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COMMENT: In his book–one of the most important in recent memory–Yasha Levine sets forth vital, revelatory information about the development and functioning of the Internet.
Born of the same DARPA project that spawned Agent Orange, the Internet was never intended to be something good. Its generative function and purpose is counter-insurgency. In this landmark volume, Levine makes numerous points, including:
- The harvesting of data by intelligence services is PRECISELY what the Internet was designed to do in the first place.
- The harvesting of data engaged in by the major tech corporations is an extension of the data gathering/surveillance that was–and is–the raison d’etre for the Internet in the first place.
- The big tech companies all collaborate with the various intelligence agencies they publicly scorn and seek to ostensibly distance themselves from.
- Edward Snowden, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jacob Appelbaum and WikiLeaks are complicit in the data harvesting and surveillance.
- Snowden and other privacy activists are double agents, consciously channeling people fearful of having their communications monitored into technologies that will facilitate that surveillance!
. . . . In the 1960s, America was a global power overseeing an increasingly volatile world: conflicts and regional insurgencies against US-allied governments from South America to Southeast Asia and the Middle East. These were not traditional wars that involved big armies but guerilla campaigns and local rebellions, frequently fought in regions where Americans had little previous experience. Who were these people? Why were they rebelling? What could be done to stop them? In military circles, it was believed that these questions were of vital importance to America’s pacification efforts, and some argued that the only effective way to answer them was to develop and leverage computer-aided information technology.
The Internet came out of this effort: an attempt to build computer systems that could collect and share intelligence, watch the world in real time, and study and analyze people and political movements with the ultimate goal of predicting and preventing social upheaval. . . .
. . . . Ranch Hand got going in 1962 and lasted until the war ended more than a decade later. In that time, American C‑123 transport planes doused an area equal in size to half of South Vietnam with twenty million gallons of toxic chemical defoliants. Agent Orange was fortified with other colors of the rainbow: Agent White, Agent Pink, Agent Purple, Agent Blue. The chemicals, produced by American companies like Dow and Monsanto, turned whole swaths of lush jungle into barren moonscapes, causing death and horrible suffering for hundreds of thousands.
Operation Ranch Hand was merciless, and in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. It remains one of the most shameful episodes of the Vietnam War. Yet the defoliation project is notable for more than just its unimaginable cruelty. The government body at its lead was a Department of Defense outfit called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Born in 1958 as a cash program to protect the United States from a Soviet nuclear threat from space, it launched several groundbreaking initiatives tasked with developing advanced weapons and military technologies. Among them were project Agile and Command and Control Research, two overlapping ARPA initiatives that created the Internet. . . .
The Political Implications of the UFO Phenomenon and the "ET" Myth
When Putin called the Internet a “CIA project” (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/24/vladimir-putin-web-breakup-internet-cia), the only thing he got wrong was the agency (DARPA/DIA).
@RKW–
Actually, he was only partially wrong.
The Broadcasting Board of Governors–a CIA “derivative”–is deeply involved with all of this, including: the development and dissemination of the U.S. intelligence-created Tor network (used by WikiLeaks, recommended by Eddie “The Friendly Spoook” Snowden and Jacob–“I wish Ayn Rand was still alive so I could (expletive deleted) her”–Applebaum, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation).
The book is REALLY important. It doesn’t go into the overtly fascist character and alliances of Snowden, Assange and Greenwald, but reveals that the so-called “privacy activists” are double agents.
Best,
Dave Emory
I want to thank you for your implicit anti-fascist work “Agent Orange and the Internet: The Spawn of Project Agile” which is needed to inform a largely uninformed public of just these sorts of threats.
Here’s a series of stories that a tangentially related to DARPA and thematically very related. It sounds like the push for a Space Force includes a parallel push to a create a new acquisition agency for space-related military spending with a DARPA-like flexibility for avoiding extensive Pentagon reviews:
Whenever there’s a new US Secretary of Defense there’s inevitably going to be a number of questions related to the future of US military spending. But now that President Trump has nominated Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan to be the new official Defense Secretary, those questions about the future of US defense spending suddenly have a futuristic twist because it turns out Shanahan has been the Trump administration’s point man on the development of Space Force, the new branch of the US military Trump has enthusiastically embraced. Oh, and it just happens to be the case that before Shanahan was tapped for the Trump administration he spent 30-years working at Boeing, one of the biggest beneficiaries are an explosion of military space spending:
“Shanahan joined the administration in April 2017 after a 30-year career at Boeing. In November 2017, he was suddenly thrust into the role of principal space adviser to then Secretary Mattis after Congress in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act stripped that job from Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, reassigned it to Shanahan and directed him to study ways to reorganize the DoD space enterprise. After Trump in June 2018 directed DoD to stand up a Space Force as a separate military service, Shanahan led the push to write a legislative proposal and persuade lawmakers to authorize the new branch.”
Yep, after Trump directed the Department of Defense to set up Space Force as a separate military service last June, it was Shanahan who led to the push to persuade congress to authorize the new branch. Then he become Acting Defense Secretary and now Shanahan is the Defense Secretary. That’s good news for the backers of Space Force.
And if it wasn’t clear that a big part of the motivation for setting up Space Force as a separate branch of a the military (as opposed to, say, a ranch of the Air Force) is the prospect of easier space-related spending, note how one of the other key efforts that Shanahan has championed is the establishment of a Space Development Agency. So a Space Force and a new ‘development agency’ for space-related spending. That’s the plan:
What’s going to be so special about the new Space Development Agency (SDA) agency that can’t be handled by current military acquisition programs? Well, as the following article describes, the new SDA is going to be set up for rapid acquisitions from the private sector. In other words, with the SDA, the Space Force will be able to spend even faster than the Air Force and the rest of the military. No bureaucratic red tape.
There’s a particular project the backers have in mind that they argue requires the SDA now: a global network of clustered low earth orbit (LEO) satellites using commercially available technology. It’s based on an existing DARPA project called Blackjack. The idea is that these microsatellite clusters could replace the existing communications networks of geosynchronous satellites which are expensive and easy for adversaries to knock out. It’s kind of like the internet for satellites: there are so many interconnected satellites that if you knock out one or a few the broader network can still operate. So the solution is DARPA’s Blackjack, a vast swarm of cheap LEO communication satellites using commercially available technology.
