Don’t know if you realize it but there’s a presidential election coming up in the next few weeks. Whoever does end up in the White House will have a lot decisions to make when it comes to U.S. space security. The National Security Space Association’s Moorman Center for Space Studies recently launched a series of papers to discuss space issues that need to be considered during the presidential transition process. To find out just what they are, I spoke to Christopher Williams, who is vice president and Chair of the Moorman Center.

Interview transcript:

Christopher Williams Obviously, we are in the midst of a very heated presidential campaign election cycle, and soon, hopefully, we will know the results of that election. And space is becoming increasingly important to our national security, to our economic well-being. And frankly, not as many people know about the impact of space, the contribution of space to our economic prosperity and well-being and our national security as they should. And so as the campaign winds down and as we know who the next president will be and who the next members of the next U.S. Congress will be, it makes a lot of sense to try to help inform them on what some of the key priority issues are that they should be looking to address in the early months of 2025, as the new administration is sworn in and as the new Congress is sworn in as well.

Eric White And what are those risks that they should be paying attention to? What did you lay out for them in this paper?

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Christopher Williams Well, just more broadly, space contributes to our economic well-being in ways that most people don’t even understand. Frankly, if space were not available, space capabilities were not available, you wouldn’t be able to access your cell phones. You wouldn’t be able to purchase gas at the gas station, you wouldn’t be able to buy groceries. You wouldn’t be able to navigate your car from point A to point B and so many other things. The health health system, basically all of our critical infrastructures are tied to space infrastructure. And if that were to be challenged in certain ways, we as a nation would would be in dire straits because of that. And not a lot of people really understand that. So one of the reasons for establishing the National Security Space Association in the first place, and also the Mormon Center for Space Studies, which is the group that I have the honor of chairing, which is the in-house think tank, if you will, of the association, is to try to shed light on these issues. How is space, why is space so important to our national security in that regard? U.S. Space forces are directly and intimately tied to the effectiveness of U.S. weapons systems and decision making across the board for the U.S. military. So if we didn’t have access to space, we would not be able to understand actions that the adversaries are taking. We would not be able to effectively command and control our systems, not your space systems, but our ground systems as well our high precision weapons systems would not go where they’re supposed to go. They would create greater casualties in attacks as opposed to the precise nature of warfare these days and many other cascading effects that would result from from the loss of space. So the National Security Space Association and the Mormon Center are devoted to trying to help educate the Congress folks in the administration, both current administration, previous administrations and the next administration on the importance of space to our national security and economic well-being, as well as the American people.

Christopher Williams So some of the things that we do at the association, we’re very proud of our work. First, we have approximately 100 member companies, and they range from traditional defense industrial base entities, large defense industrial contractors that you would recognize to a lot of space tech technology startups that are looking at a broad range of things, whether it’s communications or intelligence gathering or space domain awareness, which is better understanding what’s going on in space and a range of other activities as well, obviously communications, data sharing, etc. So we have a broad group of companies and the Mormon center in particular is responsible for that thought leadership, if you will, publishing papers on timely topics, helping educate both legislators and folks in administrations of whatever political stripe. We’re very much a nonpartisan organization as well as the American people on how reliant we are on space systems for our economic vitality and our national security. So that’s kind of a little background on the association and the Mormon Center within it. We also do a variety of programing. We have many classified events that are very valuable for our member companies as a way of promoting information sharing between government organizations, whether it’s the Department of Defense, for example, the U.S. Space Force or the Space Development Agency, U.S. Space Command, etc. On the intelligence community side, whether it’s the office of the Director of National Intelligence or the National Reconnaissance Office, for example, and other organizations. And we try to promote greater collaboration, more information sharing between the private sector and in various US government entities, so that on the private sector side, companies can be anticipating the kinds of requirements that are going to be levied on them for meeting critical, timely, urgent needs of the military and the intelligence community. And also the more companies, whether it’s commercial companies or traditional companies, the more they understand what the government’s needs are, the more they can start investing their own resources, whether it’s private capital, venture capital funding, private equity, etc.. On the one hand, or Internal Research and Development (IRAD) dollars on the part of some of the larger companies to anticipate and try to meet those needs in a timely fashion.

