Space and Emerging Technologies: Future Proliferation Threats

Aaron Stein 0:09

Hello, and welcome to the Arms Control Wonk podcast. My name is Aaron Stein. I'm a contributor to the Arms Control Wonk blog, and I'm also an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:19

And I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I'm the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Monterey Institute.

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We've got a special guest today. We've invited my friend Theresa Hitchens to come on to talk about life in Geneva, space, and emerging technologies. How are you doing, Teresa?

Theresa Hitchens 0:44

I'm doing great, Jeffrey. Thanks for having me.

Jeffrey 0:46

Great. For those of you who don't know Teresa, although probably everybody at this point does, she is the director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. I got to know her best when we were working on space issues. She used to be the editor-in-chief of Defense News and then was the vice president at the Center for Defense Information.

But for the past six years, she's been in Geneva heading up UNIDIR. And that's where we met. Right. So I want to ask you, Teresa, what are you going to miss most about Geneva now that you're coming back?

Theresa 1:17

That is a very good question, and it's probably going to be a very silly answer. Cheese.

Jeffrey 1:23

Cheese. Now, do you buy the cheese in Geneva, or do you cross over the French border to go to the little markets in the towns?

Theresa 1:31

Oh, everywhere. The Swiss, you know, rival the French in the number of cheeses that they make, and the Swiss are quite proud of their cheese. And you may not realize this, but all cheese in the United States must be pasteurized.

Jeffrey 1:45

Oh, I know this. I have a very sad story about this, but you first.

Theresa 1:49

Well, this is a problem set for me because some of the best cheeses on earth are non-pasteurized, and they just don't translate into the American market, nor can you import them. So I know that's a very silly answer, but it is really the truth. I like cheese.

Jeffrey 2:06

Yeah, so one of the things I really love is there is this bizarre cheesemaker over the border in France who makes Comte-like cheese. But it's almost impossible to get Comte aged for more than 18 months, and this pervert ages it for two years.

Theresa 2:24

Seriously? All right. So good. Offline, you'll have to give me the address. Same here. I don't know about this.

Aaron 2:30

I live here and I've never heard of this.

Theresa 2:32

Exactly. Me neither. And I go to France all the time to Divon, to the market at Divon-le-Bain.

Jeffrey 2:37

Well, you know, I'm very lucky because both my wife lived in Geneva for a long time. And so she knows a lot of the little hidden secrets and she's the one who knew the cheesemaker. But for, you know, like 10 years before you stopped inviting me, Teresa, I used to go to that UNIDIR space conference.

Theresa 2:53

Yes.

Jeffrey 2:56

But you always get there a day early, and so you always have an extra day to go exploring. So I spent a lot of time in Geneva, so I know it pretty well.

Theresa 3:06

It's a good city. It's got its charms. One of the nice things about it is that it's not huge, so you can get around to different parts of the city very easily. In the summer, for me, the summer is really beautiful because I live very close to the lake. I'm a block away from the lake. And that's really nice, just to go down and sit at the pier or at a restaurant lakeside and watch the sun go down over Lake Geneva.

It's a special thing. It's a privilege.

Jeffrey 3:37

So we are definitely going to discuss some substantive issues in a particular space. But I did want to ask... What was it like running an international organization like UNIDIR? Because my suspicion is it's very different than, say, life in an American think tank. And I suspect people have a lot of suppositions about what UNIDIR is and what it must be like.

Aaron 4:04

But you've got a six-year tenure that's coming to an end.

Jeffrey 4:07

And so you're in a pretty good position to let people know what it's really like.

Theresa 4:12

Okay. Okay. Well, the first thing I should note is that UNIDIR is a very special creature within the UN system because it's part of the UN system, yet it's separated. It's got kind of a firewall from the UN system in that UNIDIR was created in 1980 by the General Assembly to be semi-independent, an autonomous institute, research institute.

So we do not report, I do not report to UNIDIR The secretary general per se. I report to the secretary general's independent board of advisors on disarmament matters. And this was done very deliberately in order to create a political firewall that would allow UNIDIR to provide objective research and analysis without getting caught up in the struggles that you know the United Nations has with politics.

And so that's a very important thing. The second thing is that UNIDIR is what's called a voluntary organization, which means we function like an NGO. I have to raise money, about $3 million a year, to keep us in business and able to fulfill our very wide-ranging mandate of research and activities. So it's a hybrid kind of an organization.