And this has to be deployed soon according to the backers of the program. It’s urgent for the US’s national security due to threats posed by China and Russia. That’s the vision of Mike Griffin, the recently appointed US Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering who has emerged as the leading advocate for the SDA. Patrick Shanahan is one of his key allies. According to Griffin, the existing commercial sector that’s already investing billions on dollars into development of clusters of low orbit microsatellites is exactly what the DoD needs, but the Pentagon procurement structure cannot handle these private sector acquisitions on the scale required to make Blackjack a reality, at least not at the pace Griffin would like to see. The SDA needs to be created and given authority to allow projects to move fast using commercial technology without getting with Pentagon reviews, with DARPA’s Blackjack as the showcase example of how this should be done. Griffin even selected Fred Kennedy, the director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, to lead the SDA. Kennedy was DARPA’s mastermind behind Blackjack.
It’s worth noting that this space network of sensor satellites sounds conceptually remarkably similar to the network of ground-based sensors developed by DARPA for the Vietnam war that became the seed of the internet, as described in Yasha Levine’s Surveillance Valley.
And this space network of low orbit satellites all has to be built NOW because the creation of the LEO network of satellites is extremely urgent and a national security issue. So the creation of a private-sector-supply global network of low orbit satellites is urgently needed now and urgently requires the lifting of traditional Pentagon acquisition reviews. Those are the core arguments being put forward by the same people behind the creation of Space Force:
“At the top of his to-do list is what Griffin described as a “proliferated space sensor layer, possibly based off commercial space developments.” He insisted that space sensors must soon be deployed to fill gaps in the current missile defense system that make the United States and its allies vulnerable to Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons.”
A “proliferated space sensor layer, possibly based off commercial space developments,” is urgently needed. So urgently that a whole new space-based acquisition department needs to be created, now, in order to deploy “megaconstellations” of low orbit satellites using commercially available technology:
Importantly, this concept of clusters of low orbit satellites was already being developed by DARPA under the Blackjack program. But according to Griffin, it’s obvious that the Pentagon simply can’t handle the development of a system that’s primarily based on commercial technology. At least not fast enough. Hence, the SDA must be created with new authorities to allow projects to move fast without Pentagon review. Shanahan clearly agrees with this assessment:
And note how the director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, Fred Kennedy, who was also the mastermind of DARPA’s Blackjack project, is the guy Griffin tapped to lead the SDA. He also brought in Lisa Porter who worked for In-Q-Tel:
Also note how it doesn’t appear that the SDA requires congressional authorization. It’s a Pentagon decision:
So it sounds like Space Force isn’t going to be lacking in funds. Of course. And that’s why it’s important to note that the forces behind the creation of Space Force and the SDA aren’t limited to figures like Mike Griffin or DARPA. The fact that Patrick Shanahan is a former Boeing executive highlights this. And as the following article describes, there’s been a small group of current and former government officials who have been pushing for Space Force since 2016, and they just happen to have deep financial ties to the aerospace industry. Surprise!:
“The concept had been pushed unsuccessfully since 2016 by a small group of current and former government officials, some with deep financial ties to the aerospace industry, who see creation of the sixth military service as a surefire way to hike Pentagon spending on satellite and other space systems.”
Yep, a group of aerospace industry insiders happens to view the creation of Space Force as a surefire way to hike Pentagon spending on satellite and other space systems. And boy will it be with a fancy new SDA setup up specifically for rapid acquisitions without Pentagon review. Even Congressman Jim Cooper, a supporter of the concept of a separate Space Force branch, is alarmed by how Space Force is rapidly being turned into a vendor free-for-all. Congressman Mike Rogers has been the other key driver for Space Force in Congress. He doesn’t appear to share Cooper’s concerns over out of control new spending:
In 2017, Cooper and Rogers inserted an amendment into the annual defense policy bill that effectively created the “space corps”, but it was still going to be part of the Air Force. Rogers apparently had concerns about this and whether or not the Air Force would be focused enough on space. In addition, defense contractors have apparently been complaining about the Air Force’s procurement policies. Rogers just happens to be the House’s largest recipient of defense industry donations:
But Cooper’s and Rogers’s “space corp” idea was killed in Congress after the Air Force lobbied against it. But then, in December of 2017, Rogers enlisted an intermediary to give Trump information his congressional subcommittee had collected about Russian and Chinese development of anti-satellite weapons. Recall that the idea for creation a global network of low earth orbit clusters of satellites (DARPA’s Blackjack) is specifically to counter Russian and Chinese anti-satellite technology, so odds are this push to sell Trump on the idea of a Space Force by lobbying him about anti-satellite technology involved a promotion of the Blackjack program:
Also note how Trump revived the National Space Council in June of 2017, so there were already moves in this direction at that point in his term. But it was apparently the model rockets displayed during a Cabinet meeting in March of 2018 that really wowed Trump and got him enthusiastically on board with the idea:
Highlighting the potential for spending explosion is the fact that Vice President Mike Pence declared last year that the goal was creating some sort of Space Force
by 2020, presumably as part of Trump’s reelection campaign. That’s a pretty tight timeframe:
So at this point it looks like the US is on track for not just a new Space Force, but a rapid explosion of new space-related spending, all to be fueled by whole new Space Development Agency that’s going to be authorized to fast-track big spending without reviews. And a fancy new global network of low orbit satellites, a large number of which will be spy satellites.
But while the SDA can be created by the Pentagon alone, the creation of Space Force still needs congressional approval. And that’s very much up in the air at this point. For example, the Congress Budget Office (CBO) just issue its estimate for the proposed cost of Space Force. It turns out it’s going to be far more expensive than the Trump administration suggested. Instead of the Trump administration’s projected costs of $2 billion over 5 years to set it up and another $500 million annually, the CBO is projecting a cost of $3 billion up front and $1.3 billion annually. So Space Force hasn’t really even started yet and the cost over-runs are already going wild. Surprise!