Christopher Williams Last quick thing I would say is the international security environment, Eric, has changed dramatically and frankly has worsened dramatically over the last decade. We went from largely focusing on finding and being able to target terrorist groups in the Middle East and other places in Asia, etc., to now having facing several multiple very well-armed nation states, whether it’s China or Russia or Iran or North Korea. And those states are collaborating more and more between them, sharing technology, selling weapons to each other, sharing information that complicate our ability to defend our interests overseas, as well as our friends and allies overseas. So our national security picture that we have to deal with now is very complicated. And again, it just reinforces the importance of space systems, whether for surveillance or reconnaissance or for command and control of our military systems or for precision strike activities, etc.. Space is absolutely vital to those activities, and our objective at the association and in particular, the Baughman Center is to help educate the broader community and foster a greater dialog between the private sector and the government on these topics. And that has worked very well. We’re very pleased with the interactions that we host. Again, as I mentioned before, we have a number of classified events that we hold regularly so that companies and the government can share secret and top secret information on the threats that we face and the kinds of requirements that the government is seeking to pursue. And then also a wide range of unclassified events where we have folks from the Space Force Space Command, various organizations come in and talk to the broader community at an unclassified level about their needs and what they’re doing and help them anticipate where the government is going so that they can be better partners to the U.S. government.

Eric White You had mentioned that you all were working on collaborating between the private sector and government entities. And the paper that we’re here to discuss was put out really for notice for whoever ends up in the White House after this next election. I was wondering if you could give us a brief overview of steps that could be taken by the next administration and Congress as well to help fix some of those new challenges that you say have arisen over the past few years and get things back to where space is somewhat safer and more reliable source of everyday life, like you mentioned.

Christopher Williams We did put out four papers as part of our presidential transition issue paper series. Those have been shared with various folks in the government and in Congress to date. They will be shared. They’ve also been shared with the transition teams as they exist right now between Vice President Harris and former President Trump. Their transition efforts are just getting underway. And so we will have even more conversations as the transition teams start to fill out and depending on who wins the election with the incoming senior administration officials as well. So we put out four papers, and I’ll just briefly run through those papers for you. One of the key elements of the secret sauce, if you will, of the National Security Space Association is that we rely heavily, in fact, on Board of Advisors. We have a number of dozens, literally of former senior US government officials from the intelligence community, from the Department of Defense, from industry, who share their expertise with us. And we rely on those folks very heavily. In this case, all of these papers were written by either members of the staff of NSSA, the Moorman Center, or a board of advisors member. So let me just walk through some of the key highlights of the papers quickly with you.

Christopher Williams The first paper is called Winning the Competition for Space Leadership, and that was authored by Mark Berkowitz. Mark served in key positions in the Department of Defense and U.S. Industry. And among the many recommendations that Mark included in his timely paper were prioritize winning the new space race to maintain America’s leadership role in the domain, shape the space operating environment and assure access to valuable resources in the solar system. Secondly, establish the statutory and regulatory framework to sustain the commercial space sector’s growth, and take full advantage of its goods and services to achieve national security objectives. Third is to create the proper incentives and partnerships between the government and private enterprises to enhance America’s international competitiveness and ensure that we win the Astro political contest. And lastly, to lead international space cooperation for collective security and mutual defense. Those aren’t all of the recommendations that Mark made, but those were four of the ones that I thought were particularly noteworthy. The second paper entitled A Revitalized National Space Council Key to Effective Governance, was authored by Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick. Sean is a seasoned expert, having served in key positions in the Department of Defense and the intelligence community over his long and distinguished career. Sean’s paper provides specific recommendations on how the National Space Council, which, as you may know and your viewers may know, is chaired by the vice president, can operate more effectively and efficiently in aligning policy strategy and programs and budgets across the various federal departments and agencies. Sean noted that if the US is to retain its leadership position in space, then the council must play a much more vigorous role in promoting U.S. government interests and activities in space, better coordinate government and commercial space activities, and educate the American public about the stakes involved in the space race that we are undertaking now that we’re involved in now with primarily with China.

