THERESA HITCHENS
Billionaires taking tourist trips to space may make the headlines, but the spectacles are only a symbol of a much broader — and more consequential — shift: the increasing commercialization of the cosmos. The privatized space race may be in its relative infancy, but as Breaking Defense’s own Theresa Hitchens argues, that just means there’s still time to heed lessons from the sci-fi epic “The Expanse” about the dangers that could lay ahead if earth-bound governments continue to cede authority, and initiative, to corporate interests. The following essay, “Flag Follows Trade”, is excerpted from the new, sci-fi-meets-strategy collection “To Boldly Go,” published by Casemate.
“For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship, or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”
— SpaceX Starlink Terms of Agreement
In the science fiction series The Expanse, human colonization of the solar system has been driven primarily by capitalist corporate interests. Those fictional megacorporations — just as today on Earth, often led by visionary billionaires—operate as near-sovereign entities, despite technically being licensed primarily by Earth’s militarized United Nations. Unfortunately, in their largely unfettered and often subsidized pursuit of profit, those corporations also serve as catalysts for terrorism, rebellions, and interplanetary war.
In “Leviathan Wakes,” the first book of the Hugo-nominated series by James S. A. Corey, readers learn that various Earth-licensed corporations first spurred the opening of the solar system to human occupation by establishing myriad mining stations on asteroids and in the orbits of the “outer” planets beyond Mars. Many of these stations developed into full-fledged colonies, with economies centralized around mining specific resources such as lithium and water or industrial-scale farming.
There are colonies on Luna, asteroids in the Belt between Mars and Jupiter, Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, Saturn’s moon Io, and other celestial bodies. Humans also colonized Mars, but by the UN-led government as a means to depopulate Earth’s environmentally stressed regions. By the time of the first book, Mars has peacefully—after a technological breakthrough on the part of the colonial forces—negotiated independence and sports its own highly sophisticated Navy and Marine Corps.
The most important and densely populated space station in The Expanse universe is the asteroid Ceres. Tycho Engineering and Manufacturing Concern, a near-sovereign firm founded by engineering pioneer Malthus Tycho and run by his grandson, figured out how to “spin” the asteroid to provide enough gravity to allow humans to live and work there. Ceres is also the “home world” of the rebel/terrorist group, the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA). OPA began as a union and advocacy group for the inhabitants of the asteroid belt—known as “Belters”—who are oppressed by exorbitant taxes and living costs, which include water and air, imposed by the corporations that manage all facets of living in the “outer” solar system.
“To Boldly Go” is a compilation of essays about what science fiction can teach about real-life strategy.
The solar system again nears the brink of war after a mysterious attack on the Canterbury, a space freighter hauling ice from Saturn to Ceres to supply water. The ship stops to investigate an SOS hailing from a seemingly distressed ship but is ambushed and destroyed in a nuclear weapons attack by a mysterious spaceship that subsequently disappears. Only five crew members survive—The Expanse’s main band of protagonists led by Earth’s James Holden. Holden’s ensuing global broadcast of his discovery that the disappearing ship appears to be of Martian military design lights a spark that tips the already restive and resentful Belt toward armed insurrection and retaliation against Mars—a conflict that surely would draw in Earth.
As events unfold, it becomes clear that the stealth ship is actually part of a secret fleet of sophisticated warships owned by the Earth-based firm Protogen. Protogen has discovered an alien artifact known as the “protomolecule,” which appears to be a semi-sentient bio-nanotech substance. Protogen proceeds to undertake a host of unethical research activities, ranging from experiments on immuno-comprised children to release of the protomolecule on the minor planet Eros, wiping out the population.
In the second book in the series, Caliban’s War, Holden and his allies discover that Jules Pierre Mao owns Protogen. Mao is one of the richest men in the solar system and co-owner of one of the largest Earth-based conglomerates, Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile. Mao-Kwikowski has interests in almost every type of corporate activity in the solar system, from providing water and other resources to mercenary forces. Mao has set up a vast, hidden research and development complex to find a way to commercialize the protomolecule for profit and power. He is also allied with an anti-Mars faction within the UN government, unbeknownst to the elected leadership, to create a super-soldier. Much of Caliban’s War revolves around the UN–Mao plot’s exposure and the race to avert an all-out war between Earth and Mars.
While Mao and his megafirm are the villains of the first books, missteps and misdeeds of corporate entities underpin the story throughout the series. Tycho has oppressed the Belters since the establishment of Tycho Station, setting the stage for the civil unrest and the OPA’s radicalization. In the fourth book, Cibola Burn, food shortages caused by Ganymede’s destruction during Caliban’s War plague the Belt, as Ganymede served as the region’s breadbasket. Belter refugees have scattered to new planets to start new lives via wormholes called “Ring Gates” created by the protomolecule. Meanwhile, Earth continues to license corporate entities to launch research and mining colonies in deep space. Cibola Burn tells the story of conflict over a lithium-rich planet. The conflict is between Belters, who arrive first and name the planet Ilus, and UN Earthers who call the planet New Terra. An Earth mining and research colony ship arrives on Ilus under UN license, but Belters sabotage the ship during landing. Holden and crew are once again called upon to try to stave off potential war, this time between the Belt and Earth.