Our functionality is somewhat like You might think of CRS being for Congress, kind of the in-house think tank. So Unity researchers are inside the game in that, for example, I sit in on the deliberations of the Conference on Disarmament, just like an ambassador would. We have a behind-the-scenes knowledge that an NGO can't have. And that's quite interesting for someone who spent her career sort of outside the system as a journalist and then at a think tank to kind of see how the sausage is made or, in the case of disarmament, often not made.

Jeffrey 6:16

By the way, I have to tell you about the sausage place in France across the border.

Aaron 6:20

I was just going to ask you about that. I got one. I got one.

Jeffrey 6:24

The Saucisson. You'd have to go across the border because no sausage is being made in the Conference on Disarmament. I can tell you that. Yeah, for listeners who don't know, the Conference on Disarmament hasn't had a work plan with like maybe one brief exception since the late 1990s. And so it's there's a lot of discussions about discussions. Exactly. Anywho, so.

Theresa 6:50

So it's a slightly different work environment. And when I say that we have political freedom, we do, up to a point, obviously, because the mandate of UNIDIR is to serve all member states and to provide information to help member states pursue the goals of disarmament, arms control, and peace and security. We like to say that our job is to bring knowledge to action.

That is, we're not just doing research for research's sake. We're not an academic institution. That's not our job. There are plenty of universities out there doing great work on arms control, including your own home, Jeffrey. But we are trying to do research that can inform policymaking and improve decision-making around issues of peace and security.

Jeffrey 7:41

And so did you raise the, I know a lot of the contributions come from governments that are members of the conference on disarmament. Is that most of the contributions? Do you raise that money on a by project basis? How does that arrangement work? Yeah.

Theresa 7:57

Okay. Yes. The largest part of the, of the funding comes from UN member States. And this can be ministries of foreign affairs, it can be ministries of defense, or in some cases it's developmental, ministries that are involved in development. So it is primarily member states. We do have a couple of small contributions from a smattering of foundations, including Secure World Foundation and the Simons Foundation for the Space Conference that we hold every year, which you mentioned earlier.

Jeffrey 8:34

I wouldn't know anything about that anymore, Teresa.

Theresa 8:36

Oh, shut up, Jeffrey. Anyway, the bulk of the money is raised in project-by-project activities. That's about 85%. This has changed over time. In the past, like 10 years ago, The bulk of the money was given as direct contributions to the institute, for the institute to figure out what to do with. That has changed as national governments have become more constrained in how they're able to spend money.

They have more constraints on, for example, the kinds of overheads they can pay or they have to have projects they can't give to institutions. This is a direct result of the fiscal crisis a while back. So there are more and more constraints. Some governments give to the institute as a whole, as I said, kind of an institutional contribution.

And other governments give to what we call our programmatic baskets of activities. So we've broken down our work for the sake of breaking it down. You can always, you know, anybody can shuffle the file cards in any way they want. I suppose a new director may want to change this. But when I came in, we recategorized our work Into five kind of separate baskets of activity.

The first, of course, is weapons of mass destruction because the primary aim of the Institute when it was established was to work on nuclear disarmament. So weapons of mass destruction is one basket. We have another basket that we call weapons of societal disruption, and that includes small arms and light weapons. It's landmines. It's conventional weapons. Work on those issues are in that basket.

We have a... Basket called emerging security threats. And I think I'd like to talk a little bit more about that later. But that includes the space issues. It includes cyber security issues. We're looking, we're starting to look at things like water security. This is trying to get ahead of the power curve, so to speak, in international security.

We actually have a direct mandate for that. We're one of the very few institutions in the UN who has a mandate to try to Identify threats to international security before they reach a crisis point. We have a basket of activities called policies and processes. And in that area, we're looking at international instruments that have been passed, whether they're treaties or they're resolutions.

These, something like, for example, the arms trade treaty that was recently negotiated and is now in the process of coming into force. And we look at how to implement those or how to better implement those or whether they're being implemented and try to make recommendations about where there are gaps, how to improve capabilities. We've done some work developing software tools, for example, to implement small arm standards.

So that's a very hands-on, if you will, if you can call anything in the arms control field hands-on. That's a very hands-on section of our work. And lastly, we have a basket of activities we call security and society. And this is where you have the nexus between disarmament and development. So we have a big project ongoing working on improving UN programming for the reintegration of combatants in a post-conflict scenario.

So that's something that's got a developmental angle to it. So some countries give money to a basket of work. So they'll say, here, you know, here's $10,000. Spend this on weapons of mass destruction issues. And we give them a report back. So there are essentially three ways to get this money.

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Jeffrey 13:32

I wanted to mostly talk about the emerging technologies area with a lot of discussion on space. But before I do that, I just, you know, holding people accountable, our own government, the United States government. How are we doing? Are we stingy or generous?

