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Hello and welcome to Tech TV’s Password with me, Peter Warren. And in this month’s program, the final frontier. Yes, we’re talking about space. Space is, according to a recent report from the House of Lords, a place of opportunity for the UK. Somewhere where we have an industry that’s actually going somewhere. but one that the UK has to improve in. Unfortunately, the Lord’s inquiry did not mention one of the most alarming developments, a rapidly escalating space war that has seen cyber
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attacks and physical intimidation of satellites by other satellites. An investigation from the Cyber Security Research Institute, a sister organization of Future Intelligence and TechTV, which make the password program, has uncovered a systematic attempt by foreign powers to attack satellite systems and communications as part of a new cyber conflict to control this vital new area. The attacks, according to those monitoring the developments, have been extensively used during the Ukrainian war and are now being used to
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apply geopolitical pressure as part of a coordinated attempt to demonstrate an ability to threaten vital global communication systems. Here’s Clemens Puria, a senior researcher at Switzerland’s ETHZurich University’s Center for Security Studies. one of Europe’s leading researchers on the issue. >> Uh there is an increase in hostile maneuvers, unwelcomed maneuvers, uh unannounced maneuvers, but there is not fully yet a war in orbit. Um so as researchers, we like to define and
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categorize stuff. uh and we distinguish between the militarization of outer space which is the use of space technologies to support military operations on earth. This is not new at all. Uh always been there with space starting with the at the same time as development of nuclear weapons and then space being used systematically in military operations since the Gulf War. Um so this is not new at all. It has intensified. Now it’s also including a lot of commercial space services as well used by uh belligerent but it’s not
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happening in orbit the the the the fight. Um so we distinguish that with the weaponization of outer space which is the use and placement of weapons in space. And this is slowly emerging. Uh it’s not fully there yet. Um they are like things that states have been observing such as development of counterpace capabilities. Um anti-satellite tests. Those tests they are not conducted against adversary satellites but usually against um old satellites just to prove that you have that capabilities. Some states are also um
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projecting uh hardly identifiable subsatellites. So that means that one of their satellite is um ejecting a a a subsatellites a bit what we discussed about this kind of like Russian doll type of space systems um that then maneuver space or deploying uh space planes that are highly maneuverable. Um there’s also a development of civilian technologies that can be turned into weapons potentially like robotic arms that can grab a satellite to remove debris. So it’s a civilian mission but um if you
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can grab the debris you can also grab an adversary satellite. So all those things are slowly developing. Um, so there’s not really an arm conflict in space in the orbital environment, but might happen soon. >> You seem to be caveing. You you you you you’re saying there isn’t a conflict yet. >> Mhm. >> If I were a human being and people were doing those sorts of things to me, I I I would feel more than a little annoyed. I would feel more than a little irritated. I would feel as though somebody was
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trying to wind me up. >> Yeah. And states are indeed annoyed. Uh they are calling out some of those maneuvers. They are attributing uh D’s maneuvers to um adversary states. Um sometimes releasing data about uh um the approach unwelcomed approach of adversary satellites. uh uh publicly uh stating that uh there’s attempts to ease drop on them in those moments um uh or publicly attributing cyber attacks against satellites or electronic warfare against satellites. So uh states are a bit
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preparing themselves for conflict in in outer space right now. >> I mean and so at what frequency is this? How often does this occur? How often does one satellite circle another? How often does one satellite put out its arm to try to intimidate another satellite? >> That’s a very good question. So, it’s not something that happens every day. Um, a lot of these things are just um capabilities development at the moment. So, it’s they’re not yet deployed. some um maneuvers like uh inspection missions
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to of one satellite going around uh an adversary one trying to each drop on them and so on. Um this has been uh occurring more frequently uh in the past decade let’s say um it’s not an everyday thing that space operators have to face where they have to constantly maneuver to avoid those things. So it’s not like uh daily occurrence but this is something that they have to monitor uh with radar data to see what’s what’s going on in space so that they can avoid collisions that they can uh cut
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communications to avoid being eavesdropped on um this this kind of things. So it’s yeah slowly developing increasing but not an everyday life thing. One assumes that this occurs at times when there’s some geopolitical tension on Earth. The the the the incidences of this sort of activity tends to reflect what’s going on back on the ground. >> Um yeah, indeed. Um actually if you look at just before the war in Ukraine so in November uh uh 2021 there was a anti-satellite test that Russia did on
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its own satellites uh but that created a lot of debris in space and it created a lot of debris at an altitude where earth observation satellites are. Um, so at that moment where there was the military buildup uh at the Ukrainian border, that meant that a lot of those satellites that were taking pictures of uh Ukraine um they had to maneuver to avoid those debris and while a satellite is maneuvering it cannot conduct its mission like taking pictures of Earth. So uh that means that at that moment
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they captured less images of uh earth than uh probably they were supposed to. It doesn’t excuse some states completely missing out on on on on the war and misinterpreting the the the military buildup. Uh but it kind of started this way and then on the eve of the invasion uh there was a cyber attack against uh satellite network that was used by Ukrainian armed forces uh which prevented them from uh using satellite communication to coordinate and respond to the invasion. Uh it also prevented them from uh accessing data from sensors
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that they had for example in the dombass like CCTV cameras and so on. So um of course during uh moments of geopolitical tension you have an increase of um attacks or interference with uh space systems. And then in my research I tried to investigate whether there were other cyber operations against the space sector as part of the conflict and I found uh 161 cyber operations um on both sides. Uh so there’s definitely uh a target on Silite’s back. >> There’s certainly somebody is trying to give you a
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picture. Somebody is trying to send you a signal. There is a message that is occurring in all of this, isn’t there? Because if somebody is intimidating a satellite, if somebody is carrying out a cyber attack, they’re not doing it for no reason, are they? >> Yeah, it’s a it’s a good comment because a lot of those, for example, um cyber operations, most of them are not destructive. Um so most of them have limited impact. So there’s a lot of strategic signaling. Um it’s a lot of interest from activist