“CBO did the report at the request of Sens. Jim Inhofe, R‑Okla., and Jack Reed, D‑R.I. The proposed Space Force would need to be approved by Congress, and cost could be a deciding factor for lawmakers.”
So costs could be a deciding factor congress and the CBO just determined that up front costs to set Space Force are 50 percent higher than the Trump administration suggested and the annual costs are 260 percent higher. But creating Space Force within the Air Force would cut down on those projected costs according to the CBO:
It’s going to be interesting to see how congress handles the proposal for an entire new branch of the military.
But even if Space Force remains a branch of the Air Force, the key factor in terms of pleasing the defense contractors and figures like Mike Griffin is the SDA, which would could pay for an explosion of new federal spending on space programs with minimal oversight. So a big question is whether or not a Space Force that’s still part of the Air Force will be allowed to use the SDA in place of the Air Force’s regular procurement agencies. At this point that’s very unclear. What is clear is that there’s probably going to be a big market for companies providing satellite cleanup services for getting broken satellites out of orbit:
“This Wednesday SpaceX will launch its first batch of Starlink satellites—a “mega constellation” of thousands of spacecraft to provide high-speed Internet access to billions of people at any location on the planet. Starlink is only the first of many such projects; there are at least eight more mega constellations in the works from other companies. Although they promise to revolutionize global telecommunications, these efforts are not free of peril: as the number of satellites inexorably grows, so, too, does the risk of creating dangerous debris that could threaten the continued safe use of Earth orbit. “This is something we need to pay attention to,” says Glenn Peterson, a senior engineering specialist at the Aerospace Corporation, headquartered in El Segundo, Calif. “We have to be proactive.””
It’s not just a megacluster of satellites. It’s also a giant space debris catastrophe waiting to happen. That’s one of the key lessons that has to be kept in mind as humanity decides to flood the the planet’s orbit with clusters of satellites. Because the more satellites we put up there, the greater the chances of Kessler Syndrome breaking out, where debris-generating collisions lead to more debris-generating collisions, eventually rendering the Earth’s entire orbit unusable:
So let’s hope the Mike Griffin’s dreams of an SDA that provides rapid streamlined reviews of the costs and benefits of megacluster satellite programs at least include some cost/benefit analysis about the risks of inducing Kessler Syndrome, the ultimate anti-satellite weapon.
Here’s a rather ominous set of stories related to the Trump administration’s push to create a new Space Force branch of the US military and the parallel push to create a new Space Development Agency (SDA) that will specialize in rapidly deploying commercial technology for the new Space Force. First, recall how the personal driving the creation of the SDA is Mike Griffin, the recently appointed US Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, who feels that the Air Force’s normal procurement policies is too slow and requires too many reviews. The SDA sounds like it will have the flexibility of DARPA but with the ability for large-scale procurements.
So now check this out: last month we learned that the Pentagon suddenly decided to let its contract with the ‘JASONS’ expire. The Jasons, are covered extensively in Yasha Levine’s Surveillance Valley, are the the group of acadademics first hired by the DoD in the 1960 to provide out advice and review to the Pentagon on a range of different technical topic. And now the Pentagon suddenly decided that the Jasons are no longer with the money. Yes, the official excuse for end the Jasons is because the Pentagon can’t afford it. Given that this is a laughable explanation, the question of why the Pentagon actually suddenly decided to end the Jasons looms large. Is there a set of programs that people in the Pentagon know the Jasons will pan? Or there’s something scandalous in the works that they don’t want outsiders to know about? What’s the real explanation? Well, it turns out that the contract with the Jasons was run though Pentagon’s Undersecretary of Research and Engineering. That’s Mike Griffin’s department. And as we’re going to see, it turns out the Mike Griffin’s department was behind the move to end the Jasons. In addition, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, Research and Engineering, announced that it will require only one study, rather than multiple studies, in its announcement to end the Jasons. So the guy who wants to create the SDA so Space Force can make rapid procurements without the normal levels of review is the same guy behind ending the contract with Jasons. Surprise!
Ok, here’s an article that describes the ending of the Jasons contract. Interestingly, the DoD has no ruled out working with the Jasons in the future, raising more questions about what exactly Griffin’s plan are in the short run. And as the article notes, in the Pentagon’s official response to questions about the ending of the Jasons they note that Griffin’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, Research and Engineering will require only one study, rather than multiple studies, going forward. The official response frame the decision as a financial: “The department remains committed to seeking independent technical advice and review. This change is in keeping with this commitment while making the most economic sense for the department, and it is in line with our efforts to gain full value from every taxpayer dollar spent on defense.” LOL! So in order to save money, the Pentagon is cutting one of the groups that would provide outsider reviews for the feasibility of defense projects and limiting the feasibility studies to a single study:
“According to a 2006 book written about the group, the panel played major roles in developing, or lambasting, technical ideas for the department, including pushing to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear weapons and a controversial stretch of ideas during the Vietnam War. Much of their work, however, has been classified.”
Sounds like someone doesn’t like their projects getting lambasted. At least that’s probably part of the rationale for the move. It’s certainly a much more plausible rationale than the official Pentagon response about the move being “in line with our efforts to gain full value from every taxpayer dollar spent on defense”. Apparently project studies are the main cost drivers at the Pentagon. Or at least that’s the official explanation from the Pentagon:
But notice how the Jasons still might get contracts in the future, although they could be one-off contracts. All in all, it’s looking like the DoD wants to put on limit on outside technical advice. What could possibly go wrong?
Ok, now here’s the initial report on the ending of the Jasons contract. Based on the article, it kind of sounds like they tried to sneak this past Congress because it appears that Congress only learned about this after reviewing budget requests and noticing that there was no request for the Jasons budget. The article also mentions the particular department behind the move: Mike Griffin’s department:
“That unit, now led by Michael Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, is believed to be the driving force behind last month’s decision.”
Yes, all signs are pointing towards Griffin’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, Research and Engineering being behind this move. A move that appears to have caught Congress by surprise based on the questions posed by Rep. Cooper:
Interestingly, the official Cooper was questioning there, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), actually ended up sort of saving the Jasons. Because the NNSA appears to have hired them instead. Starting in January of 2020 the Jasons are working for the NNSA at the Department of Energy:
“In essence, NNSA seeks to recreate the Pentagon’s contract with the advisory group through the end of next January, in order to keep key research from falling apart.”
