they make here that there remains a significant gap between governance that protects civilian during times of war and the reality that civilian harm can come from these activities below this threshold is what we were kind of acknowledging earlier. And that's also just

kind of astonishing to me that that hasn't made it into that discussion. And I think this, whether that's intentional or not, that is the essence of the motivation really behind this paper, I think, of this, how is this impacting, as you keep saying, Laura, groups of people who may not even really think about the fact that this is a space-based issue. And that the impacts are going to be disproportionate, right? Yeah. If you think about a country like Chile investing in space, it is such a huge country. It has completely different climate zones.

It has no other option to really reach some of its most remote communities in terms of telecommunications basic services if it were not for space right right so if if conflict were to happen or or again these cases where we talked about that occur in the gray zone where you know it's maybe involving a commercial actor or maybe it's involving a partner nation on which Chile depends to receive access to some of these capabilities, then it is those remote communities that are going to suffer. And they're not even going to know or be participating in the conversation to really protect those interests. Yeah. I mean, Chile is basically a one long beach protected by mountains, right? So not the easiest to put cell phones, towers, and other ways of communication.

That's a really wonderful, the role of geography in terms of how this impacts some of the state and remote communities within that geography. This is actually an area that I really wish that I would have liked to see much more discussion about in this paper that they state this a few times. And I think you just provided a really wonderful example of how that would play out that's something i could have i could have seen more of i would have appreciated a bit more of examples because i think that's so critical to this overall argument and understanding the mechanisms by which and i wonder if that would help inform some of the direction of policy then to move forward. What are the most threatened communities that could happen through these activities based on examples like you just given? And does that help prioritize some of the

activities moving forward, I think would give some extra shape and value to the paper as a baseline for action subsequently. I mean, if not better defines the problem, defines the motivations for other nations to participate in a standard setting process, right? That you then have that momentum. We don't want to be making rules after a cataclysmic event happens and disenfranchises or disconnects people in remote parts of the world or people in urban areas or whatever the specific gray zone attack results in. to be thinking forward about it. And I think, you know, it's mentioned a few times in here, the Artemis Accords as sort of this model, right, of this is that specifically about the moon, right, and about the return of humans to the moon and future use of the moon. But that maybe is in

part a model of, well, you know, it's the United States spending the lion's share of the money, the huge majority of the money to return humans to the moon, but is making a concerted effort to engage now 34 other countries in establishing those norms. Something similar needs to happen. Clearly, there are 34 countries. A lot of them do have space industries or have something within their nation that may benefit from the Artemis program or broadly U.S. investment in space exploration. But there's a lot that aren't. You know, notably, there's nations in Africa who are just now on that emerging trend in being involved in space. And they see it as this aspirational thing, as this thing that they, as a nation, want to be a part of. And I think part of that motivation

is ensuring security and safety for future generations, right? And that's, again, this is only specifically Artemis, but I think this applies more broadly to space security and to addressing this gray zone, right? Is that there are incentives already built in. We don't have to come up all the time with new reasons to keep people involved, but it's about engaging people on the ground level, on Earth. What are the benefits to us solving this problem here and now? And what are those norms, and who's

going to take the lead in developing it? Because again, I think one of the underpinning themes that we're talking about is these things aren't just going to happen. There's not just going to be, you know, the next outer space treaty going to come on down and everyone's just going to sign it. No one's going to know who authored it. There is going to be authors of it. Right. There's going to be a motivating force behind that and how we can leverage the intrinsic motivations right within nations around the world to better humanity, as well as the maybe economic and prestige motivations in the sort of great powers and, and, and emerging powers that are, have already,

I'll say, seen the light, right. Seen what space can do for them as a society, but it really does affect all 8 billion people. And so all 8 billion people should have a part in solving this problem. And I think one thing I struggle with, and I don't have an answer, is it costs something to engage in those discussions. And we've touched on so many, right? Another one that I know is emerging is, you know, the idea of the dark and quiet skies, to be able to do astronomy and all that stuff. I wouldn't put that in the same, no one's asking me, but I wouldn't put that in the