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also to uh target satellites or the space actor because it’s kind of seen as a ultimate target or something that could be cool to do and that would generate media attention um even if their operations don’t have any kind of impact on space operations. Um so you have a few attacks that are very sophisticated and have impact but most of them don’t really have any effect on the battlefield uh for long periods. the researcher Claus Pario from the Swiss University ETH Zurich who spoke to me at
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the tellingly named softwaredefined space conference in the Estonian capital Talin near the Russian border on the intimidation tactics that bear an uncanny similarity to the incidents where we have seen both Russian and Chinese ships damage undersea communication cables. The extension of that activity to space has been ongoing. In January 2007, China successfully destroyed one of its obsolete weather satellites with a missile in a major anti-satellite test. The Chinese missile had no warhead and
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was the equivalent of a high-speed arrow. As Paria pointed out, a similar tactic used by the Russians immediately before the Ukrainian war started led to a debris field that forced battleground monitoring satellites to take evasive action. The 2007 Chinese test was not the first time anti-satellite capability has been demonstrated. In September 1985, the United States destroyed its Soulwind P781 satellite with an anti-satellite missile fired by one of its warplanes, an F-15 Eagle that was 7 mi above the Earth and flying at
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just over 700 mph. The satellite it hit was orbiting at 345 mi above the planet. Just as alarming as this missile capability is the potential for the satellite networks that we increasingly depend on to be interfered with by cyber operations. A point Tom Pace, a former United States Marine and the founder of the cyber security company Netrise makes. >> Number one, uh, all satellites have to communicate with what’s known as like a ground air station. you know, there’s some infrastructure on the ground that
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they’re communicating with. Um, and there’s what’s known as like an uplink that, you know, is essentially the invisible channel that, um, it uses to receive information and update itself or whatever. Um and there’s certainly been, you know, there’s certainly units within the federal government who are responsible for assessing the probability and likelihood of satellites to be compromised uh using various approaches. Um I mean you have uh you know electromagnetic pulses, you
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have kinetic weapons, you have any number of things that could be used. I mean, for certain satellites, I mean, we have aircraft that can reach certain levels of satellites depending on how high or low they are in orbit. So, you know, there’s a number of ways that you could knock things out of the sky. Um, you know, I’m sure someone somewhere has done something in space that the public’s not privy to. Uh but yeah, I don’t I here’s hoping it never gets that far because uh the world
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relies on that infrastructure and a in a very significant way for any number of things. So >> So what you’re saying is you can hack a satellite. What what what if you’re hacking a satellite, what do you want to achieve? What’s what’s the aim? I mean you want to remove whatever the set of capabilities are that that satellite is providing to whoever is reaping the benefit. So, you know, you had uh whenever, you know, Russia invaded Ukraine and that whole thing kicked off. Um, you know, forgive me if I get the
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details not perfect, but essentially Russia did something that um made VIAT uh just not possible. Uh like that infrastructure was basically taken down. Um, and so any if you were using if you were using a satellite phone and you had a VIAT subscription, that phone was a brick. That phone did you no good. Um, and so then Starlink came around and was able to be more resilient to to those types of attacks for whatever reason. Um, or you might want to knock a satellite out of the sky or, you know, cause a denial of service
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attack against it that is, uh, like a GPS satellite. Um, or you might want to knock out a satellite that’s broadcasting, you know, TV channels because you want that portion of the population to not have um, rapid access to information for whatever reason. I mean, just depends what your goals are and what those satellites are providing. Um, whether or not you would want to, you know, remove their ability to do what they’re doing. >> Okay. So, Tom, would you be able you you’ve mentioned that there’s this huge
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flow of information that satellites are coming up with. Would you be able to poison that flow of information? Would you be able to distort that flow of information, give out false parameters and false analysis information? Sure. Uh you know there was a recent story around uh I think it was can’t I think it was like uh cell phone tower satellites or you know satellites that were owned and operated by like the big mobile carriers but they found out that everything was being communicated in plain text basically. Um, and so, you
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know, I think the assumption was everything was encrypted. Uh, that wasn’t true. And so then you would have to imagine what other assumptions have we been making that maybe aren’t true. So the challenge would be you’d have to determine um is there some level of integrity checking going on between the messages being sent and the messages being received. Um that’s a normal part of you know modern networking. But if you were able to somehow, you know, spoof certain things and make a
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satellite receiver believe it was something that it wasn’t, uh, you would be able to essentially man in the middle of that traffic just like you can man in the middle any traffic. Um, and then, you know, manipulate the payloads and have it say something that’s happening that isn’t. Net R’s Tom Pace is an expert on the security of the internet control systems that run our lives because of his experience at the US’s Department of Energy. As Pace adds, the space war is becoming increasingly
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perilous is my assumption. So, and there’s also just this element of, you know, mutually assured destruction in outer space, which is, I mean, we have the most space infrastructure by far. Um, it’s not even close. One has to imagine, I mean, I think we’re the only country with a space force. Uh, maybe China has one now. I’m frankly just not sure. They probably do, actually. Uh but we almost certainly have the most advanced you know space military group. Uh so it would seem to be
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unwise uh for some other nation state to target our space infrastructure knowing that the response would probably be not inind. H what is a space force then Tom? What what what is this space force? It’s not lots and lots of um science fiction like devices is it? >> Well I mean space force is just a branch of the air force currently. It’s a subset of the air force. Um remains to be seen if it’s ends up getting its own um you know its own branch of the military. Uh currently that’s not the
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case. I mean I just think I mean Space Force is just a set of people in a mission that is distinct um you know so that you can have a group of people that are focused on a particular um you know uh area of operations, right? It’s the same reason we have a navy. Um, you know, why why don’t we have the army? >> But but what I was asking was what what what sort of vehicle what what does it look like? Are these drones? Are these very high altitude airplanes? Are they um what what does a space force look like?