So it’s not the end of the Jasons. They’ll still be conducting studies for the Department of Energy, which probably good timing given the Trump administration’s plans for nuclear weapons. But it is the end of the Jasons routinely reviewing work for the Pentagon. And this all appears to be driven by Mike Griffin, the force behind the Space Development Agency, a new procurement agency set up to avoid extensive reviews for new projects.
It seems the Pentagon’s new no review agenda might be in need of a review. Preferably multiple extensive reviews.
Here’s a disturbing update on the ambitions by the US military, SpaceX, and other companies and countries to create “megaconstellations” of thousands of low orbit satellites: Now that SpaceX has already launched the first batch of 60 satellites, astronomers are already reporting that these satellites obstructing their views of the stars. And that’s just the first batch of one company’s megaconstellation plans.
Given the potentially dire consequences of unleashing “Kessler Syndrome” — a chain reaction of spain junk that creates more space junk — and making parts of Earth’s orbit unusuable, it all raises the question of how exactly humanity has decided to collectively regulate the Earth’s orbit and address questions of who actually ‘owns’ the different parts of Earth’s orbit and who can put what where. Surprise! It’s all basically voluntary. That’s according to None of the five existing outer space treaties mention space debris. What coordination does take place happens at the agency level, like the Inter-agency Space Debris Coordination Committee created by 13 of the world’s space agencies, but there’s no treaty that can prevent a national from just flooding the Earth’s orbit with satellites. Each nation is responsible for its own behavior and the behavior of their private companies. So avoiding a catastrophe like “Kessler Syndrome” is basically going to required all parties behave responsibly.
As the article also notes, the current track record is anything but responsible. Over the past two decades there have been efforts to establish guidelines and codes of conduct, with the goal of having at least 90% of satellites and launch-vehicles with liftetimes longer than 25 years take themselves out of orbit or put themselves into orbits with lifetimes of less than 25 years. Currently, the success rates are closer to 5–15%. So it’s looking like we might be making the Kessler Syndrome inevitable unless the actors involved with launching satellites suddenly become much more responsible than they’ve been so far *gulp*:
“If we’re now thinking about putting another couple of thousands of satellites up there, with levels of compliance similar to what we’ve been doing so far, then we’re talking about a possible catastrophe.”
Careening towards catastrophe. That’s more or less how Stijn Lemmens describes the situation. Yes, catastrophe can be avoided, but only if all parties involved suddenly get much, much more responsible than they have been thus far:
And keep in mind that, while Lemmens suggests that SpaceX is going to be extra responsible because its going to be their own megaconstellations most at risk from a chain reaction event, that’s really only going to be the case during the lifetime of those satellites. Once the satellites are no longer in use we can’t be sure SpaceX is going to feel the same responsibility about taking them out of orbit. And while SpaceX’s Starlink satellites probably aren’t going to be in orbit for more than 25 years given their low orbits (which will make them more susceptible to orbital decay), SpaceX isn’t going to be the only player in this sector. What if some other megaconstellation operator goes out of business and stops actively managing their constellation? Will someone else step in for the rest of the planned lifetimes of those constellations to avoid catastrophic chain reaction events? Is there some sort of satellite constellation management insurance policy? In addition, as Lemmens points out, we don’t actually know yet if the current norms are actually sufficient for large constellations of satellites:
So it’s kind of a giant experiment at this point. A giant experiment that other countries have no real say over because there’s no global treaty addressing the management of space debris risks or how many satellites an individual country or company can launch. It’s up to each government to manage their own companies which, realistically, means it’s up to each company to lobby their government to get permission to do whatever they want with promises of responsible stewardship. In other words, realistically it’s the powerful industries that are going to be regulating themselves:
Finally, as Lemmens notes, humanity needs to accept the reality that the ‘space’ around Earth is a shared resource and a limited resource. There might be a lot of it, but it’s still limited:
And that’s perhaps the saddest aspect of this issue: Without a recognition that we’re dealing with a shared public good that’s a limited resource there’s no chance of us not screwing this up. And irresponsibly managing limited resources in an unsustainable manner is like a human specialty. Humanity hasn’t even demonstrated an ability to sustainably share the oceans and the rest of the Earth’s environment. Recognizing the limited nature of vast resources is simply not something humanity has instincts for so we have to learn this ‘globally shared public good management’ skill set and we clearly aren’t very good at it.
Space,
the final frontierthe final public good for us to casually trash.Here’s a story worth keeping an eye on regarding the growing interest in creating swarms of nano-satellites and the associated risks of polluting earth’s obit with space junk: France has big nano-satellite plans of its own. To protect its satellites from rival anti-satellite technology. It’s a big part of Emmanuel Macron’s recently-announced “Space Command” which will focus on satellite protection. The vision includes swarms of nano-satellites patrolling the regions around France’s main satellites. Another part of France’s new satellite protection program will involve the development of offensive anti-satellite technology, like powerful ground-based lasers, which can ostensibly be used to neutralize enemy satellites threatening France’s satellites. Some satellites might get machine guns too.
We’ll see how far along France goes with this Space Command initiative, but we can add France to the growing list of countries making major investments in satellite-based warfare which is the latest reminder that a satellite arms race that promises to flood earth’s orbit with a range of offensive and defensive satellites is already underway:
““France is not embarking on a space arms race,” Parly said, according to the publication. However, the projects outlined Thursday by French officials include swarms of nano-satellites that would patrol a few kilometers around French satellites, a ground-based laser system to blind snooping satellites, and perhaps even machine guns on board some satellites.”
Swarms of protective nano-satellites and machine guns. That’s a peak at what satellite warfare could look like in another decade. The kind of warfare that’s presumably going to create quite a bit of space junk if a space conflict actually broke out.