same category in terms of priority as the one we just talked about with those communities, remote communities, being able to access critical services. If someone were to ask me i you know i we could come up with criteria for how you prioritize i think it's going to be very dependent on a given nation but i do worry about you know we're talking very positively about this wave of all these different actors engaging i do worry about losing stamina and the fact that countries have especially small countries have to prioritize and like focus on things, that it's going to get very diluted and that we're going to maybe not make as much progress in areas that are very ripe for progress, like space debris

mitigation and management and space traffic management, because it got so diluted that we're talking about terraforming know, terraforming on Mars or whatever, which is fascinating. Also important to definitely do it, figure out those principles and those governance structures before we go. But I just personally wouldn't put on the same list right now. Oh, and that sparked a thought in there's that the section about what space means for us humans and the culture, right, that underpins everything that we do, right? We all are a part of a culture somewhere. And that space has been a part of humanity for as long as there's been a humanity we've looked up. And there is something that happens. And I think maybe this illustrates a problem, maybe an impediment to future agreements is especially within our communities, right? The space the high frontier. We put all these like priorities on those things. And that does not always translate to the people in positions of power. It can be the most important thing to you.

And this is, I mean, I think just part of being a good advocate, right, is it may be the most important thing to you, but that doesn't mean that it has to be or that it is the most important thing for somebody else. But meeting somewhere where it is important to them and important to you is I think one of the benefits that space has. I mean, you get, you know, as many space advocates or people in a room, they all have a reason to support space. Some of them, it's commercial. Some of them, it's national security. Some of them, it's scientific. Some of them, it's academic. But everyone has a reason. But we have to find those reasons to build that consensus. And you're right. Terraforming Mars, huge topic, right? That like I know a lot of people within our community, very excited about the prospect of these large aspirational goals. But that's not everybody's large aspirational goal. For some people, it's making sure that their community is connected to the rest of the world through the internet, right? And making sure that whatever governance structure we come up with

for whatever it is in access to space, that we are prioritizing the things and not belittling. And I feel like I do see this sometimes that like, oh, well, they're not really a space enthusiast, and they believe in this other thing. So it's not important. So they shouldn't be part of the conversation. And that's just not the right tone, right? I mean, we live in a diverse and multicultural society and thinking about these problems in an intersectional way is important to solving them, these problems to begin with. Otherwise, you don't even have the buy-in to get started. Yeah. And I think to just quickly on that last point, it's not just a matter of, oh, you're allowing certain people to participate. It's

also that you should recognize that the way a lot of these governance structures and frameworks are going to be tested is whether they're following the rules as well, whether they're invested enough, right? So when we think about debris again, we know that you don't have to be that sophisticated to screw it up. And so that should be part of the incentive to get as many of the actors to participate as well, right? But yeah, I think that comes back to something that motivates a lot of my work is understanding what are those priorities of the different countries, the fact that they are different, the fact that they're going to be very context dependent is going to show up here. As we move along the paper, one of the things I like about the recommendations they make on how to color in

the gray is that they're not specific to an issue. Defining what peaceful use means cuts across a bunch of different things. But then some of the others, transparency, national governance, they, I think they're gonna, they're gonna be useful no matter what issue you're trying to address. And so they didn't prioritize the gray zone challenges, which maybe I would have liked perhaps, but, but I also still think that it's very valuable that the recommendations that they gave, I think could be useful across the board. That's a really fascinating perspective about the application of it. And it's almost like a framework for solving these than

kind of giving specific answers for it. So, I mean, we're firmly into this. It says it's coloring the gray, the last section here where they say, what can we do to produce these gray zones? And this, I think, clarifying use. Now that it's some of these, though, at the same time, easy to say, but maybe very difficult to implement. Like, well, let's just decide what to say was peaceful use or not. And this is where I wonder if that's the activity of attempting to do it has inherent value even if you can't necessarily get to a really strong outcome because even acknowledging the issue seems to get you closer to solving it in some way. So these rules of peaceful use, they said identifying threatening

and non-threatening activities, again always a challenge. Mary Elbarowitz who was on the show in the past has written a lot about the inherent dual nature of everything in space that moves at 17,000 miles an hour. Everything is a kinetic impactor, if you want it to be. But I think that's where intent and openness. So that was the one thing I wanted to mention here was that what struck me is inherently the fundamental baseline of approach is just being open and the data sharing and integrative and allowing inputs, but also to say, here's what we're doing. Here's what we're doing. And that's almost in a way so simplistic, but amazing that that just gets you so far. And I think this wraps way back at the beginning of this discussion, Laura, of your concept of intent.