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Well, I mean, I don’t know that you’re not you’re getting into a territory I think that is probably not known by by by anyone publicly. Um, I don’t know that they have a well- definfined set of like vehicles in that sense. Um, I mean there is like some Boeing space vehicles that are you know wellknown and established out there. Um but you know all the vehicles that are all the vehicles that are moving up and down through space are SpaceX. Now that rises Tom Pace and his echoing of
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the cold war phrase mutually assured destruction regarding attacks on satellites was not the only time it has been mentioned. Several of those interviewed for the CSRI report mentioned electromagnetic pulse weapons, a terrifying new weapon system development based on the discovery that a side effect of nuclear weapons was a pulse of energy that will wipe out all electrical systems, including our essential power grids. It’s something that the US in particular is very worried about. It has set in
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place measures to upgrade its military communications network to proof itself against such threats. And just how lethal they can be to satellites and ground infrastructure has been warned about by William Furchon, a warfare expert and author of the apocalyptic book 1 second after now being made into a film about the immediate aftermath of an EMP attack. Fortune is one of the world’s leading experts on EMP. >> Let’s start at the beginning. EMP electromagnetic pulse with some of the
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used up on it is created by detonating a small nuclear weapon out in space 200 miles up. When the weapon explodes, it sets up an electrostatic discharge called the Compan effect which cascades down to the Earth’s surface. It’s an electrostatic discharge. Once it hits the wiring, millions of miles of wiring out there and feeds into the power grid, shorts off make stations and also blows power lines off the fire lines. So there was the Department of Energy study about 10 years back that said five years after
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such an event, 80% of our power grid would still be offline. That’s catastrophic. So why are we worried about this now? If it’s been around for, as you say, since 1962, then that’s about 60 years or so that we’ve known about this. Why is it suddenly coming to people’s attention? Well, the expectation, normality, everything worked yesterday. I mean, when you got up today, for example, where did your water come from? What’s the deal? Where’ the water go? You got it. It’s a tap. It’s a tap. It
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always comes in the tap, Bill. >> Yeah. Yeah. It’s that magical tap that we all have in our house. It works today. It’s going to work tomorrow. That’s the scary part of this. We’ve known about it, but we’re sort of whistling in the dark. And and the same way basically with nuclear weapons, it will be 80 years come August that the one the two only times that a nuclear weapon was used in combat killed at least a quarter of a million people for 80 years. We’ve been stockpiling these
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weapons, but we’re always saying no, no, no, we’re never going to use it. The Russians are never going to use it. The North Koreans are never going to use it. going to go like that another 80 years or maybe tomorrow. >> So what you’re saying is that and [clears throat] I’ve been speaking to a number of military experts about this who are saying that they are worried about people using a limited nuclear device. Obviously, it’s not going to have the impact that a nuclear device
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may have if you dropped from the ground, but when detonated in the atmosphere, but you say it will wipe out the power grid. >> Yeah. You know, I suspect that you might have been a kid during the cold war. I mean, I was I was born in 1950 and the 50s, 60s, 70s, it was called mutual assured destruction. Man, I love that. Madshore destruction. Russians hit us, we hit them. We were always thinking in those days of massive hundreds, thousands of missiles hitting. Well, EMP is a game changer and has been all
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wrong. Uh worst case scenario for the United States is only three. You detonate a weapon over eastern, central, western United States. One second after title the book, but it’s also real. One second after everything starts to shut down and then hold on there’s hierarchy of needs. Where did your order come from? Well, who’s the bride? Town only has about 20 days worth of food. The trucks aren’t running anymore. Gas stations aren’t working anymore. This isn’t working. Medication isn’t working.