Theresa 13:49

I would never call a donor government stingy under any circumstances, Jeffrey. I will say can always do more. Everyone can always do more. And no, the, the U S has been a donor for about six years now when I came on board, I don't believe they were providing funds prior to that. They've given money primarily again towards the space conference.

Out of the State Department. And yes, of course, I believe that Washington could provide more funding, but I would say that about every donor. The U.S. has been very, very supportive politically to UNIDER and particularly to the issue of our independence within the system and our autonomy. And that is as important in many ways as financial backing.

Because there are forces in the world that would rather not have an independent institution out there to provide this kind of information.

Jeffrey 14:58

Yeah, well, I've encountered some of those forces who'd rather not have an independent press either. So let's discuss, but let's talk about space because that's how we really first met, which is like 10, actually more than 10 years ago.

Theresa 15:11

It's more than 10 years ago, Jeffrey. I don't even want to think about it.

Jeffrey 15:15

It's really crazy.

Theresa 15:16

Can I just say one small thing? My son will be 20 this year. Just put that in your little headspace.

Jeffrey 15:23

Yeah, that is very, very hard for me to imagine. Like when he graduates college and, you know, like starts showing up at meetings, that's going to be like weird. I know. Yeah. But Aaron and I really like the space issue, mainly because Aaron has a weird thing about ASATs.

Aaron 15:41

It comes from the guy who writes an entire foreign policy piece about it. Yeah, I know. It was like 5,000 words or something obscene.

Jeffrey 15:49

5,000 words in foreign policy. I may have edited it down by the time it finished, but yeah, it was a beast. We try not to over-prepare for these podcasts, so I am just going to go in guns blazing with stupidity and ignorance. Where are we on the code of conduct?

Theresa 16:09

Oh, that's a very good question.

Jeffrey 16:10

And I should say for listeners, well, maybe you should explain the space code of conduct, but it's something that's near and dear to our heart.

Theresa 16:23

Yeah. Yes, this is an initiative that was undertaken a few years ago by the European Union, in fact, prior to the Obama administration, during the latter years of the Bush administration, to try to come up with a solution to the well-recognized problem that if we are going to continue to have stability and security in the outer space domain, we really need to think about What you might call loosely rules of the road for space activities.

In that currently, although there are a number of treaties that are out there, most importantly the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which a lot of people call the Magna Carta of space, there are treaties out there. In actuality, activities in space, and particularly national security activities in space, are Fundamentally unregulated and, and unconstrained. So there's kind of a, been kind of a wild west attitude going on.

Jeffrey 17:29

And so, so for example, when the Chinese blow up a satellite and scatter debris, there's absolutely nothing that says there's anything wrong with that, even though it's a huge problem.

Theresa 17:39

Not that there's anything wrong with that, as somebody would say. So yeah, so there's, there's, there are issues and And even in the legal world, in the space law world, I mean, there are a lot of different interpretations of what the law says. So, you know, the old phrase about lawyers and dancing on heads of pins. So the idea of the EU was to say, look, the U.S. at the time was fundamentally against any kind of arms control treaty or any kind of treaty governing space, whereas the Russians and the Chinese for a very long time have been pushing a treaty solution.

So the European Union thought, well, let's try to think about how we set norms. And one of the ways to set norms of behavior in the security field is to come up with a code of conduct. So the EU developed a draft code of conduct, and they've been iterating it over time and trying to get buy-in from other nations.

And unfortunately, that's proven unfair. Harder than it should have in that what the code says, everything in the code is perfectly good substantively. I mean, some of it doesn't go as far as I might like, and one of those things in my worldview would be constraining The development of ASAPs, Aaron.

Aaron 19:05

I didn't say I like them, I just said I wrote a policy memo about it.

Theresa 19:11

But, I mean, a lot of it's based on current treaty language, current international law, or interpretations of international law. And so the idea was to create a framework, a normative framework. So the substance is actually quite fine, okay? Some might even say innocuous. But it's always good to have And to have agreed norms, to have an agreement on norms.

It's a first step in kind of creating a stable and secure environment. And unfortunately, I think, because this was developed by the EU, and you know that the EU has to agree on, they have to have unanimity on something before it can go forward, I think there's been kind of a disconnect between the EU and a number of the developing nations Who have felt in the beginning kind of left out of the process.

There were suspicions that somehow this was yet another attempt to constrain the development of new space powers. There are concerns from some places amongst the Russians and perhaps Chinese and some others who are keen on treaty solutions. That signing a code of conduct would take momentum, as if there was a lot of momentum, which there's really not, toward taking momentum away from some kind of treaty-based solution.