Can you establish trust and intent? And I guess you just do that by saying what you're doing a lot and then doing what you say. And doing what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. And I think also establishing parallel and appropriate ways of communicating. So for example, the PLA shouldn't be calling NASA to let them know of some military space exercise they're going to do. No, they need to contact their counterpart in the Space Force or in wherever it might be, right? NASA is more appropriate talking to another civil operator, right? And so I think evolving sort of those channels, because I think it's going to just help build in more trust or contain the mistrust into something that, okay, we have a way to verify whatever you're saying, right? And I think where technology is going to be helpful

is as our ability to say, for example, improve our space situational awareness, that is going to help build in that trust, even if there isn't inherent trust among the countries and the actors, right? Because others are going to be able to verify what's going on. I was actually surprised I didn't see more discussion of that particular space situational awareness in this paper, because if you have an open, accessible database that you're readily sharing very accurately of everything that you're tracking in space that can help reduce ambiguity of was this an intentional collision versus an accidental collision and that seems really relevant to this issue i want to just

go back to this little discussion on defining the peaceful use of space because this is where can you say if spoofing or dazzling spy satellites or cyber attacks are explicitly non-peaceful and that's what their idea is can you reduce these can you color in these spaces can you reduce what we would consider a gray zone and that again by definition is basically nations limiting their tool set and this is kind of what i was curious about like you're asking nations to limit what they're able to do in the realm of acceptable or semi-acceptable activity and that's a lot it can be seemingly a lot to ask people to volunteer or nations to voluntarily limit themselves like that so i just i don't know if there is a pathway there but i mean we clearly have seen it in the past for very, very destructive things. And they give some examples of previous agreements they note here, chemical weapons convention. I think they also highlighted some of the issues around air pollution and others, but those are pretty nasty things. And I wonder if things that don't instinctively create some kind of fear or

loathing in human existence is going to be powerful enough to get us over that hump in terms of self-denial of action. I think the momentum we've seen recently on kinetic anti-satellite testing is probably the closest to what we've come to something like that. And I think it comes from the same logic that right now, destroying other satellites doesn't give you that big of a military advantage and comes at a really high risk for orbits that you yourself want to use. And so, it seems to be garnering significant support. 37 as of last year, the end of last year, I believe. And if you get into the nuances to your point about restricting behavior, the U.S., which started this whole process, isn't necessarily saying we're not developing them. They're saying we're not testing them.

But it shifts it away from the technology and the thing that you can label as a gun or not into the behavior. And the act of testing, there's just no way to define that as peaceful. And so I think the shift to behavior is very positive. positive. And I think we will hopefully get into technologies that are more fuzzy, like the types that are going to do rendezvous and proximity operations. But if their intended use is X, and there is transparency, and there's a way to verify, and there's all these other things, then we don't necessarily need to jump to, oh, it could be repurposed to, well, it could be. But hopefully we can build a framework around it.

Let me put it this way, creating the incentives that it isn't. And is there trust, right? Is there trust in that transparency that a capability is being developed that could have military application, that could have a violent application in space? And do you trust your partners? Have you built that bilateral or multilateral relationship to say, I know they could, but I trust that they won't? And I think the complicating, one of the complicating themes here is going to be that the private sector and that in countries where for historical reasons, for good and bad reasons, there might not be trust of private sector actors. And in the world we're in today,

you are going to have to trust the country under which the jurisdiction is that they're saying they're going to do A and not do B. But inherently, you might not trust the commercial sector actor. So I do recognize that that raises a lot of complications, right? So how do you build trust to a company like SpaceX, right? That is going to be a challenge. I have no easy answers for that. I want to just mention one or two more things before we wrap up here. We talked about earlier, stronger domestic governance. And I think, Laura, you highlighted and Jack, through your discussion of the Artemis Accords, gave two examples of how that can happen. So countries themselves can just improve the

overall behavior because it's a sense everyone sense everyone in space because everyone orbits everyone else can help improve and set standards and norms of behavior which they also identify here norms of behavior improving communication and data sharing enhanced cooperation just lots of this i don't know the meat and potatoes kind of governance work and and communication and i just want to highlight one thing at the end here that threw me a bit for a loop, which is at the beginning of this section of coloring the gray, they said, maybe gray zones actually aren't all bad. Like maybe it's okay to have some, they said, flexible rules can be reinterpreted, facilitating evolution and governance and arguments for the tolerance and management of gray zones, it also can allow