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All of these factors together start creating a man to die off within a matter of weeks. >> The EMP expert William Furch on EMP attacks as he says it would be mutually assured destruction, the deliberate acronym for which is MAD. Such consequences are not lost on those developing offensive systems in space. Many of those we spoke to mentioned other more conventional types of new weapons that could be deployed without inflicting such massive global damage. Two very surgical technologies in particular stood out. Lasers and
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highintensity radio frequency guns, a glorified microwave oven that can fry all of the circuitry a her beam hits by overloading electronic circuits and causing them to either burn out or crash. Herf guns are already being developed to take out drone swarms as a response to the use of the remote technology in the Ukraine and they are already being deployed by navies and armies around the world with her guns being spotted on naval vessels and tanks to deal with drones and incoming missiles. Well, the
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UK’s Royal Navy has also announced its development of Dragon Fire, a laser directed energy weapon that provides its ships with self-defense again against threats like drones, missiles, and aircraft. Dragon Fire uses a high power laser beam to heat and damage a target at long range. It’s delivered with very precise tracking and beam control systems, so the energy stays on a small spot. Demonstrations have shown such accuracy that it can hit a target the size of a pound coin at about a kilometer, a key
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to making the weapon effective without using enormous power. A burst of dragon fire costs around £10. nothing in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of pounds of missile costs. So why has space suddenly become this contested? As ever, the answer is depressingly simple. Space is power and riches. Here’s Net Rice’s Tom Pace again. >> I mean, [clears throat] yeah. Yeah, I mean there’s a uh one of our investors has a investment in another satellite company and they use them for insurance
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adjustment um purposes. They use them to uh take pictures uh and monitor, you know, uh big swaths of forests and national parks to uh attempt to predict where they would expect to see fires break out and stuff by, you know, the dryness of of the environment and things like that. Um yeah, I mean, there’s just countless opportunities. It’s a totally new paradigm and so we’re probably not even capable of properly um uh understanding all of the use cases that are going to you know be available to us. I mean
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that’s going to be that’s a bit of a shock to people isn’t it? Because you know they think about satellites as being up there and remote and to actually be providing information like that. I mean you can use satellite data to actually work out whether uh crops are ripe or not and whether you should send in the the combine harvesters you can divine so much information from so far up >> 100%. I mean the federal government’s known this for a long time you know they created entire
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government like government agencies and military systems for it. You know, you have in the United States, you have the National Reconnaissance Office, you have the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, obviously you have NASA. I mean, it’s not been lost on certain elements of the federal government um how how important these things are. So, um it’s just becoming the technology has come down in cost uh so people can access it. uh the ability to attach yourself to a private space corporation like SpaceX.
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There’s others too that allows you to get your private company payloads into orbit is something that just was not available to people. You’d have to somehow have what like some connection at NASA uh for a rocket that’s going to go up what every once every 3 years or some something crazy. Um and so anytime you give people more uh the ability to transport more supply in a capitalist economy at least you’re going to get more demand just kind of automatically and that’s what’s
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happening. Net rise is to pace and as both he and Zurich University researcher Clamors Puare have mentioned interfering with that flow of data is even more valuable than the last resort of taking out a satellite with more conventional weapons. A point realized by Estonia, one of the more technologically nimble countries in the world, which is because, says Paul Leas, the head of space at the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, it can see cyber gold in the stars. >> It might sound a bit strange that why
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should a very small country with 1 million 1.3 or 1.5 billion people go to space? Actually, it makes sense because uh one of the challenges Estonia and Estonian industry has been facing is that we don’t have that many products to export and to be on the high level in in the supply chain. And what we have discovered in the space sector working together with European space agency for example is that uh space helps and motivates our industry to invest more into R&D activities and not only the companies themselves themselves
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but also attract venture capital for example. So we see that we can develop technology and with this technology we can of course be more higher in the supply chains and be more efficient in what we are doing. So not only doing the subcontract manufacturing for others in Europe for example but be owners of our own products and services. And of course if you’re talking about the space domain then it doesn’t mean always that we are developing scientific missions or launchers but it’s also the
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spin spinoff effect for now that space technologies could be used in other domains. For example, there have been examples of developing super capacitors for the space domain. But today, of course, the main customer in the main market is not in space domain, but it’s in the automotive uh industry. So, investing into space means that we are learning to really develop the high-end technologies which can be used in other sectors and grounds. And then of course there is the other aspect spinning
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effect. So how we can use the technologies what we have developed on ground how we can use them in the space. For example, Estonia is very well known for cyber security and when we were working on the Estonian space policy more than six years ago, then we were exactly looking for the right fit for Estonia because how should Estonia enter the space domain for example and should we compete with existing industry in Europe or US which is maybe not a profitable it was it was one of the questions how to enter what are
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the needs of doing this and then we discovered that actually we are already very good and we are well established in IT and and cyber security and then we started to look into the area. So in which direction the cyber security market in also in the space domain will will develop and together with European space agency. Then for example we started to work on the civilian industry to get the cyber security experience also used in the space domain. So of course if you’re now listening then of course maybe 60 years ago cyber security
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space I was heavily criticized about it because one of the questions back then it wasn’t it was a very human and easy question so why should someone attack the cube center so what’s the economical benefit and back then it was it was also also valid point so what’s the value of the space services what people did not realize is that’s how dependent actually we are on on our daily lives. GNSS is one of the easiest examples of all the applications on our phone to deliver food and uh get