So the EU is battling on, having rounds of discussions with different countries and regional groups to try to get buy-in to the code. And I should confess, because it's important for transparency's sake, That UNIDIR for the past several years has been working under a grant from the EU to organize some of these regional briefings to inform people about the code and what it says and what it actually does not say.

So we have a little bit of a dog in the fight. It's moving very slowly, much more slowly than I had initially thought it would and much more slowly than I had hoped. I don't think it's dead yet. And I'm hoping that there'll be a little more momentum behind it in the coming year or so.

Jeffrey 21:30

Well, let me ask about some of the individual debates. And I guess the place to start maybe is with the Russians and the Chinese who did want a treaty agreement. And and continue to pursue a treaty right lavrov actually like a week ago brought the treaty up again right and that's kind of their new defense to you're cheating on the inf treaty and they say oh well we're willing to discuss all kinds of treaties and then they they bring up the space treaty which i you know i i was not i do not think is a viable treaty in its current form But let me ask about that question of momentum because I do recall – I shouldn't say in defense of the Russians and the Chinese because I suspect that a lot of their support for this is tactical.

But I do remember when we were having these conversations in the early 2000s and Michael Krepon was a particularly – Strong advocate of this notion that, you know, a treaty might not be the best way to go about it, that there was a real advantage to doing rules of the road, both because you would avoid the hangups that we've seen with, for example, the CTBT, where it's, you know, It's 18 years old and still hasn't entered into force.

Right. But also it has a certain amount of flexibility and you can go back and revise and change things, which is probably really useful. So you know, I actually did see the rules of the road or the code of conduct as an alternative to a treaty. But I thought of that as a benefit and, and not a right, not a problem.

So, I mean, do you think that the Russians and the Chinese are, you know, do you think that they're going to be opposed to a code of conduct on principle simply because it's not a treaty? Or do you think there's a reasonable prospect of getting them to support a code of conduct, even though they're still going to want some additional legal instrument really to get at, you know, I think, missile defense?

Theresa 23:38

Yeah. There were a lot of questions packed into that.

Jeffrey 23:43

That's good news for you, Teresa, because it allows you to pick the one you feel like answering and ignore the rest.

Theresa 23:53

Somebody asks you a question and you answer a different one, I'm not a politician by trade.

Jeffrey 23:58

Which probably, you know, probably made life at Unity harder than it needed to be. I'm sure that's the case.

Theresa 24:07

I think I often started conversations by saying, I'm not a politician. I'm not a diplomat.

Jeffrey 24:11

You know, we had Lassina Zerbo, the executive secretary of the CTBTO on, and he is technical, right? He's a geophysicist by training. Right. His only international organization job has been in the CTBTO, first running the data center and now as the head. He does exactly the same thing. He starts exactly the same way. I am not a politician and you guys with your thing, whatever.

Theresa 24:39

Whatever, yeah.

Jeffrey 24:39

Let me tell you how it is.

Theresa 24:41

Anyway, back to the multiple questions that were packed into that.

Jeffrey 24:44

I was giving you time to think.

Theresa 24:45

Giving me time to think. The first thing is that, yeah, I mean, I think there's a place in the world for normative codes. Now, I personally am a big believer in legal solutions. I think there's a time and a place for that. And I also think there's necessity for that. I always saw the Code of Conduct as a framework agreement that hopefully then would be further fleshed out with technical standards, etc., And that's actually kind of happening in parallel if you look at what's, you didn't mention it, but look at what's happening at the Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

On the question of the longterm sustainability of space.

Jeffrey 25:23

And so these are standards about like debris creation.

Theresa 25:25

Yeah.

Jeffrey 25:25

I mean, they're, they're talking about because Teresa, even though you and I spend all of our time worrying about orbital debris, lots of people listening are going, wait, orbital debris, there's junk in space. Like, yeah. You know, when you put a satellite up, there's, it generates debris and it may not come back down. And you know, yeah.

So anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Theresa 25:47

Gravity, see the movie Gravity, despite the fact that all my astrophysicist friends are kind of cheesed off about the science and the fact that Sandra Bullock's hair didn't fly in the right direction and the debris came in too fast, etc. You know, see the movie Gravity, everyone out there, and then you will know about space debris. Anyway, back to the substantive.