Christopher Williams A third paper, which I had the privilege of drafting is called Ensuring US National Security Space Forces are Ready for Near-term Conflict. And as you derive from the deduce from the paper’s title, it provides concrete recommendations for the next President and Secretary of Defense and Congress on actions needed to immediately enhance the readiness posture of U.S. Defense and Intelligence Space Forces for deterring and defeating aggression by America’s adversaries. Some of the recommendations from that paper were to have the president direct the secretary of defense to accelerate plans to effectively protect and defend critical U.S. allied and commercial satellites from adversary attack. In addition, direct the SecDef, as we call him the SecDef to and the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, to jointly work with the private sector and allies to strengthen information sharing on adversary threats. Another recommendation was to attach the Director of National Intelligence to develop options for leveraging presidential authorities to conduct what’s called covert action to enhance the US ability to counter adversary space systems and supporting infrastructure, associated supply chains and more. In this regard, one of the reasons for that recommendation to the Director of National Intelligence to consider providing options to the president for covert action is because of the Russian nuclear ASAT. Your viewers may be aware, some of your viewers may be aware that the US government revealed the fact that Russia may be, in fact developing a nuclear armed space based ASAT. And if that was detonated in low-Earth orbit, for example, as has been discussed, it would essentially eliminate the thousands, literally thousands of satellites that are on orbit that provide critical missions and functions to the US economy, to the economy of our allies and friends across the globe, as well as significantly degrade our military capabilities. So that was one of the recommendations there. A third recommendation is direct the secretary of defense and the Director of National intelligence to take immediate steps to harden and shield critical U.S. space systems, networks and components, including those for nuclear command control and communications and intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance from ground or space based counter space threats, including the Russian nuclear ASAT that I just mentioned.

Christopher Williams And then the fourth recommendation I would highlight from that paper, is a recommendation for the president to direct the secretary of state and the secretary of defense to launch a coordinated campaign to work with friends and allies to assure support for U.S. diplomatic efforts to bolster international cooperation on space security while rejecting unverifiable and counterproductive space arms control measures that are proposed by Russia and China. And then the fourth paper I’d like to briefly touch on was drafted by my vice chair, the vice chair of the of the Moorman Center for Space Studies, Jim Frelk. I had a hand in that one as well. The title of that paper is Cislunar Space Competition with China Urgent Action needed to Secure the Ultimate High Ground. Cislunar space includes not only, but it includes the moon and surrounding areas. And many, many of your viewers probably don’t know that the competition between the United States and China, especially for control of cislunar space, dominance of cislunar space and the resources that are on the moon that could be vital, could be very valuable and vital to future economic well-being, is heating up dramatically. So some of the recommendations from that paper include declaring that advancing U.S. interests in Cislunar space is a top national priority, and the president should direct the National Space Council, again, led by the Vice President, to prepare an integrated National Strategy and Action plan for cislunar space that affirms US vital interests and outlines the steps that relevant federal departments and agencies must take to better position the U.S. to compete with China in cislunar space, including by promoting and enabling U.S. commercial cislunar space activities. Commercial activities, in this case, unlike previously, many of the most advanced capabilities that are being developed or even deployed being launched into space now by both the U.S. and China are from the commercial sector. They’re not just bought and paid for and directed, designed by US government. There’s an enormous competition underway on the commercial sector between the commercial sector in the United States and China, much of which is governed and promoted by the Chinese Communist Party. A couple of the other recommendations from that last paper directed development of an integrated government wide strategy to better position the U.S. for the increasing competition between the U.S. and China in Cislunar space, as I mentioned. This includes, among other things, efforts to improve U.S. space domain awareness in cislunar space and facilitate U.S. commercial sector leadership in space, launch exploration, mining operations, etc.. U.S. government, even though the U.S. government is not always paying for these activities, there’s a lot that we can do to make these commercial capabilities much more competitive. And that means, for example, streamlining any regulations or minimizing regulations that are in the way of allowing U.S. companies to perform these activities in Cislunar space.

