Off-Nominal - 157 - Assuming States are Rational (with Laura Delgado López)

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Jake and Anthony are joined by Laura Delgado López, Visiting Fellow at the Americas Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to talk about Latin American space policy.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 157 - Assuming States are Rational (with Laura Delgado López) - YouTubeSpace security in the Americas can no longer go overlooked - SpaceNewsWhat Are the Implications of Peru Joining the Artemis Accords?Follow LauraLaura Delgado Lopez | LinkedInCSIS Americas (@CSISAmericas) / XFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Hello, on a Tuesday live-to-tape version of Off Nominal. Hi, everybody. I know how to start recorded episodes, Jake? But how are you doing? Good, good. I'm good. I've got a busy week going on.

I'm traveling next week, and there's like a lot of prep going on. There's other stuff going on. So I'm like really happy to just kind of put that outside this room for a second and talk about space for an hour. Let me tell you that much. I'm pumped and, yeah, I'm pretty excited about this show, Jake. This was one. Yeah. We had planned for a little while.

So you got to give us the rundown on how we ended up here. Yeah. Yeah. So we have Laura deGaldo Lopez with us today. And I heard Laura on the space policy edition podcast, Casey Dreyer, our bud, Casey. He's got a great podcast. And you were talking about a whole other thing. But I thought it was an interesting conversation.

I looked you up and saw that you are doing this whole project, this whole like, I guess it's a sabbatical or something about space. in Latin America. And I am someone who's interested in space and having to live in Latin America. And I was like, this is a niche topic that I feel like I have a duty to bring onto our show. And so I would just immediately, I was like,

I got a call her. So welcome, Laura. Oh, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, yeah. So it'll be kind of a weird show. I'm going to try really hard not to like just saying a bunch of Spanish words. I said I'm going to try it on to do it.

Oh, you didn't say that was off the table. So if they're closing up to Italian, I will keep So it's okay. In front of other white people, I sound awesome in Spanish and then I get in front of an actual Spanish speaker and then I probably look like a complete idiot. So we'll see. I'll leave it too. It works both ways.

Like my parents or other native Spanish speakers will comment on how my English doesn't have an accent and I'm like, hmm. Thank you though. I like the accent, but I do have an accent. I recognize it. I will say though, I was at Starbucks yesterday and I worked order to drink and the barista told me that my Spanish was good and he said he was surprised based on what I looked like.

And I feel like that is like a big win for me. You know, like, you know, I was pretty excited. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a pre-recorded show because I'm traveling. And so it's a weird time. It's the middle of the day early for me as 10 a.m.

I think you guys are about lunchtime. But so our drinks might be a little different, but I don't know. Do you want to go around the table? kind of show what we're going. Maybe Laura, why don't you start us off? I saw you had something pretty cool there. Yes, I have tea, which, you know, it's awesome. But I really like this mug.

One of my best friends gave it to me, and it's a Scrabble mug, and you know it's a Scrabble mug, because it's got all the, you know, points in the back. Point values. But for space people, it's a Lagrange Point mug. So. It's the best dual-use item of all time. It just depends which way you point it,

and you've got a whole different market. Yeah, exactly. That's fantastic. Cool. I'm rocking a cappuccino today. I don't know if we can get, can I get into the top part of it there? That's good phone. Influencer of you, yeah.

You made yourself. I made a self, yeah. I got one of those like semi-fancy ninja coffee makers. It's like it's as nice as you want to get before you just have to buy an espresso machine, right? It's like that. Yeah. I always, that sounds so cool to have it home. And then I'm like, do I want to be like?

a high pressure plumber for the rest of my life because I feel like you're just going to be running that machine for air and you're now that's a whole new thing to take on this is a great middle ground because it's like pretty much just a coffee machine but it's got a little milk frother that you can just attach and rinse when you're done perfect it's lovely I'm on I mean I guess per the the drink that I have big on figuring out the ROI of coffee and the time investment that you're putting in but this I was like Jake are we drinking on the show and then I forgot that it was 10 a.m. your time so I grabbed out of my fridge, a la Cologne cold brew can that I had in there still, which was nice

because I, on a minute pivot from what am I going to drink? But I am drinking us out of a Yeti that the crew at SE sent me at some point, SpaceExpressure Engineering. So. Nice mug. I think they sent this to me to use at the Space Symposium last year, but it is like a daily use. I'm actually surprised at something. Usually my wife steals us to take the work, so I should probably take the space thing.