In related news, Chinese researchers have developed an innovative approach for cleaning up small pieces of space junk that are large enough to damage satellites but too small to easily capture and clean up: stick a powerful laser on another satellite and shoot the pieces of space junk with the laser. The idea is that the laser will cause a piece of the junk to heat up and burn off, ejecting the rest of the junk out of orbit where it will eventually burn up. This laser technology, of course, could be used to attack other satellites. It’s an example of how the technology for cleaning debris will often be dual use technology with offensive capabilities.
So at the same time we’re seeing the militarization of space create the conditions for generating massive amounts of space junk, even the space junk-cleaning technology is going to potentially be able to generate even more space junk...which is going to require the development of even more satellite defensive technology to protect against rogue junk-cleaning satellites. And if a space conflict does break out and a bunch of satellites get blown up, there’s going to be even more space junk floating around necessitating the need for even more space junk-cleaning technologies and more protective nano-satellites. Arms races of the past have tended to have ‘tit-for-tat’ self-reinforcing dynamics, but when it comes to the satellite arms race the space pollution from satellite conflicts will literally linger around in orbit and drive the arms race even more. So that’s an interesting new trend in arms races. It’s not exactly progress.
Here’s a somewhat disturbing update on SpaceX’s new Starlink ‘mega-constellation’ of thousands of sattelites and the growing risk that humanity pollutes the Earth’s orbit so much with space junk that it induces “Kessler syndrome” , the chain reaction that makes the Earth’s orbit effectively unusable: The Euoropean Space Agency (ESA) just revealed that it had to make an emergency course correction for one of its satellites, the Aeolus satellite. Why? Because one of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, Starlink44, was recently moved into a lower orbit to test out de-orbiting techniques and in the process Starlink44 ended up in a possible collision course with the Aeolus. That’s not the disturbing part. The disturbing part is that after ESA contacted SpaceX to let them know about this possible collision — which was estimated to be a 1 in 1000 chance, ten times higher than the threshold used to decide whether or not evasive actions are required — SpaceX decided not to move Starlink44, leaving it up to the ESA to decide whether or not the space agency was going to risk a collision or if they should move Aeolus. In addition, SpaceX has been bragging about the automated collision avoidance systems it built into these satellites, but that system wasn’t used in this case for unexplained reasons. So the ESA decided to take evasive action and move Aeolus. And this ambiguity on who would move their satellite, if anyone at all, was all perfectly fine and legal because there are no rules for space. While the ESA had the Aeolus in that orbit first, there’s no rule that says SpaceX was therefore obliged to move Starlink44. It’s all based on good will and cooperation.
After the following article was public, SpaceX gave an explanation for why it told the ESA it wasn’t moving the Starlink44. The way SpaceX describes it, when they were first in contact with the ESA about a possible collision the estimated probability of a collision was at 1:in 50k chance, well below the 1 in 10k threshold, and that’s when SpaceX told ESA it wasn’t moving its satellite. Later, the US Air Force updated the probability to around a 1 in 1000 chance of a collision, but a bug in SpaceX’s paging system prevented the Starlink operator from seeing the new messages about this probability increase and if the operator has seen those messages they would have coordinated with the ESA about the best options. That’s SpaceX’s story. An email bug. Who knows if the ‘bug in the paging system’ is just public relations ass covering or really happened. ESA asserts in the original article that the email they received from SpaceX informing them of the decision not to move the satellite was the first contact they had with SpaceX since the launch of Starlink despite repeated earlier attempts. So it sounds like SpaceX is making Starlink rather difficult to contact, which seems insane given the circumstances. Especially since satellite operator companies directly communicating each other appears to be how these situations get resolved.
Adding to the disturbing nature of the story is that only a small fraction of SpaceX’s planned ‘mega-constellation’ of satellites are actually in orbit at this point. Only 60 out of the planned 12,000 Starlink satellites were launched this year. Beyond that, the vast majority of those 60 satellites were moved to a higher orbit. Starlink44 was one of the few brought into a lower orbit to test de-orbiting techniques. So there was a collision risk from just a handful of the satellites from this growing mega-constellation. How many ‘uh oh’ near miss moments like this are going to happen once the full 12,000 mega-constellation is up and running, along with all the other planned mega-constellations other companies and countries have in mind?
Also keep in mind one of the perverse dynamics at work here: part of the appeal of the mega-constellations of cheap small satellites is that operation of that system is resistant to losing some of the satellites. It’s like an internet of satellites built to be robust to satellite loss. So when these potentially collisions are discovered, the operator of a mega-constellation has far more incentive to simply risk a collision and not engage in evasive maneuvers precisely because it doesn’t really matter if they lose that one satellite. There are thousands more to back them up. As a result of this dynamic, where there are no rules on who is expected to move their satellites in the event of a potential collision, these mega-constellations are going to be in a position to simply demand that everyone else move their satellites instead. Unless, of course, its the satellites from two different mega-constellations that are heading towards each other. We’ll see who ‘blinks’ happens in that case. And it’s just a matter of time before we see such a scenario unfold because we’re just at the start of the era of the mega-constellations of satellites:
““What I want is an organized way of doing space traffic. It must be clear when you have such a situation who has to react. And of course automating the system. It cannot be when we have 10,000 satellites in space that there are operators writing the email what to do. This is not how I imagine modern spaceflight.””
It’s all based on corporate communication and cooperation. That’s the current system for how satellite collisions are avoided. So it’s extra troubling to learn that SpaceX’s Starlink team has apparently been extremely difficult to contact at the same time the company starts its experiment with mega-constellations. Isn’t that exactly the time when the Starlink team should be extremely easy to contact? It’s also the kind of situation that makes the ‘bug in the paging system’ excuse by SpaceX seem more likely to be a public relationship cover story:
And despite the SpaceX plans to rapidly get this mega-constellation up to 12,000 satellites, the company remains tight-lipped on its plans for how to handle a growing number of these kinds of situations:
And if this incident is a sign of what we should expect from SpaceX, it sounds like their plan is to make it very hard to communicate with Starlink and just leave it up to the other satellite operator to move their own satellites. It’s a system based on goodwill, without the goodwill.
With great power comes great responsibility. Those were the words of wisdom don’t just apply to spider-themed superheroes. It’s kind of a meta-warning for humanity’s technological ascent.