certain types of activities to go without having to provoke a serious violent response or start a conflict. Having some kind of ambiguity may actually be useful. I just wanted to mention that because it kind of threw me for a loop at the end of this whole thing about getting rid of gray zones. Like, well, maybe not all of them. And maybe some of them times are okay. And I don't know if anyone wants to add anything to that. But I just thought I'd mentioned it as an interesting counterpoint to remember. And maybe if one had to critique a paper one wanted to that may be what area they might want to critique, like maybe this isn't all that bad to have some ambiguity that gives people some flexibility in case they mess up or need time to reset.

I would just say that it at least acknowledges that even terrestrially, our activities, military and civilian activities, there are still gray zones. And we've been doing these things for tens of thousands of years, and there are still gray zones. And I think it acknowledges that there is never going to be a perfect paradigm. We need to allow for that human error, for those opportunities, for things to maybe go wrong a little, that we acknowledge that that's going to happen, but not in a way that then causes a cataclysmic event or hurts future use and a peaceful use of space and give people that opportunity. We just need to, I think it just acknowledges the fact that there's always going to be a little gray and maybe part of it is good to be part of the gray. I agree with that. And I would add that part of it is, I think, recognizing that if we were to say today, oh, we're going to list every possible use, every possible scenario before we wrap this thing up with a bow, we're never going to be done. Right. And so it's where can we get to agreement now that helps reduce the death of that gray and that but allows us to revisit it in 20, 30 years when we're

hopefully still around, right? Or 50 or whatever it is, right? And then I think to what Jack was trying to say, I would hate for, to draw that red line in such a big, bold color that if something were to happen, a country couldn't say, well, I don't want to retaliate or I don't want to take that action. I want to pursue this other path. If that country feels pressure because the system's built in a certain way, then I don't think that's going to succeed anyway. Excellent point. So, Laura, you brought this paper to us. We had a good amount of time and thank you for your time to talk about it. I'd like to leave you with the last word if you want to wrap up and kind of summarize some of what we felt or you felt through this discussion and about the paper itself

and maybe how you're going to use this paper and your work going forward and how you think people should really integrate this. Thank you for being willing to go through it with me. It's one of those things where you read something that excites you, that makes you think, and you want to talk about it with other people. So I appreciate that opportunity. I still think for me, the value is one, it taught me something, how to approach the topic, but it's also very practical. And I live in this world where I'm trying to deepen understanding about what's going on in a certain region of the world. And also just go back to the so what, right? Because there's so many things going on. And so I really appreciate this paper giving me just examples, ammunition, just really useful explanations and things that I can use in

that dialogue to, like I point out in the paper that we referenced earlier, that's in Space News, to like I point out in the paper that we referenced earlier, that's in Space News, why should something like space security that is so seemingly so separate from the day-to-day lives that I think are important, that is why it's important, why they matter. So thank you for the opportunity. And we could have kept talking about this for a few more hours. So I look forward to listening to other episodes with other papers. Well, thank you, Laura. It was a delight to have you. Really enjoyed the paper. And best of luck on your research and leave from NASA this year at CSIS. And I look forward to reading the work that you produce from that. Maybe we'll have you on to talk about that

in a year or so. So best of luck to you. Thank you so much. in a year or so. So best of luck to you. Thank you so much. That was Laura Delgado-Lopez. Again, you can find this paper online at planetary.org slash radio. So thank you for joining us this month. As always, you can find more episodes of this show, the Space Policy Edition, as well as our weekly show, Planetary Radio, all at planetary.org slash radio, or on pretty much any major podcast distribution network. If you like what you're hearing today, if you like this show, please consider subscribing, sharing it, or even giving us a review on those networks. It really helps

other people find this content. The Space Policy Edition is a production of the Planetary Society, The Space Policy Edition is a production of the Planetary Society, which employs both me and Jack, and is a member-supported, independent, nonprofit space outreach organization based in Pasadena, California. Anyone can join us and membership start at just $4 a month at planetary.org slash join. So until next month, Jack, Ad Astra. Ad Astra.