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the car right. But now if you are in a crisis or in a war situation even in in Europe then we can see that all the operations starting from weather. So drone attacks they need this is data about uh be aware of the situation or in which direction we should go until connectivity. So we can get information from the field and uh or even not only during war but ina in times of crisis for example heavy storms which due to that we have no connectivity with uh satellite connectivity is rather easy to set up networks in the area uh to
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establish and connectivity. I think and so it also points now out that uh space services, space infrastructure both on ground and in space are attractive targets for someone who wants to mess up your daily life. >> Estonia is very well known for making for very deliberately electing to get involved in technology. They thought that as a nation it thought right don’t have huge amounts of raw materials what can we do so what’s the key component about developing a high-tech economy what’s the key component to get wanting
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to get involved in space what is it that you need or what is it that you have >> I think uh if you’re developing a technology industry then the most important component is not the natural resources but it’s the human resources to have smart and educated people who are also very well motivated for me because just by my own example because my uh my life is very much connected with the Estonian space director when I was a small kid and it was more I was more fascinated in aviation for
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example it was very cool area in my opinion. But somehow I ended up in the first Estonian student satellite. How cool is that? You can really build the first Estonia satellite mission from scratch and it was 2008 when we started the project and it was basically a team who had no idea what we were doing. We had no idea about space technology but we had this will and urge okay we want to do something cool started doing it and in 2013 we were we were able to launch it and it was a very successful mission and it was
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successful because we had no one helped us. Pulas, head of space at the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communication, proving, to paraphrase Oscar Wild’s immortal line, that while many of us are in the gutter, some of us are looking to the stars. Estonia is not alone in such lofty sentiments, many have already begun to decry the spoiling of space. Dr. Bledin Bowen is a lecturer in international relations at Darham University and the author of war in space. He says that we should really be pragmatic about why we
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ventured into space in the first place. >> Well, space is used for military purposes and always has been from day one. So, ever since Sputnik went up into space, it was more about its demonstration as the Soviet Union’s ability to launch nuclear weapons towards the United States rather than putting a radio beacon up in orbit. Similarly, the United States was able then to put spy satellites onto its long range rockets and ICBMs to spy on the Soviet Union. And what you get from the 1980s is an increased reliance on
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satellites for military systems to start targeting each other, especially long range strike capabilities. So what you have today is that continued maturation of those technologies that first really came about in the 1980s in terms of tactically relevant space-based intelligence and surveillance and reconnaissance systems. And what you also have is the spread of those technologies to non-western militaries. So you have Russia and China who have modernized their militaries in the last 25 30 years. The Russians picking up
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where the Soviet Union left off in the 1980s because Russia went through quite a lot of economic distress in the ’90s and their old systems fell apart. But Russia’s rebuilt a lot of those and China is modernizing its military power across the board and its military space reconnaissance systems are part and parcel of that modernization and expansion. In terms of waging modern warfare, it’s not a done deal if you don’t have space support. It very much depends on the situation at hand. So,
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and and the actual war that you’re talking about. So, for example, the United States still had a very tough time putting it politely, in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite having an unchallenged dominance of outer space. It still couldn’t beat the Iraqi insurgency indefinitely. It still could not defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. We’re still dealing with those problems now. resistance still ongoing because they managed to find ways to adapt to the way the Americans fight their wars and deploy their military forces and conduct
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a long range strikes or drone strikes. There are always counter measures to the weapon systems you want to employ. And we’re seeing that a lot now in the Nagor Karabak clashes between Armenia and Azabaijan where you know you can have all the drones you want and all the satellites but if you have good air defense systems you can start swatting them out to the sky if you want. If you have the right sort of systems, you can also start denying your visibility to the enemy as well. Alqaaida in the
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invasion of Afghanistan 2001 got very creative in hiding their forces from American space-based [music] sensors and made life increasingly more difficult for longrange precision weapons for the United States. It’s a different case, however, if you’re looking at, say, China versus America over Taiwan perhaps, where there’s a greater dependency on satellite support systems for waging maritime and air warfare against a better equipped adversary that also has its own space systems. But there are still always options and
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adaptations that you can have towards enemy space systems and also mitigations if you also lose your own satellite support systems as well. So, some of the things I try to tease out in my book is is to think through the push and pull of how dependent are you on space systems and when do you actually need to deny space support to the other side and what mitigation measures can be in place to make sure that you can get by in a pinch without space systems. So, I wouldn’t write off anyone just because they might
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have some problems in space. It can make life more difficult, but it’s not a done deal. >> Who actually owns space? What governs what people are after in space? >> Well, nobody owns space. So, there’s there’s no there’s no territory that’s owned by any state. And it’s not the right of any state or authority to portion out any territory in space. So when it comes to governing outer space, the only things that’s written down on paper really is the outer space treaty
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of 1967 and then three other subt treaties that are building on on various principles in the outer space treaty. And that sort of sets the broader principles and the broader legal philosophy around providing access to space for all or the right of access to space for all for space exploration and peaceful purposes. But it also does not contravene the right of states to defend themselves according to the article 51 of the UN charter. So it’s it’s very loose. It’s a very broad framework and the only things
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that are sort of properly outlawed is the appropriation or claiming of territory. So you can’t make a sovereign claim on any territory. You can’t place weapons of mass destruction loosely defined in Earth orbit or on celestial bodies like the moon or asteroids. And you can’t build military installations on celestial bodies like the moon and asteroids or any other planet. So, so that in a nutshell is is sort of the international legal framework around outspace activities and it was basically