In today’s world, as in The Expanse, commercial entities also dominate efforts to push the boundaries of human activity in space. Companies around the world are developing the technology required to refuel and repurpose spacecraft in orbit, clear growing fields of dangerous space debris, and even mine asteroids. For example, PayPal billionaire Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, have set their sights on sending humans to Mars and deep space colonies, respectively.
And over the past five or six years, the United States government has taken steps to support domestic space firms by enacting laws and implementing policies to help spur the expansion of United States economic interests into outer space. In November 2015, Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed, the United States Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act that makes it legal under United States law for companies to keep and profit from the sale of celestial resources. While the law raised some eyebrows abroad, since international law prohibits sovereign claims in outer space, the United States argued that space resource extraction is legally akin to fishing in international waters.
Support for the United States commercial space industry became a central policy under the Trump administration. In a series of executive orders, known as Space Policy Directives, Trump aimed to ease licensing restrictions on traditional space activities and set “light” regulatory provisions for emerging capabilities. The 2018 National Space Strategy encouraged NASA and the Defense Department to turn to the commercial marketplace for space technologies and services as a first resort—rather than developing bespoke capabilities in-house using traditional government contractors. Former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross often repeated optimistic industry predictions that the global space-related economy could be worth as much as $3 trillion by 2040. “We believe the future of space is overwhelmingly commercial in nature and will no longer be dominated by government agencies and their priorities,” Ross told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 24, 2020.
The Trump administration tasked NASA to develop a plan to establish a permanent United States presence on the moon by 2024, a plan heavily reliant on commercial firms. The Moon–Mars Artemis program envisions a permanently inhabited station in lunar orbit called Gateway. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine was enthusiastic about the prospects for space commerce—and the need for the United States to be the first in what many national security space officials see as a race with China to establish primacy in the future orbital economy.
“There very well could be trillions of dollars—tens of trillions of dollars—in large deposits of platinum-group metals on the Moon. And if that’s the case, if somebody were to be able to capitalize on those discoveries, it could change the balance of power on Earth,” Bridenstine told a recent webinar sponsored by the Mitchell Institute, a think tank that advocates for the U.s.Air Force.
It is this perceived economic competition that in large part has helped drive a renewed emphasis on warfighting in space. Part of this interest in military space operations resulted in the August 2019 re-establishment of U.S. Space Command, a new incarnation of a previous organization that existed from 1985 to 2002, and the subsequent December 2019 creation of the Space Force as the sixth branch of the U.S. military, structured under the Air Force in a similar fashion to the Marine Corps under the Navy.
On September 22, 2020, Space Force—tasked with organizing, training, and equipping personnel assigned to SPACECOM—signed a memorandum of understanding with NASA to expand joint efforts to build up the capabilities to operate in cislunar orbit. Chief of Space Operations General Jay Raymond told this author in an email:
Today, economic and military space activities do not extend farther than our highest-orbiting satellites. However, commercial investments and new technologies have the potential to expand the reach of vital national space interests to cislunar and beyond in the near future. It is our responsibility to maintain U.S. advantages in space. If and when that extends beyond the GEO belt, we will go beyond as needed.
There is a vocal contingent among U.S. military space thought leaders who argue that, in order to make cislunar space safe for economic exploitation for the benefit of humanity, the country first needs to establish the means to ensure military security in space. This viewpoint essentially is a modern corollary to the 18th- and 19th-century axiom, “trade follows the flag,” a notion that stems from the imperialist argument that colonies stimulate trade for the mother country. But in fact, the United States government is carving a policy pathway—a pathway that by and large seems to be typical for today’s space-faring countries—that is more akin to “the flag follows trade” model of The Expanse and the disastrous historical example of the British East India Company.
The East India Company, founded in 1600 and abolished in 1858 by the British government, can be seen as the archetype of unfettered corporate capitalism. With the Crown’s tacit approval, the company was at the heart of India’s conquest and colonization. The East India Company usurped the local government of Bengal in the 1750s and spread its reach to most of the subcontinent by the early 1800s. In 1803, the company’s security force stood at some 260,000 men, more than twice the size of the British army.