So it’s worth noting a rhetorically similar slogan seemingly taking shape, operating as a similar, albeit ironic, warning: With great-power competition comes great opportunities. Opportunities for the greatest profits ever. Military contracting profits.
That’s the philosophy that appears to be guiding the development of what could be seen as humanity’s next grand opportunity for historical folly: the “great-powers” militarization of space. A military space race the the world has been introduced to with the militarization of the Starlink cluster of satellites for the Ukrainian military. As we’re going to see, that experience in Ukraine has militaries around the world planning on satellite clusters of their own. But it also has the US planning on a massive expansion of the military satellite cluster technology. Specifically, the application of commercially available satellite technology for the purpose of rapidly developing and deploying military-grade satellite clusters as needed. Yes, SpaceX’s Starlink is one of those commercial operators the US has in mind for this future. But SpaceX is far from the only commercial operator in this space with an eye on selling their commercial technology to the US military. In fact, the militarization of space is seen by the aerospace industry as one of the leading sectors of future profits. Future “Great-Powers competition” massive profits for years to come. In other words, Starlink was just the demo.
This is a good time to recall how we first started hearing about these plans back in 2019 for the creation of a whole new procurement paradigm for the US’s space-based military activities that would rely heavily on existing commercial space solutions. That paradigm was getting boosted by then-Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive who became the Trump administration’s point man on the development of Space Force. Plans that included the creation of a new Space Development Agency (SDA) designed around the DARPA model of relying on the commercial space for rapid acquisition and development cycles from the private sector. Lifting the normal Pentagon review process on new acquisitions was also part of the plan. A plan that was formed after months of lobbying of the Trump administration by industry aerospace lobbying groups who view a “great-power competition” in space as a path to a wave of lucrative new government contracts. And the particular new type of infrastructure this group wanted to see developed as soon as possible — dubbed “Project Blackjack” was low-orbit constellations of satellites that could by used for any upcoming conflicts with Russia or China.
This was 2019, three years before Starlink was repurposed into a key piece of dual use military hardware in Ukraine. So we shouldn’t be surprise to learn that those plans for expanding the dual use commercial space sector for military purposes have blown up too. SpaceX’s new Starshield service is just the beginning.
But as the following article describes, it’s not that the US is planning on relying increasingly on Starlink directly for military operations. Instead, it sounds like the plan is to create new specialized military-grade satellite constellations. In other words, even more low orbit satellite constellations — military grade constellations — on top of the growing number of commercial satellite constellations already in the works.
Interestingly, it also sounds like part of the impetus for the separate “Starshield”-brand of satellites came from SpaceX itself, with originally planned to sell Starlink communications as a commercial service to the US Department of Defense (DoD), “but think they’re finding that that’s harder than they thought.” At the same time, SpaceX views Starshield as a potentially lucrative new avenue for making larger, more customized satellites.
And as the article also describes, SpaceX is merely the leading player in this sector but far from the only player. A number of commercial satellite companies are planning dual use satellite clusters of their own. All with an eye on the massive and growing new government contracts they expect as the current “Great Powers competition” continues its orbital migration.
So while the Pentagon appears to be embracing the commercial space sector as an avenue of both faster development cycles and lower costs, the sector itself is seeing this all as a grand opportunity for larger, more lucrative government contracts. We’ll see with ‘vision’ wins out. But one thing is abundantly clear: “space” is poised to become an increasingly ironic term when referring Earth’s ever-more-cluttered militarized orbital battlefields. Also, massive obscene profits will be made in the process. That’s also pretty damn clear at this point:
“Like other commercial players, SpaceX is eyeing opportunities fueled by the United States’ “great-power competition” with China and Russia. A U.S. national defense strategy document the Pentagon released in October calls China a “pacing challenge” that threatens to surpass the United States in defense and space technologies. To win this race, DoD intends to tap commercial innovation.”
The unfolding Military Space Race: It’s the predicted next phase of the unfolding “great-power competition” geopolitical landscape. A space race the Pentagon is planning on winning by relying increasingly on commercial providers already expanding their space-based services for the civilian sector. Commercial space solutions for military purposes. As John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, put it, the integration of commercial space into military operations is “the way of the future...It’s pretty clear now that the department doesn’t have to build its own constellation for every mission set to introduce resilience.” So it sounds like the application of existing ‘dual use’ civilian space infrastructure is the Pentagon’s big plans for this space race. Plans entirely consistent with the vision laid out back in 2019 by then-Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and the creation of the SDA. The plan is for a space-based ‘Cold War’-style spending spree for decades to come. Or, as Even Rogers, a former U.S. Air Force space operations officer, put it, “Defense is where the big growth is going to be because of the strategic competition with Russia and China. What the DoD wants is defense technologies at the innovation rate of commercial technologies. That’s the Holy Grail.”:
Notably, it sounds like Starshield isn’t just going to build separate satellite clusters for the US military. Those satellites are also expected to be larger and more powerful. It’s another trend to keep an eye on: the militarization of satellite clusters is probably going to result in larger satellites overall. And more clutter, presumably, when these satellites face an attack:
And yet, as this explosion in defense-related commercial satellites continues, there’s the yet-to-be-resolved issues surrounding the fact that this trend is increasingly turning commercial civilian space infrastructure into legitimate military targets. Issues like what kind of compensation should civilian satellite operators get should their systems come under military attack as a result. How viable is it for companies to simultaneously operate as a global service provider with customers around the world at the same time they operate as US military contractors? It doesn’t sound like these tensions have actually been worked out:
And that why this “great-power competition” doubles as both one of greatest business opportunity of our times but also one of the greatest business gambles. The commercial space sector is militarizing itself in the pursuit of lucrative military contractor profits. What are the long-term implications of that? Time will tell. Specifically, enough time to allow the planned space-based military conflicts of the future to play out.