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um an fairly easy one for the Soviets and the Americans to agree upon in 1967 because there was very little to be gained for either side in trying to put any military installations on the moon. It really wasn’t that relevant and it still isn’t that relevant in military strategic terms today. It’s the moon is pretty much relevant for science and exploration still. The moon treaty or the moon agreement which was put forward in 1979 hasn’t really been ratified and even signed by most countries in the
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world. And that was a treaty that was unpopular because it tried to resolve the problem of how to equitably distribute the potential resources of the moon when only very few states had the capability to do so. And that is a debate we’re seeing now with all the hype and hot air now about lunar resources or asteroids. But we have the United States, Luxembourg and possibly China who have write written domestic laws which will allow companies to go to the moon or the asteroid and and take the minerals or or regalith and then
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sell it in those states. So they don’t claim the territory, but they can sell what they find. >> So this is mining of the moon, mining of asteroids. That’s what we’re beginning to talk about now. What saw some people are beginning to talk about which I think is very premature because nobody knows what the real bounties of the moon are if there any to be had and it’s still massively expensive to get there. So it’s one of the few areas where the legal discussions are far in advance of
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the actual problem actually needing to be resolved. So in that sense it’s good. >> I mean they are talking about helium 3 on the moon, aren’t they? >> Oh they they’ve been talking about that for for for a generation already. So, I mean, there’s nothing significantly changed that makes it more accessible now. And the helium 3 bubble burst a while ago. So, now it’s about utilizing the lunar regalith to make rocket fuel for rovers and other space probes that might launch from the moon. So, you only
00:45:50
need to send them to the moon and then refuel them on the moon, which is far cheaper than giving them more fuel if they want to go to Jupiter or Saturn or Neptune or the outer planets, for example. What is regalith? >> The the soil the the surface matter >> and we can make fuel out of that. >> Well, that’s some scientific sort of proposals anyway. It’s not been proven, but if you can distill hydrogen and oxygen from what you find on the lunar surface, then you can theoretically make
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rocket fuel out of synthesizing sort of mixing the compounds. But but that this is very much scientific exploration. This is not stuff that’s relevant for the global political economy or military power. It’s very much science and exploration, their sideshows, their prestige. It’s not actually altering, you know, the balance of power on on Earth because it’s still so expensive to do anything in space. And we still don’t know enough about what the moon is actually made of to know whether there’s
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anything worth actually mining on a large economic scale there. >> Well, it’s cheese, isn’t it? [laughter] >> Yeah. I don’t think Wallace ever figured out what sort of cheese it tasted like in the end. >> Dr. Bledin Bowen, a lecturer in international relations at Darham University and the author of War in Space on the competition for raw power in the skies above our heads. As Dr. Bowen says, “The space race has always been about an arms race since Sputnik’s
00:47:20
1957 launch precipitated the US’s Corona satellite program.” Since then, it’s become a free-for-all. So much so that in the last two months of 2025, South Korea, Iran, Taiwan, and Japan attempted to assert satellite capability. The South Korean satellite confirmed its successful launch with a signal to a South Korean ground station in Antarctica. While Japan and South Korea have stated their aim of developing a satellite network that is proof from jamming by North Korea and China. Fear shared by
00:48:01
Taiwan. For Taiwan in particular, satellites have become increasingly vital due to its fears over Chinese invasion. Several of the satellites it launched last year are intended to pick up signs of Chinese naval activity. A point made by Holmes Liao, senior adviser from Taiwan’s space agency last December who said that Chinese ships had been habitually disabling their automatic identification systems in the past. He said, “We’ve identified many incidents where Chinese ships, cargo ships or otherwise either turn off
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or they disguise into something else or they spoof their locations into a completely different area.” Satellite surveillance would allow the Chinese to track those ships. It’s a battle that in a sense was foreseen at the start of the superpower space race of the 1960s when legislators must have felt a little surreal debating the subject of who owned space and who had rights to it. Here’s Professor Steven Freeland at the University of Western Sydney in Australia from an interview for Password in 2020 on owning
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space. Freeland is also the co-chair of the UN Committee on the peaceful uses of outer space which discusses the exploration, exploitation and utilization of space resources. >> There are five treaties but they they have quite a few fundamental principles around the fact that space can’t be colonized. the fact that there’s an overall notion of peacefulness, peaceful uses of space. There are limitations on certain types of weapons. There’s a liability regime if things go wrong and
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there’s collisions. There’s a responsibility regime so that the UK is responsible for all of its citizens actions in space and what they do in space. You know, fundamental principles that work really well and around cooperation and taking account of others interests and all of that. So those treaties and and so that was a the 1967 we know it as the outer space treaty it’s got a longer name and that’s a fundamental framework princip treaty like the Geneva conventions uh for warfare like the United Nations
00:50:28
convention on law of sea is for the law of sea this is the fundamental one with the fundamental principles the subsequent four treaties essentially add some flesh to that the last of those treaties was in 79 we know that as the moon agreement and that was a treaty about mining the moon. So the discussions that are sexy now were also on the agenda then and that really highlighted this this notion of how do we get the benefits cuz only a few people could actually do that and in that treaty through weight of numbers of
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voting with all these newly independent countries. It says, you know, if we set up a regime to exploit these resources, we have to do it safely, sustainably, and benefits somehow have to be shared on an equitable basis amongst everybody. And those discussions were going on because it’s all politics at exactly the same time that the same discussions were going on with the same diplomats about mining the deep seabed in the in the law of the sea. So, so the moon treaty is 1979 and the law of the sea treaty is
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1982 and even though there’s three different they’re essentially simultaneous and the negotiations for them were simultaneous and the same people were going from meeting to meeting and so the same issues come up in the law of the sea and the law of the sea also says sure if you if you’re going to mine the deep sea bed you got to do it safely sustainably and you got to share the benefits and so exactly the same thing happened in both treaties The big boys and girls said, “Okay, well,
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we’re not going to sign up because we don’t believe we’re spending all the money, effort, R&D, etc. Why should we share the benefits even though the underlying notion is about cooperation?” But geopolitics, it was all about geopolitics and ideological differences. >> So in ter in terms of those countries that haven’t signed up, then I understand it’s the big players that haven’t signed up. to the UK, the US, the Russia. >> Correct. Correct. To the moon agreement.