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Christopher Williams And then lastly, I would recommend to folks consider the direction that we urge for the President to tell the secretary of defense to develop plans and programs to protect and defend U.S. interests in cislunar space. In this regard, the secretary of defense, in collaboration with other relevant departments and agency heads, should rapidly develop and deploy a cislunar space domain awareness capability that effectively leverages U.S. Commercial SDA offerings. The fundamental point of the fundamental need at the moment and going forward is to understand what’s going on in Cislunar space. Cislunar space is a vast territory and the U.S. has to know what’s going on. What are the Chinese doing? How are they positioning themselves in Cislunar space? Are they looking to lay claim to large swaths of the moon’s surface or subsurface for mining purposes for things like helium three that could be very, very lucrative and valuable in enabling some of the future economic growth of the world as well. So those are some of the recommendations of the four papers. My apologies for going on so long, but there’s a lot to digest there. And as I mentioned, that’s the first tranche of four papers we have produced. We are drafting another set of another tranche, if you will, of presidential transition issue papers. Those are likewise being drafted by members of our very distinguished Board of Advisors and the staff of the Moorman Center, and we hope to have those published within the next month or so. So stand by for that, Eric.

Eric White I certainly will. And yeah, no problem. I mean, this is a complicated subject and an important one, so you can’t go too long on this topic. My my final question is kind of a two parter. As in, I want to take a look back just a little bit in your analysis, is there any point in time where the U.S. may have missed the boat on something and actions that could have been taken beforehand where would put us in a better situation than the one that we’re seeing now? And on that note, is your messaging, are you seeing it stick now? Are you getting a lot of feedback that shows that leaders in Washington and elsewhere are taking these matters seriously now and seeing that the next frontier is going to be the actual next war ground as well?

Christopher Williams The good news is, I guess I would say there’s progress, but there’s still a lot of work to be done, is the bumper sticker answer to your questions. Over the last decade, roughly and certainly in the last, I would say, eight years or so, there’s been a greater awareness of the importance of space for not only for our economy, but for our national security. And so the government has taken a number of important steps to try to better position us for that competition, primarily with China, but with Russia and others as well that have ambitions in space or current capabilities or are developing systems that could defeat US vital space assets as well. One of which is well known to many, and that is the establishment of the US Space Force as another branch of the US Armed Services. And that was a big step. And the leadership of the Space Force has been at it hard for the last several years and made significant progress there, making very good progress in not only standing up the force, but fielding capabilities at a rapid pace and to meet what are very, very well understood shortfalls in our space systems that we have on orbit today. And and so there’s there’s been a lot of progress, likewise, the U.S. Space Command, which is the organization, the military organization that actually is responsible for planning and conducting military operations in times of war. U.S. Space Command, located out in Colorado, was reestablished several years ago as well, and it too is maturing in very significant ways. And I have nothing but good things to say about both the Space Force and U.S. Space Command. They’re making a lot of progress. That being said, our adversaries aren’t sitting still and as I mentioned before, they have been fielding more and more what are called counter space systems. Those are systems either from the ground or in space that can damage or destroy or even completely defeat US space systems that ranges from lasers being launched from the ground that can blind US reconnaissance satellites or jammers that can prevent us from communicating effectively all the way to missiles, whether launched from the ground or from space, that can attack, directly attack and use kinetic force to defeat our space systems. So we have a lot of challenges as foreign counter space systems mature. That makes it much more difficult for us to be able to rely on those those systems. For the long time, we were the dominant player in space, but that situation is no longer in place. We have a highly competitive space environment now.

Christopher Williams And then to the second part of your question, what’s the reaction been to the papers? We’ve had nothing but positive feedback. There’s a lot of meat in these, as you heard me go through. There’s a lot of very concrete, actionable recommendations. That’s why we wrote them that way. And as I mentioned before, we are a nonpartisan organization. We believe these recommendations should be implemented by whomever is elected as the next president, because these kinds of recommendations will help better position us for a conflict that clearly we, the United States, do not seek, but may be foisted upon us by our adversaries, whether that’s defending our treaty allies in Europe who could be defending our treaty allies in Asia and friends in Asia. It could be working to help our friends in the Middle East, combat violence there, etc.. So we as a military are spread thin these days, and space systems help enable our relatively modest but nonetheless very effective military forces perform their missions. And that’s why it’s important to continue to shine a light on the good work that the space forces, US space forces, not just in DoD, but again in the intelligence community like the National Reconnaissance Office and others are doing. And that’s the whole purpose for the National Security Space Association and the Moorman Center is to try to help enable their operations and get them the support that they need to be able to do these missions in an effective way. And again, that’s what the purpose of these transition papers are for, to help educate the incoming administration and the senior officials there as to what some of the early steps are that they should take to better position is for this new, certainly more contested environment that we face in space.

 

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