The militarization of Earth’s low orbit space is already a reality. The conflict in Ukraine and key role played by the Starlink satellite clusters have made that reality abundantly clear. But as the following Financial Times excerpt from last month warns us, there’s no reason that reality is going to be a static situation. As the reports on Starlink’s new “Starshield” military-grade satellite clusters for the US military make clear, the proliferation of satellite clusters is an evolving dynamic situation. And that’s soon going to include nation satellite clusters built by countries like Taiwan explicitly for the purpose of surviving a military conflict. That’s Taiwan’s response to the successful use of Starlink by Ukraine: Taiwan wants a Starlink system of its own. And not just Taiwan. Neighbors like Japan, South Korea, and Australia are looking into building satellite clusters of their own. Clusters that can presumably withstand military attacks.
And that brings us to the warnings in the second article excerpt below. Warnings issued almost two years ago by researchers examining one of the other potential side effects we can expect from this low orbit satellite explosion: upper atmosphere aluminum pollution. Yep, we’re changing the chemical composition of the upper atmosphere thanks to all of these aluminum-rich low-orbit satellites. Every time a satellite returns to Earth and burns up, some of that aluminum ends up burning off and lingering in the atmosphere. Like so much of the pollution humanity produces, it was tolerable in small amounts. Not so much at an industrial scale.
So what are the possible consequences of this upper atmosphere aluminum pollution? Well, for starters, aluminum catalyzes the destruction of ozone. So this could literally chemically destroy the ozone layer. Will it be a low-grade slow destruction? Or will the ozone layer get blown out of the sky in one giant military conflict that sends thousands of satellites plunging through the atmosphere? We’ll find out, but ozone layer destruction is now on the menu.
But there’s another possible aluminum side effect and this is where the situation gets really dark: it turns out flooding the upper atmosphere with aluminum has actually been proposed as a solution to climate change. Yes, adding aluminum changes the atmospheric albedo in a way that results in more light scattering and getting reflected back out into space. Now, experts have long warned that this would be a wildly dangerous experiment to attempt with all sorts of possible side effects (like ozone holes, perhaps?) But there’s no denying that plenty of industries and governments would love to find a ‘solution’ to climate change as simple as polluting the atmosphere with heavy metals.
And that’s the ominous situation unfolding above us: there’s an out-of-control low-orbit space race that’s only just getting started. An out-of-control space race that’s like a recipe for eventual out-of-control space junk disasters that will only be ultimately ‘resolved’ by the reentry of large volumes of aluminum-rich space junk. A ‘resolution’ that might ‘fix’ climate change or might destroy the ozone layer. Or maybe both. It’s not exactly the kind of moral/intellectual challenge humanity is ready to handle. But we’re going to plow ahead anyway, as always, damn the consequences.
Ok, first, here’s a look at Taiwan’s new satellite cluster ambitions. Ambitions that include building that cluster and then using it to withstand a Chinese attack. In other words, ambitions to build another satellite cluster military target to share Earth’s low orbit:
“The project is part of Taiwan’s broader efforts to build communications infrastructure that could survive an attack by China. Beijing claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has made increasing threats over the use of force to bring the country under its control.”
Taiwan isn’t just planning on building its own satellite cluster. It’s planning on building a satellite cluster that will survive an expected Chinese attack. In other words, Taiwan is building a military target. The kind of military target that will hopefully withstand whatever China throws at it.
So is this going to be a domestically-built platform? Not entirely. We’re already hearing that Taiwan has approached Silicon Valley firm Draper Associates — an early investor in SpaceX and Tesla — to build the satellite cluster. Recall the interesting pedigree of Draper Associates: Tim Draper was the financier behind an effort to split California into six states. And Draper’s grandfather, William H. Draper Jr., was deeply involved in both the inter-war industrial investments in Germany and the post-war building of the country. William’s cousin, Wyckliff, was the chief financial backer of the eugenicist Pioneer Fund. That’s the guy Taiwan is looking to partner with to build its version of Starlink:
And as the article notes, this is just the start for national satellite clusters. Japan, South Korea, and Australia are also interested in clusters of their own. It’s going to get crowded up there:
And that projected explosion in national satellite clusters brings us to a report from back in June of 2021 about the projections of another kind of orbital explosion: an explosion of upper atmosphere pollution. Not the pollution of space junk that threatens to spiral out of control (Kessler’s Syndrome) in the event of a physical attack on the satellites. No, these experts were warning about a potentially far more damaging form of pollution: chemical pollution from reentering satellites that ends up changing the chemical composition of the upper atmosphere. In particular, a significant increase in aluminum resulting from the aluminum-rich satellites plummeting back down to earth.
Keep in mind that one of the assurances we’ve heard from the industry on why we needn’t be overly worried about the possibility of these satellite clusters spiraling out of control is that they are in low orbit, so if they fall out of their prescribed orbit they’re likely just going to harmlessly fall back to earth and break up in the atmosphere. In fact, these satellites are operated at such a low orbit that solar storms can effectively knock them out of orbit by causing the atmosphere to temporarily expand outward
So what happens if the reentry processes isn’t actually harmless? That’s the big ecological question looming over the explosion of satellite clusters. But it’s not just a question for the ecology of the upper atmosphere (yes, there’s an ecosystem up there). There’s a far greater danger that could pose a risk to nearly all the life on earth: aluminum catalyzes the destruction of the ozone layer.
Yes, humanity found a new way to destroy the ozone layer: satellite-reentry aluminum pollution. It’s a thing. A small thing when there aren’t very many satellites reentering very often. But what happens when there are tens of thousands low orbit satellites operating in clusters? And what happens in the event of a military conflict that threatens to take down entirely fleets of satellites? Or a Kessler’s Syndrome scenario of out-of-control space junk? What are the consequences to the ozone layer and, in turn, life on earth?
Oh, but there’s more: it turns out there’s another side effect from polluting the upper atmosphere with aluminum: the albedo of the atmosphere will change, in turn change the amount of sunlight that reaches earth. In fact, changing the earth’s albedo has been one of the proposed geoengineering ‘solutions’ to climate change. A proposal that experts have long warned could have disastrous unknown side effects. That global geoengineering experiment is now poised to happen.