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In fact, there’s only there that the US, Russia, China, there’s only 18 countries that have signed the moon agreement, right? Ratified it, including my country, Australia. So, I’m very proud of of my country. So the moon agreement and the United States has already said this, they they don’t regard that as part of any basis for discussion in in the discussions that I’ll be moderating and there’s lots of other preliminary discussions going on. But there are lessons to be learned
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from some of the things there. So we don’t have any more treaties since 79 because that treaty brought these brought this raw difference, right? But we have lots of since then, you know, technolog is racing ahead. So we have lots of other types of instruments that are not traditional law binding, but their codes of conduct, their guidelines, the UN principles about a whole range of different things that and law especially when it comes to space, it’s it’s all about regulating behavior
00:53:35
and leading to behavioral norms which are responsible to allow us to move sustainably forward. And so there’s a lot that so so a lot of those things might they might not be traditional binding law but they actually have you know value and normative effect and then in addition to that more and more countries like your country like my country have national law because more and more private entities are engaging in space. So the UK needs to it has obligations under the outer space treaty. it brings them into, you know,
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it has to implement them, but it also wants to regulate you to make sure that what you’re doing meets with what the UK’s obligations are, but also what their industry guidelines and of course their national security is. So there’s there are lots of law, but clearly the technology races ahead. Law never keeps up with technology. It’s impossible and it shouldn’t because the technology moves. And so we need to try to supplement what we’ve got build on these principles that service us well have
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stopped there being wars in space there you know it’s space has essentially worked albeit you know there are issues many issues so we need to build on that with more norm you know behavioral things whether they take the form of formal treaties is going to be very hard because in this geopolitical climate to get a multilateral treaty on anything not just space is impossible Right. [snorts] But that doesn’t mean we won’t get other types of understandings and and even just last year the UN committee agreed
00:55:08
it took a long time took them seven or eight years to agree them principles about the sustainability of space. So we are moving forward. It’s slow. There are many agendas, difficult discussions, but in a sense we got to get it right. And as I keep on saying until people get so bored, there’s a common interest in finding a way. Even notwithstanding that I hate you and you hate me terrestrially and we are quote unquote competitors, it’s not in either of our interests to screw it up. Professor Steven Freeland
00:55:43
of the University of Western Sydney in Australia, who is also the co-chair of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space on the debate about who should do what in space. It’s a debate that could be still born at a time when the US is trying to assert control over Greenland, which as we heard from Dr. Margren, is pivotal to Earth’s satellites. As Dr. Mram pointed out the new NASA chief Jared Isaacman, a close friend of Elon Musk, says space is not just about scientific discovery.
00:56:21
It’s about strategic security dominance. And the Pentagon has said the most important warfighting domain is space. So it’s not really about ideas like Elon Musk’s and others of setting up colonies on Mars and the moon. begging the question, have we not really evolved beyond the depressing end [clears throat] of Stanley Cubrick’s Doctor Strange Love, where even in the wake of a nuclear apocalypse, the characters discuss a post-nuclear winter conflict. For as William Ferin said earlier, in
00:57:00
the aftermath of a nuclear war, electromagnetic pulses would have permanently destroyed the world’s power grids. So, it’s perhaps ironic that one of the most compelling attractions of space for our modern age is due to its harsh conditions. It is perfect for the building of data centers to develop massive AI processing without some of the attendant water and energy issues. Space is cold, so the cooling needs of current data centers would not be a problem. The data centers could be solar
00:57:35
powered. Solar panels in space are massively more efficient than they are on Earth. A solar panel on an orbiting data center is five times more efficient than a solar panel on Earth. Sounds like science fiction, but so much of what you’ve been listening to once was. And data centers in space are already happening. Over a year ago, Loom in Orbit, now renamed as StarCloud, announced plans for data centers in space and has received funding to do that. A development that makes securing space even more important.
00:58:17
There is though an issue that might go beyond computer viruses, missiles, and high-tech weapons. We’re throwing so much material into space that two satellites now come down a day. And we work on the principle that what goes up must come down. But that’s not true of the biological microbes that we send up on our devices. Something that Bill Miller, a former NASA scientist now with the commercial company Deep Space, says means we could be sending alien life forms out into deep space. The singular reality is that
00:58:54
we’ve become what’s called an agent of panspermia. Let me explain because it sounds like a complicated term, but it’s not really. One of the many theories of the origin of life on Earth is that it’s come from outer space. I think many people are familiar with that. And of course, we don’t know. It is possible that uh the planet was seated by pre-existing life that is coming in from outer space and then the planet the theory is was a fertile location for life. So life may be abundant out there and it
00:59:29
it starts from either multiple places around the universe or perhaps even just one central location and disseminates outward. And one of the reasons that this is a very prominent theory is because of the of the mystery of why we can’t find any life. Scientists for decades and decades have believed that life is prominent throughout the universe simply because on a statistical basis. The hundreds of trillions of stars and that even many more exoplanets mean life should be everywhere and yet life
01:00:03
is nowhere to be found. Panspermia is the thought that life has come from outside. Now we are doing it. How did it happen? Well, it began from the very first moment we started to put spacecraft and propel it up into space. Here’s why. NASA was serious about the possibility of sending germs out into space. They didn’t think it was a good idea right from the very beginning. The engineers were aware that this was a problem. And so they developed what were uh considered a highly vaunted clean rooms.