Yeah, so the Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is looking at long-term sustainability. These include debris issues, but they... They also include a number of things, trying to figure out how to make space operations more safe, more secure. And this is fundamentally looking at things from a technical approach. So if you wanted to make kind of a systems map of what people are trying to do to get a handle on the security issues in space and the safety issues, because COPUS doesn't deal with security.

Remember that. We have a church and state thing between The Committee for Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and the Conference on Disarmament, and for a long time, Never the Twain Shall Meet, which is another whole serious problem, but we can put that aside. COPUS deals with civil space. CD is supposed to deal with national security space. So these issues are interlinked.

So if you want to put together the systems map, you have a code of conduct at the top, which sets a normative framework. You have the work going on by COPUS that's kind of fleshing that out. So what do you mean when you say... You're not going to create debris. How are you going to do that? And then the third thing in the map would be some kind of treaty to bind everybody to different pieces of this.

So that's kind of the formulation. There are those in the UN system, and it's not just Russia and China. I mean, Brazil, some of the other developing countries, India.

Jeffrey 27:36

Yeah, I recall India was making a huge – Yeah, issue. Well, and contribution is not the right word, but there was a lot – India's share of debris was growing much quicker than other countries because they were doing a lot of space launches and maybe not being as careful as they could be.

Theresa 27:56

And India is not keen on the code. But a number of these countries have a very legalistic approach to international affairs, and they don't believe in sort of these soft solutions, if you will, because they see them as malleable and flexible and potentially malleable in a way that benefits the great powers. Okay? So I can understand the impetus for a legal instrument.

As you may or may not know, the Russians and the Chinese intend to put forward a new draft of the PPWT, their treaty proposal, this year in the Conference on Disarmament. I don't think That they will be the big problem in opposing the code. I actually think it's more the India's and the Brazil's, the developing space powers, Malaysia's, those powers, who are still slightly suspicious that somehow this is a first attempt to rein in their development.

So I think that's the problem set. With regard to the treaty, yeah, I agree with you. The PPWT in the current form And I'm not even going to say the acronym because, you know, somebody did bad PR with the acronym. But the treaty proposal in its current form has a lot of holes. It's got a lot of holes.

And some of those holes are inherent to the problem of trying to regulate technology and not regulate activities. It's very difficult to say what is a space weapon because every or almost every technology on orbit could be used as a weapon. Now, not every, but a lot. I mean, you could ram your satellite into another satellite. That would make your satellite a weapon, right?

Right.

Jeffrey 30:11

Yeah. Well, and I mean, it's not an entirely hypothetical question because it seems to me one of the most interesting technologies that we have at the moment. Are the autonomous satellites that can do proximity operations.

Theresa 30:28

Exactly.

Jeffrey 30:29

And those are really potentially revolutionary in terms of our civil and commercial use of space, but they make great space weapons.

Theresa 30:39

Exactamente.

Jeffrey 30:40

The kind of space weapons that makes Aaron Stein smile. That's right.

Theresa 30:44

It's a good thing I can't see Aaron. Anyway. It just makes it good.

Aaron 30:49

Fascinating.

Theresa 30:50

But you are exactly right, Jeffrey. I mean, this is why there's more and more concern about the stability and the security of space, because these kinds of technologies are increasingly available that could result or could be used in weapons or could even be seen as clandestine weapons, even if they're not meant to be. See what I'm saying?

I mean, for example, when the shuttle was first being put together, the U.S. space shuttle, you Were convinced that somehow this was going to be used as a weapon. Something was going to be shot off of it. The Canada arm was going to pick up their satellites. And so there are suspicions because the technology has multiple uses.

So this is one of the reasons why the international community is seized of the question of trying to put some stabilizing factors in some way, shape, or form around the activities. But what I was trying to get at is that the treaty proposal is – Fundamentally formed as an arms control treaty. And that's difficult in this area.

And, and it, it makes it, it makes it very hard to see how you could implement that. I mean, who's going to say whether those proximity satellites are weapons or not?

Jeffrey 32:15

Well, look, to me, and again, I think this was the strongest benefit of the Code of Conduct, is that when the problem of access to space is framed as an arms control problem, and this is coming from the guy who has an arms control long podcast, I think it's too narrow. Because when I look at space, and tell me if you see it the same way, the biggest problem I see to the use of space, and this is what makes me crazy about the position of the Indians on this, the biggest threat is debris creation.

And the idea, and that's emblematic of it, just a general sense that we don't have enough rules to use space sustainably. And the military piece of it, like the ASATs are part of the threat to the access to space, but they are not nearly as big of a threat as all the other stuff. And in my experience, the stuff that we need to do together, right, like sharing catalog data on where the debris is, coming up with procedures to minimize debris, the thing that I find really awful about ASATs is it sucks all the air out of those conversations, and it makes it really hard to cooperate, even though that's the only way we can use space sustainably.