She used her work recording. I'm honestly surprised she takes space nerd things to work out of the house. But I guess she's growing into Mora of a space fan these days. You probably have to look pretty hard at that mug to notice that it's a space thing. Yeah, well, I always joke with the crew over there that they own, they own s e.com, c.com. And I'm like, you guys, I know you bought this domain when the internet was like nothing, but like, you might want to shop that around a little bit. That's cool. Yeah. That's their exit strategy.

When they're ready to retire, they just sell the domain and they're done. Whatever vision startup is happening at the moment, you know. Jeez. Yeah. Anyway, all right. So we're well caffeinated on this show. It's going to be a higher energy. Higher energy.

So let's talk about space policy. I love it. Uppers instead of downers this time. Yeah. That's good. Okay, so I'm having trouble trying to figure out where to start because like, it was like, oh, space in Latin America is like not a small topic. That's like a very large broad.

There's a lot of places we can go with that. So I guess maybe where, where we should kind of go is like tell us a bit about yourself and this the project you're working on and we'll use that as a nice framework so who is laura delgado lopez um so hi everyone and i have been in the dc area 15 years i'm from porto rico originally and i studied political science undergrad and then moved to dc and went to the george washington university space policy institute which you may have heard of um and then started working in in space and i I worked in different, so nonprofits, like Secure World Foundation, which may also be familiar with, industry. I worked for Harris before it became L3 Harris,

and then ended up at NASA, and there I'm a policy analyst in a policy team within the Science Mission Directorate. But as you were saying earlier, I'm on a sabbatical this year, not working for NASA this year, I put away my pins to do research. So when I was in grad school,

I was trying to figure out what to focus on, because as you know, space can be super, super, super broad, but then you need to pick a few things to really go deep and invest your time in. So I was starting to read about developments in Latin America in terms of space, and I would hear stories about China and cooperation with Brazil, for example, and Bolivia and Venezuela.

And I admit, I almost like intentionally shut that off. I was like, I don't want to just go there because I speak Spanish. Like, I don't need to care about this because I'm from the region. And so I started dabbling into other topics and it kept coming back. And so I can't escape it. I can't escape it. And then I started, I realized I could read documents in Portuguese, even though my Portuguese is, you know, a little rusty.

And it kept coming back. And I started noticing a trend that, you know, what little discussion there was about developments in Latin America tended to focus only on this story of China and Latin America. And I knew very little about what else was going on in these countries, but then also who else were they partnering with and why and that type of thing. And so eventually, before my final year, I was like, okay, let's just accept who I am. And also, importantly, accept that these developments are relevant on their own, regardless of. whether I care about them or not. And then sort of, you know, faced it head on and made that the focus of my kind of final project

that I turned into a paper that I published in space policy, trying to say, sure, there is some great power politics dynamics, you know, US v China going on, but that doesn't tell me anything about why a country in Latin America is saying yes or no to different partners. And so trying to kind of examine things from that. standpoint. And so that was a good, wow, it was 19, 2012 maybe when it was published. So it was a while ago. And obviously, things have kept evolving and changing. And, you know, in some of the work I was