01:00:40
These clean rooms they felt were utterly sterile. So they would go around with their little swabs and they would culture on the on these plates and look for microbes and then they would report back to their supervisor that spacecraft craft is clear. No problem. Well, here’s what’s happened, Peter. In the ensuing decades, we now have genomic techniques that are identifying forms of microbial life that were completely invisible. So, how inaccurate were this this old culture technique? Wildly inaccurate. Not just a little
01:01:17
bit. In fact, we probably were not culturing 10% of the total microbes that were in and on that those spacecraft. We weren’t being negligent at that time. We simply didn’t know better. We didn’t have the technology to know better. When I was in medical school, I was taught that the insides of our body, except for our our guts, were sterile. My pancreas, my spleen, uh my brain, these are all sterile compartments. Well, now we know that’s not true. That’s not because of cultures. That’s
01:01:52
because of these new enhanced genomic techniques. So, inadvertently, we have been propelling microbes out into space. Here’s the issue, though. Back then, we didn’t understand how hardy microbes are. They’re just unbelievably resilient. There’s a whole category of life that’s called extreophile microbial life. There is no nook or cranny on Earth going down as many miles as we can dig to as to the very top of the stratosphere that does not have its companion microbial life. When you go
01:02:36
down many miles beneath the Earth’s surface where there’s no light, where there’s no oxygen, it was long believed that no microbe could survive. Well, microbes are so intelligent with respect to their metabolic processes that they actually live off electron flows. They live off uranium um u emissions, radioactive emissions. They have all sorts of tools in their kit to survive that are very unlike the way we humans conduct our own metabolism. They can also go into spore states. These are dormant states in which their
01:03:17
metabolism drops to to virtually nothing. So you can combine a microbe who has a life cycle that can be measured in a thousand years with a spore state. And a recent paper talks about a retrieval of a set of microbes from strata that are 100 million years old. Rock sediment that’s 100 million years old. There were living microbes that could be found that could be brought reerminated and brought back to life. So we sent microbes into space without knowing. We sent microbes into space that are incredibly hardy without
01:03:57
realizing. Now it’s different, Peter. Here’s why. Now we’re doing it on purpose. Two ways. One is we have private industry. And I’m not against private industry in the slightest. It’s just that the rules can be different. So, you remember the Tesla car I had that this the astronaut and the red Tesla and it was a and on the on the dashboard it says, “Don’t panic.” It was brilliant advertising. It was magnificent. But Tesla said right off the bat, they don’t care whether or not it was
01:04:34
sterile. They didn’t even try. It didn’t matter to them. But here’s the issue. This particular craft is is has got a loop and I don’t remember the exact number of years and and but it loops the solar system every couple of decades or so. I’m making that up because I don’t remember the exact cycling but and they say it won’t crash into a planet for at least 1.2 million years. Well, so what? So what? All that time little tiny micro little tiny bits of comets, space dust, micrometeorites are
01:05:10
impacting that craft. Eventually over over a long period of time, that craft will be pulverized into a hulk. But the space suit, the visor, and every single thing, all of that has microbes on it. And every time something hits it, some of those hearty little devils are going to be going off wherever they go. on trajectories that are unknowable with organisms that can live for an unknown length of time. Well, how consequential is this? In the 1970s, we sent out Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Their task was to go past
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Saturn and Jupiter and do some great science and they did. They succeeded. It was a very good project with respect to that science. Of course, those those crafts were thought to be sterile and were were definitely not. Well, the Voyagers have succeeded so well that now it’s actually exiting the heliosphere. The heliosphere is the is the region of space which is under the sun’s influence. That’s not the end of the solar system. That goes out out way farther. The the orc belt and that’s
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another 10,000 years of travel. Even though the the Voyager crafts are are traveling at a million miles a day, we are in the process of sending life outside the solar system. We have become agents of panspermia. So if you want to catalog in all human history what is the single most significant activity of man, don’t give me speeches and don’t talk to me about wars. This is it. This is our human moment. No one’s talking about it. >> Bill Miller, the NASA scientist now with Deep Space on human microbes, the human
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debris that we don’t think about that may be beating us to the stars. Cyber warfare, germ warfare. Wherever humans go, there’s always conflict. When will we ever learn? We’ll leave you musing on that while you look up at the stars. Password is a future intelligence production for TechTV. Research for this program was based on a report from the cyber security research institute. The program was presented and written by me, Peter Warren, and sound edited and produced by the imperturbable
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Blue Buffery and edited and co-produced by Bill Mu. If you’d like to know more about the war in space, go to the future intelligence website, www.feutureintelligence.co.uk. Thanks for listening and goodbye. [music] [music] >> [music] [music]