So, you know, I'm... It drives me crazy because I think Brazil and India are the countries who have the most to lose if we don't get some rules.

Theresa 33:45

No, I agree with you. And I think the debris issue is the driving issue. This is the issue we face today. We face a serious situation with space debris in some areas. Our most used orbits are obviously our most polluted orbits.

Jeffrey 33:58

And, and we should say thank you in part to the Chinese who dramatically increased the debris population.

Theresa 34:05

They did, but you know, let's be, let's be honest here. The Russians and the Americans created a heck of a lot of debris in the early days. So, and that debris is still there. It hasn't gone away. No.

Jeffrey 34:16

And, and it's still, yeah, no, we still have a very large share.

Theresa 34:22

Yeah. So if you, if you look at the shares, I mean The US and Russia account for most of it. But I think you're correct in your analysis. And the one key thing that you said is that the ASAT discussion sucks all the air out of the debate. It not only sucks all the air out of the debate, it actually is a serious obstacle.

Because concern about ASATs and potentially weapons in space prevents the sharing of data that we need to solve the problem of debris.

Jeffrey 34:52

Exactly.

Theresa 34:52

Because it's seen... The sharing of data is seen through a national security lens, and this has been something That you know I've been working on for a very long time.

Jeffrey 35:04

Well, I almost certainly only think it because you do.

Theresa 35:07

I'm sure. I'm sure that's the case. And poor Aaron's not going to get a word in edgewise on this.

Jeffrey 35:14

It's his own fault for being so quiet. I'm listening and learning here. I wasn't a participant in any of these space conferences. He's sitting there coveting an ASAT right now.

Theresa 35:23

I know. I want to talk about ASAT, so I'm not going to.

Aaron 35:26

It sucks the air out of the room. LAUGHTER

Theresa 35:30

But, you know, it's not that people aren't thinking about them. I mean, you know, the Indians might test one. They might be more clever about how they test one, but they might test one. So the technology is out there, and we do have to be a little bit concerned. And there's technology out there that could create on-orbit weapons, and we have to be concerned, and we have to be vigilant.

But the problem set here is that by looking... At the issues of space solely through a national security lens, you actually undercut the ability to address the problems that are going to come down the pike and hurt us all.

Jeffrey 36:10

Okay, last question on space, and then I want to ask about some other emerging technologies. Although I was going to do that to let Aaron in, and I heard you, Aaron. Did you want to say something?

Aaron 36:19

Well, I think there's a convergence between these two issues. I mean, one is, you keep hearing a lot about this. I think it's called the X-37B, which is an autonomous shuttle-like looking system that many people are saying that one of its potential roles, because nobody knows exactly what it is, is to fly up to satellites and potentially disable them.

Sort of the Russian argument you were making about the space shuttle to begin with. So are we seeing a convergence between, let's say, unmanned autonomous systems and the space issue? And what are the linkages there?

Theresa 36:52

That's a really good point. And I think there are linkages there. And certainly the X-37B has launched a whole host of conspiracy theory type conclusions. You know, the best guess from those of us who don't have security clearances is that currently anyway, that the mission set that's seen for that plane is reconnaissance. But you're absolutely right. That doesn't mean that it couldn't potentially do other things.

And so you have a question. You also have this issue of autonomous refueling of satellites, the idea that you could refuel them, give them a longer lifespan. So you do have a convergence of technology there and raising all kinds of, you know, concerns. I mean, that sort of flips you over into the question of autonomous systems in general, of autonomous military robots, which is a big issue in the civil society end right now, though I would personally argue that there's more smoke than flame in that debate right now.

But yeah, there, there are some, some interesting juxtaposition juxtaposition starting to happen there.

Jeffrey 38:13

Okay. So really last question on space, just, just for the record where is the U S on the code of conduct? I love Frank Rose. He's my pal. Is he helping you out?

Theresa 38:24

Yeah, I just saw Frank in in New York for the first committee. This year. And yeah, I mean, you know, the U S has been very supportive of the code of conduct and they've been working very hard to promote it's forwarding. And so I think that's a good thing. I mean you know, as you know, Jeffrey, when we first started working on this issue, it was under the Bush administration and essentially it was talked to the hand.

There wasn't any interest in international cooperation. It's clever.

Jeffrey 38:59

So, you know, but the hand actually had shut up written on it.