doing at NASA, I started looking at, you know, emerging partnerships and, you know, Artemis Accords had come out and all that stuff. And I was like, you know, I wish I had time and resources and, you know, support to be able to revisit this whole question, maybe broaden it a little bit. And so that's what motivated the project I applied to a fellowship called the International Affairs Fellowship, funded by the Council of Foreign Relations. That's a think tank here in D.C. And was incredibly fortunate to win one of the fellowships. And so this year I'm funded by them. But it's really cool because you get to pick where to go. And so I picked the Americas program here at the Center for Strategic International Studies. I wanted to, you know, one of my assumptions

going in was as much as space people, we love to think everything begins and ends of space, I wanted to just really look at issues from a regional lens and really put them in context, and then, you know, from there, understand what was going on in space rather than the other way around. And so, and so, yeah, long story short, that was, I got here in September. I have a couple more months left. I'm actually writing my final kind of longer paper now. and you know glad for the break because i'm in that you know pit of the spare the country yeah yes um where you forget why you're even doing this um but um but yeah no

so it's been really good i've i've sort of proven out some of my theories and we'll kind of talk about that with some specifics but um i've also one of my other goals was as you were kind of hinting you know there's very little known especially covered in english of developments in the the region. And so I wanted to, you know, do podcasts, do talks, do presentations and interviews and stuff and have found a lot of interest. And so it's been really cool to be able to do that and say, hey, you know, pay attention. There's a lot going on. Yeah, yeah. It is hard to find that information. Like, and even, you know, because I, I try to go looking for it and I'm, you know, I will, I will try and read Spanish news coverage of things that are happening here. And I still have

trouble even just trying to find, like, where they're talking about it, if they're talking about it at all. You know, it's a pretty, it's a much more niche topic. I'm mostly looking in Mexico, so I don't know how much this applies to other things, but it's a niche topic here for sure, right? And so just trying to understand what's happening. You get these little glimmers. Like every once in a while, it's like something will just like come up across my desk. This is like, oh, there's someone, you know, this student from Yucatan who went to Mexico City

and he's studying and he's got a, you know, a co-investigator on an instrument that's going all the way to tighten or something. You're like, wow, this is like, they're doing it. They're here. And then you'd never hear from that person again or what's going on. And it's like, it's a bit evaporates and it's hard. It's hard to trace activities from beginning to end. And you do end up in a lot of rabbit holes.

Then there's also different governments and different organizations have different standards and practices when it comes to like publishing and updating stuff online, which I think we take for granted a little bit. But then also a lot gets lost in translation, which surprises even me a little bit. So one of the stories that I'm examining in my work is, this Latin American Space Agency, which you may have heard of, I'll say is the acronym ALCE. And there will be some that you might have found in Spanish in Mexico, because Mexico is one of the big proponents of this effort. And it's got a long history that we can get into. But the point is that even though it was announced in 2021 and like 2020, I believe, countries

signed on, you know, decided, hey, we're going to do this. One of the provisions was that you needed to have at least 11 countries formally ratify it, you know, go through like the Senate and all that, before it became operational. So it's not operational yet. Hmm. It doesn't have, it's got 10, you know, it's been chugging along, and so it's got 10,

and the expectation is it'll start operations this year. But if you read, I went to a talk some months ago, and I won't say which organization, but they were talking about it as if it were a done deal. And I'm like, it's not. Now I don't blame them, it's kind of hard. You got to talk to a bunch of people and do a lot of research. But it's one of those things that you read one article a few years ago that said,

hey, we're going to launch this thing. You assume it's done. It's out there. And it's not yet. There's a nuance there about it was announced and it's sort of, it exists as an effort, but it doesn't exist as an organization quite yet. Is that supposed to be like an ESA style organization where it's got the quirks of having to be, an organization run by a bunch of different governments

so there are times at which there would be these big what do they call them in the ministerial meetings that Issa has and would it function like that once it's up and running? So that's the dream. There's no details yet as to how it will operate and affect things like that. Like for example, what the model is to fund it, that type of thing. But one of the things it's trying to do is, yes,