So the risks of polluting the upper atmosphere include both destroying the ozone layer and also, maybe, helping to reduce global warming. It’s about as dangerous a set of incentives we could come up with:
“For years, the space community was content with the fact that the amount of material that burns in the atmosphere as a result of Earth’s encounters with meteoroids far exceeds the mass of defunct satellites meeting the same fate. Even the rise of megaconstellations won’t change that. The problem, however, is in the different chemical composition of natural meteoroids compared to artificial satellites, according to Aaron Boley, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of British Columbia, Canada.”
It’s like a whole new frontier for humanity to spoil: we’re trashing the upper atmosphere with our satellite space trash. Aluminum-rich space trash that threatens to change the chemical composition of the upper atmosphere. What could possibly wrong?
And note the disturbingly tempting possible side effect of this aluminum pollution: it effectively mimics one of the proposed geoengineering ‘solutions’ to climate change by altering the albedo of the upper atmosphere and cause more sunlight to get reflected by out into space. That insane experiment could become a reality thanks to the mass upper atmosphere satellite pollution trend now underway:
But potentially ‘fixing climate change’ is just one of the side effects from this from pollution. There’s the other side effect from all this additional aluminum in the atmosphere that experts have already identified: destroying the ozone layer. Yep, we’ve found a new way to blow holes in the ozone layer:
Finally, let’s also keep in mind one of the biggest warnings from the past on this giant experiment unfolding in orbit: these were warnings about the risks associated with the existing satellite clusters. The warnings don’t even account for the projected explosion of satellite clusters in coming years. In other words, we’re on the cusp of an orbital pollution crisis that experts can see coming but no one is going to stop:
And let’s not forget one of the other major scenarios that weren’t accounted for in those warnings: space warfare that ends up de-orbiting large numbers of satellites. Or, worse, the triggering of Kessler’s Syndrome and the consequences of an out-of-control cascade of space junk. Consequences that would obviously include littering the upper atmosphere with a deluge of aluminum and other exotic metals.
Also keep in mind the “Starshield” program of military-grade satellite clusters SpaceX is already building for the US military. Military-grade customized satellites that will quite possibly include more mass and more exotic metals.
Don’t look up. And try to avoid looking in any direction outside other than down after we blow out the ozone layer.
Following up on the near collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the questions swirling around what role, if any, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund may have played in sparking the bank run, here’s a pair of articles that give us some insights into the events that lead up to the Treasury Department’s decision to intervene and prevent a collapse on Sunday:
First, Axios has a new report giving an apparent insider account of the internal deliberations that took place inside the Founders Fund on the morning of last Thursday. It was later that morning that the Fund began reaching out to its porftolio of companies, advising them to move funds out of the bank. Founders Fund is now telling Axios that Peter Thiel was not at all involved in that decision. Or, more precisely, Thiel was not part of the conversation between the fund’s top officers that morning.
Yep, that’s the narrative now: Thiel was out of the loop! This is a good time to recall how the mystery of what led up to this bank run includes the fact that the whole thing appears to have started with a Feb 23rd investor newsletter that first started raising red flags about the financial health of the bank. In other words, if planning was required to trigger a bank run run, there was indeed plenty of time to plan it. And now the Founders Fund is attempting to imply to the world that Thiel wasn’t part of this fateful decision at all. It’s the kind of highly convenient narrative that points towards a cover up.
And that brings us to the second article excerpt below from Defense One about another dimension to this story that we have to keep in mind: SVB was effectively operating as a kind of national security defense contractor financier. Yes, it turns out a large number of its clients are operating in the national security space. So much so that the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) — the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley outreach agency — was actively planning on emergency measures that would have kept a number of national security-related firms afloat has SVB been allowed to collapse.
Now, as we’ve seen, that collapse wasn’t allowed to happen. The Treasury stepped in. And that raises the question: to what extent was the national security angle to this story a factor in the Treasury Department’s decision to prevent a collapse? In turn, we have to ask: was the SVB really ‘Too Big to Fail’ in terms of the potential impact of its collapse on the financial system, which is an assertion many have questioned? Or was it ‘too big too fail’ for the Pentagon? And if it was indeed effective ‘too big too fail’, was this status known by figures like Thiel in advance of the near-collapse? These are some of the questions now swirling around what is turning out to be a highly peculiar bail out that still has a number of observers scratching their heads trying to figure out what just happened.
Ok, first, here’s that Axios piece on the narrative the Founders Fund is now putting out there. A narrative that laughably appears to leave Peter Thiel completely out of the loop:
“Behind the scenes: By Thursday morning, Founders Fund’s top operations executives were on the phone, quickly deciding to move firm capital to a number of bigger banks. Firm founder Peter Thiel was not part of the conversation.”
LOL! Peter Thiel was apparently too busy or something. It’s the kind of narrative that just screams “What’s under this rock?”
And that brings us to the following Defense One piece about another curious aspect to this whole story: the SVB wasn’t just the Founders Fund’s bank of choice for its portfolio of companies. It was the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley bank of choice too:
““It was a busy weekend, for sure,” Michael Madsen, acting director of the organization that acts as conduit between startups and the military, said Tuesday at a Reagan Institute event in Washington.”
As we might imagine, it was a “busy weekend” for Michael Madsen, acting director of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). As we’ve seen, the DIU is one part of the Pentagon’s so-called Research & Engineering Enterprise that also includes DARPA, the Missile Defense Agency, and the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO). And as we also saw, it was the DIU that was touting the readily-available capabilities of the SpaceX Starlink satellite cluster for use in Ukraine almost after the start of the conflict last year. So it turns out the DIU’s portfolio of commercial ventures was heavily reliant on the SVB. In other words, while the SVB may or may not have been ‘too big to fail’ from a financial systemic standpoint, it was way too big to fail from a national security perspective:
And as the CEO of one defense contractor put it, this whole near meltdown event isn’t just a crisis. It’s an opportunity. An opportunity to rethink the kind of role SVB could play in financing the development of new national security technologies. A more direct role that could transform SVB from a bank into something more like a direct technology incubator:
Is that the future of the new ‘reformed’ SVB? Some sort of direct technology incubator for national security-related technologies? Time will tell. But it’s going to be worth keeping in mind that, should such a transformation happen, it probably wouldn’t have happened were it not for the still-mysterious near-meltdown of a bank that we only belatedly discovered was too-big-too-fail.