Theresa 39:04

Yeah, it did. And you don't own a teenage boy. Once you own a teenage boy, you will know about talk to the hand. In any event you know, the Obama administration has been quite eager to have International consultations and they're working on the code and they're very active in the COPUS discussion. I have to say that the chill between the United States and Russia right now has created some problems for the bilateral aspect of this, which is a bit difficult.

But by and large, the U.S. has been good on the code issue. We still have some problems and some ways to go on the data sharing issue with the Air Force. And the DoD. Again, they...

Jeffrey 39:54

It's an education mission.

Theresa 39:56

Yeah. There's a lot of inherent resistance to...

Jeffrey 40:03

I mean, it's really hard. I recall early on, it was really hard to get this idea through that, you know, like, actually, it's really not in your interest if the Chinese run into one of your reconnaissance satellites.

Theresa 40:14

Exactly. I mean, you know, this is one of the first things I did at CDI when I was working on the space security project was to try to start some conferences on data sharing. And And it was really difficult. It took me about two years to finally be able to even get the Air Force to show up at such a conference.

They still want to talk about it. So that was – it's slowly, slowly, slowly changing. But there's still a lot of resistance, particularly – When it comes to China. And of course, then there are congressional restrictions as well. So you have, you know, all kinds of issue sets there. But there's a lot of work to be done in that arena, but yeah.

Jeffrey 41:06

Well, so what's next? What's we've, we spent a lot of time talking about space but I know that you're interested in a whole range of emerging technologies and the, the The space plane conversation sort of got us in that direction. What are the other big emerging technologies that you're interested in working on in the coming years as you transition out of UNIDIR and back to the U.S.?

Theresa 41:29

Well, you know, I'm actually looking at the question, in my head anyway, of technology governance. And this is sort of bigger than the individual technologies. It's looking at how we, the United States in particular, but also in the international community, deal with these emerging technologies and technology revolutions that are primarily being driven by the civil and commercial side, and yet which pose risks or potential risks to national and international security.

So on one hand, these technologies have potential for enormous benefits to societies, to, to development, to, to the world, maybe to world peace. But on the other hand, they propose they have risks as well. So let me give you, I mean, the easy example is, is cyber the question of information technology, cybersecurity, where, you know, you have a And you have a network, you know, the internet, which is primarily, the infrastructure is primarily civil, but there are enormous national security concerns.

And sort of the reaction to this has been typical of how technology governance happens or does not happen well in the U.S., that at the beginning of the new technology, you know, when it's becoming used in the civil sphere, etc., and this is even for cyber, which got its start in the Pentagon, You know, it's kind of a benign neglect.

And then all of a sudden somebody realizes that there's a potential national security risk and people freak out. And then they run around like chickens with their heads cut off and, and, you know, bad regulation is made, bad policy is made. And that policy can actually stifle the benefit. Okay. So let's take a just a very small example in the cyber world.

And that is the question of cyber offense, war, using cyber tools. You have a real conundrum here in that if you really think that you, as a military, as a national security agency, as the CIA, as whoever, want to use cyber tools in an offensive manner, you have to hoard vulnerabilities. So say you know about a vulnerability in a certain operating system.

I don't want to name an operator. A certain operating system, what's called a zero-day exploit. Nobody else has it. And you know about it, and you don't tell everyone else who's using that operating system, banks, individuals, websites, et cetera, that that vulnerability is out there. You have just put your civil infrastructure at risk in order to protect a potential use of that as a weapon.

That's a problem set.

Aaron 44:31

Go ahead, Aaron. Well, let me just jump in there and just ask a question. I mean, is there a need to set a norm or have we already moved down that path with the use of offensive cyber systems? I'm thinking about Stuxnet in particular. And you're also seeing a lot of reports that say next generation aircraft are able to inject malware over certain systems, I think over surface-to-air missiles or radar of something like that, if I'm remembering the reports correctly off the top of my head.

Are we not moving there already with no rules of the road? And do we need rules of the road?

Theresa 45:02

We are moving there already with no rules of the road. It's exactly what we did in the space security arena. Be careful what you wish for, for you will surely get it. The problem here is that there are no norms and there are no understandings of red lines, what constitutes a red line. When does a cyber attack on another nation state, for example, or its infrastructure become causa spelli?

I can't answer that question, neither can you, and neither can the people who are contemplating cyber attacks. So that's a problem set.

Aaron 45:37

I've seen from the country that I study the most, which is Turkey, they had a cyber issue. I won't go into it, but you had at that time the foreign minister, he's now the prime minister, saying that we will treat any cyber intrusion as an act of war. And I made my ear pop up because he was making a very heavy declaratory statement.