give people a home, experts a home in the region so that the region can talk about doing things together, A, so for example, one concrete idea I've heard a few times is Latin America doesn't have weather satellites. So they rely on weather data collected by NOAA here in the United States and some other data collected by Europe, et cetera. And so, you know, a weather satellite is something that may not make sense for a single, you know, country, but could make sense for,

for the region, right? So there's that, but then the other rationale is, you know, there's no single point of contact official entity for others, right? So other countries I want to cooperate or other companies or that type of thing. And so the hope is that I'll say will help fix that. I get into a little bit of that in my paper. I have, you know, some concerns. I have some doubts because, you know, when you look at developments in the region,

and even politically, there is no such regional organization. If you look at Europe, they had the European Union, right? So there's a history of countries kind of giving up certain sovereignty. Organizations, yeah. You don't have that in Latin America. At any one time, you could have up to 30 kind of regional entities. And so, you know, you see countries kind of picking among them for certain issues and all that. And so, you know, I think some of that, some of those debates and kind of tensions will come up in the space agency.

But anyway, so that is some of the point of it. Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting to think of like, in some ways, this topic feels very much like it's the 1970s again, where it's like there's these two like superpowers in the world that are espousing some sort of ideology. and they're like, they're like collecting countries and like trying to bring them all in and be like, oh, no, you're on this team or you're on this team. And it's like, it's obviously different now, but we have this sort of like, you know, with China and the U.S. now we have the Artemis Accords and the research station, the lunar research station. And they're doing the same thing. They're collecting countries, right? And they're kind of going around. And so, you know, looking at some of this,

seeing how Latin America is kind of splitting or sometimes playing both sides, which is kind of interesting. And there's a lot of like, like, there's a lot of similar themes here. This is a story that we kind of know, but is also very new. You know, it's very interesting. There's one other aspect, though, which is that there's been recent comments from people who have, like, you know, the ILRS paperwork is not officially out there for anyone to read, but there's been people that have either seen it or been aware of it. And they're like, it's not that different.

Like, there's a lot of stuff that is in common here. So it's kind of annoying because it's like, can we just figure out like the one thing that where you don't agree on? And then just like, we don't have to, I mean, the state dinners are probably nice for people. So I'm not sure the state dinners will stop. But, you know, maybe it'll be less of a thing that I would keep score. of from time to time. Yeah, I've heard that too.

And as I wrote in a paper, I wrote for CSIS recently about Peru joining the Accords. I think Peru one might be the first country that technically could do both because they're a member of Apsco, the Asia Pacific, I shouldn't start spelling out unless I'm certain. I've got it. Asia Pacific space cooperation organization. Yes. Who, Absco. They've been a very active member of Apscoe.

They hosted a meeting there last year, and their absco signed an MOU with China, with a Chinese national space agency on ILRs. And so I think technically, Peru becomes one of the, maybe more who is able to do both, right? So I will say, I think, and again, this is very consistent with a foreign policy of countries in the region, especially Brazil.

They definitely don't want to be caught picking sides. Like they, they, they, I think some choices are in fact driven by that, by that disbalancing act. They call it hedging. And so there's a big rejection against this idea that if, if you cooperate with with the US on one hand, you can't cooperate with China and the other. And so in that way, it is a little different, but I do think a lot of the narrative around it is certainly pitted against US, US, China or, you know, West East type of thing. Europe's playing that game too. They're flirting with the idea of doing Chinese cooperation as well, right?

Yeah, and I, you know, I think there's certainly room for that. When you look at the region, so, for example, Brazil is really interesting. Brazil cooperates with the United States on space situational awareness type of things through their military space activities. on the civil side, science side, Brazil has been cooperating with China on something called the China-Brazil Earth Research satellite system for decades. They've launched six satellites, five successfully, to monitor deforestation and that type of thing. And so I think the Chinese cooperation is more significant, but that doesn't have to be the case, right?