While lining its founders’ pockets, the company initially poured funds into Britain’s coffers by brutally exploiting Indian natural resources and its people as near-slaves in the garment trade. The company’s practices led directly to the first Indian Rebellion in 1857 and catalyzed the country’s long drive toward independence. It also launched the trade in illegal opium from India to China, eventually leading to the Opium Wars. Meanwhile, it shipped Chinese tea to Massachusetts, where its dumping in Boston harbor played a role in the run-up to the American war of independence, according to the London-based Guardian.
The East India Company was put under regulatory control by a worried British government when it required vast cash loans. The firm needed these loans when its revenues fell due to famine in Bengal in 1773 that were mainly the company’s fault. In the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion, London had had enough and virtually abolished the firm in 1878.
The East India Company’s corporate power has yet to be equaled by any space company in any country—indeed, by any corporate entity, even the ubiquitous Google or Amazon. But the recent boom in global space commerce is already outstripping national and international agreements. National regulatory structures lack substance with regard to new types of space activities, such as resource extraction, and are nearly non-existent when it comes to the prospect of commercially led exploration or colonization. And while the framework international accord governing space, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, prohibits claims of national sovereignty over the Moon or other celestial bodies, it is silent on corporate entities’ rights except to make states responsible for the actions of firms registered in their territories.
The increased interest in exploitation of space comes at a time when geopolitical tensions between the United States, Russia, and China are at a 21st-century high. In recent years, United States leaders have insisted its adversaries have “weaponized” space. For example, the unclassified summary of the Pentagon’s Defense Space Strategy states: “Space is now a distinct warfighting domain,” and articulates DoD’s plans to “ensure space superiority.” Interestingly, the Defense Space Strategy notes the interplay and potential impact of the commercial and civil space arenas on national security:
Rapid increases in commercial and international space activities worldwide add to the complexity of the space environment. Commercial space activities provide national and homeland security benefits with new technologies and services and create new economic opportunities in established and emerging markets. The same activities, however, also create challenges in protecting critical technology, ensuring operational security, and maintaining strategic advantages.
In the short and mid-term, many space experts worry that there is a rising risk of conflict being sparked unintentionally in the absence of clear national and international law and norms of behavior for space commerce. Jamie Morin, vice president of Defense Systems Operations at the Aerospace Corporation, told this author in an interview on December 21, 2020, that the newly “crowded and democratized” nature of space adds complexity to the geopolitical instability that has emerged in military space relations. For example, he said, countries are beginning to rely on commercial space services without fully understanding their inherent vulnerabilities. “If we are all on edge watching for harmful interference or kinetic attacks on satellites, and we have a way more crowded environment, we’re increasing the chance—in some cases geometrically—of accidental things being perceived as intentional.”
As an example, the United States Transportation Command is exploring use of Elon Musk’s new Starship, designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the moon, Mars and beyond, to rapidly ferry military logistics and potentially even troops to far-flung battlefields. Starship made its first suborbital flight December 9, 2020. It crashed upon landing, but both the company and outside experts say the test results mean that Starship, which comprises a giant Super Heavy rocket carrying a shuttle-like spacecraft also called Starship, could take its first orbital test flight next year. As of November 2020, SpaceX had launched 955 Starlink satellites, with a plan to eventually expand the constellation to some 42,000 small satellites to provide high-speed communications—eventually all the way from Mars, if users sign the terms of use that include acknowledging SpaceX’s claim that Mars is a “free planet.” Musk has articulated a goal of landing humans on Mars in 2026. Right now, there is nothing in the United States legal code or international law to stop him.
Meanwhile, after a boom and bust in the early 2000s, asteroid mining is again on the agenda for commercial investors in the United States and abroad. In a bid to spur United States company interest in space mining, Bridenstine, on September 10, 2020, announced in a tweet that NASA is launching a program to buy moon rocks from commercial mining concerns. Luxembourg in 2017 passed a space resources law similar to that of the United States; and the United Arab Emirates in February 2020 followed suit. The European Space Agency in 2019 released a Space Resources Strategy to guide investment through 2030. China is rapidly moving forward with its space exploration plans, which China hawks in the United States charge are aimed at establishing a dominating position in the future space resources market, as well as laying the foundation for a military presence. While most non-vested experts believe that the advent of a true commercial market for space mining is decades away, the fact remains that there are no internationally agreed rules on how such commercial ventures should be regulated, if at all.
Further, despite growing concern from industry, scientists and experts about issues ranging from an increase in space debris to crowded near-Earth orbits to space salvage rights, no space-faring country has yet picked up the baton to launch multilateral negotiations on governing an emerging space gold rush. Some of these issues, including that of debris and orbital crowding, are already pressing. Thus, as the march of space commerce continues apace, the United States and other space nations will need to consider how they intend to harness the benefits of commercial space exploitation and corral the risks. The alternative to a well-regulated commercial space market is a dangerous “Wild West” scenario, driven by the heirs to the East India Company and prototypes for the likes of Tycho and Mao-Kwikowski in The Expanse.
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