Declaratory. There, you got it. Declaratory. And I don't think politicians really have begun to think through what that actually meant. Of course they haven't.

Theresa 46:10

Because if that was true, Turkey would be in perpetual war right now.

Aaron 46:13

So that's my point. It's like where is the disconnect between, say, politicians and the practitioners on this? How should we separate hype over the cybersecurity threat and what's really real?

Theresa 46:25

It's really very difficult and it's very complicated. And part of the problem is that you have policymaking going on in a vacuum. And cybersecurity is probably the easiest to see this in because it is incredibly complicated. It not only involves, you know, what we're talking about with the military under the national security, but it also involves crime.

It involves net privacy issues. It involves surveillance and the whole NSA business. So there's a lot of stuff going on there. And one of the key problems we have is that we don't have the nodes properly talking to each other. So you don't have the private sector really being in systemic conversations with the national security sector or even with government in general.

You have a complete disconnect between Between Congress and the technology people. Congress, I hate to say this, isn't, by and large, a technologically savvy body. So you've got a problem there. And this is increasingly true as we move towards a number of technology, I would say, revolutions, or at least evolutions. So let's look at something else besides cyber.

Let's look at something maybe a little more simple. Let's look at 3D printing, OK? 3D printing, if it really comes into its own, could do marvels for the developing world. Think about there's a tsunami and you need to get structures up. And the cost savings and the quickness that you could do this if you could actually 3D print buildings, okay?

That's cool. And the benefits could be huge. But right now we have some Yehu out in the west, you know, out in – I don't know where he's from, Arizona or somewhere – Who's just started a business selling online 3D gun bodies that can go through metal detectors and can't be detected. This is not good. And, you know, I have a nightmare.

I'll tell you about my nightmare weapon as soon as I mention one more thing. Another big area where we have some problems, or we're going to have problems, is synthetic biology and the question of the potential for tailored biological weapons. This is not science fiction, okay? This is increasingly becoming possible and you have more and more capabilities for creating biological agents outside of laboratories, outside of government, outside of universities that you can do in your basement if you were Sheldon Cooper, right?

So this is a problem. So I have started to really be worried about these things. So my... Weapon in my head, the terror weapon is the, the miniaturized autonomous drone. So it's an autonomous drone, tiny little thing, size of mosquito being able to be 3d printed and it's little stinger tipped with a targeted biological weapon. You think I'm crazy.

I'm not looking, look at the technology progressions in each of those areas and start being scared. But it's not just the technology. It's the problem of how we deal with it. And we don't have the governance structures that can bring together the nodes that need to be brought together in order to have rational discussions about benefits and risks and to find rational solutions that allow technological development and revolution to go forward but do not create a whole new set of risks.

We've lost the plot in the cyber area, and now we're scrambling to put a whole bunch of genies back into bottles. And that's going to be very difficult. We need for the future to get ahead of the curve. We need to sit down and say, how do we get an educated legislative branch? How do we put together the private sector with the government sectors in ways that are not oppositional, but that seek to find solutions that work for everyone?

How do we translate this to the international community?

Jeffrey 50:34

So Aaron, how are you going to transition us from there to a happy note?

Aaron 50:39

I was just about to go there. For listeners to the podcast, we end all podcasts on the happy note, or at least we try to. So Teresa, how are you going to make that sound like a happy note? What do we have to do here?

Theresa 50:53

Can't we all just get along? Let me think about that for two seconds. No, I think there is a happy note here. I do think that there is starting to be a recognition that we do have to start trying to develop forums and methodologies for bringing together the technological community and the governmental community. And I think you're starting to see At least acknowledgements here in the US that this is a problem that we have to fix.

And so there are opportunities to fix it. And you know, I'm not a, I'm, I'm not anti-tech. In fact, I'm pro-tech as Jeffrey knows, I'm a, I'm a huge geek, you know? So I see a lot of benefit to having a better system of government private sector discussion debate for And working together to create better systems of governance for the emergence of new technologies, I think that will be good for everyone all around.

So I'm hoping that this is something that continues, this is a trend that continues to happen, and that I'm able to do some work in that area when I get back to the U.S. at the beginning of next year.

Aaron 52:09

Right. So we have a positive trend, which is a positive, no, wouldn't you say, Jeffrey? Absolutely. I think that we're going to, Take it. Go, go, Aaron. Go. Yeah. So I want to thank Teresa for a really fabulous conversation. I appreciate it. And thanks, everybody, for listening.

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Thanks, Jeffrey. And thanks again, Teresa. Thank you for having me.