That could change. So when you look at tactical, not tactical, specific, specific, types of cooperation, you see them again. They're going to intentionally want to do both and not close off any doors. Other actors that I think are like that are like the UAE. Yeah, yeah, for sure. India a little bit too, right? They kind of like try not to try to make science, right?

Yeah. Exactly. One of the things you mentioned a little while ago was around the weather satellite issue. I feel like that was a good example of like a larger situation generally. I think space is a good example of it where, because of the way that the space industry developed from its roots back in the day and the way that it developed from that point forward and also the level of investment it takes to do things in space. There's a weird moment where, like, you know, countries might want to kind of start a whole space industry internally or develop some capabilities, but they have to pick and choose what the right things to apply that effort are because you can't do it everywhere because everything's, there's just too much, there's too much space these days. So it's like, you kind of want to pick, are we going to do, you know, are we a country whose geography leans in the direction that communications would be really helpful to have that as a homegrown capability?

Or do we think we have something unique in the weather satellite area? But then at the same time, you're looking at, well, what can I buy services from a Starlink or a one web or something? Or what can I get for free from NOAA on the goes data? And there's this weird environment where there are these really developed things that you could either buy commercially or get from other governments. So how do you like from the countries that you've interacted with so far, what is the tipping point when they realize, oh, we actually should pull this one asset to be a homegrown capability? How do they pick what that is and where to start? That is a great question. And I think you're sort of assuming that states are rational.

I'd love to, but they're not. You know, what I've seen is, especially in emerging space ecosystems, they're very disparate and fractured. And so you get decisions made by certain parts of that community, and maybe those certain parts get more authority, you know, at a given time in history. And then so the decisions they make kind of continue or they get, you know, canceled by others, et cetera. But the point is that when you look at some of these programs, especially the ones that have been around for decades, and I'll give some examples because we've kind of been hinting of them. But it's not as logical as, oh, we want to have a space program.

This is our niche. You know, I wish it was like that. I think there's some interest. There's some, you know, really smart people in some of these countries that are trying to pivot to that and look at different models. Sometimes I think it actually hurts them sometimes. to just continually refer to, say, NASA or the U.S. space program big picture. And I'm like, yeah, but you don't have the same goals.

So why would you be looking at, you know, maybe you should be looking at Canada, right? Or some model that might be more, you know, more relevant. But I wish they were having some of those discussions, right? What you see is, you know, and there's some good literature on this. You know, there's the work on the Space Club that comes up to the space plug, the space technology ladder, all those things. There are certain technologies that are associated with having made it as a space nation, right? And so you get some of the older actors, so Argentina and Brazil, their space activity started day one in the 60s, started in the 60s, started in the military beginnings, thing back to, you know, early nuclear ambitions. and eventually those efforts were separated,

and so you have civilians-based agencies that get established around the 90s. But both those countries have, with slightly different areas of emphasis, have had long-standing interest in developing indigenous capabilities from A to C. So launch vehicle, Brazil, for example, has a very successful sounding rocket program and has been trying to develop a launch vehicle, an orbital launch vehicle for some time. Same with Argentina. But then owning what they call owning the full satellite development cycle,

and they've both reached that in the sense that they've designed, developed, integrated, tested, launch, excuse me, all the way up to launch as satellites, right? So they still have, you know, ambitions in those directions. unliked to get there anytime soon, just because, again, the context they're living in, very limited investment of resources and that type of thing. But I put them in one bucket.

Then there are other countries that are trying to look more, more narrowly, right? More subset of capabilities. You know, I think of Chile, Chile started. Chile is really interesting because they started by buying, procuring satellites for Earth observations from the commercial European companies at the time commercial sector. And then they operated them, right, to then access data and learn how to use it.

And now they're talking about, okay, wait, we want to have some of these capability ourselves. And so they now have a system that relies on the technology transfer concept of, okay, we'll buy the first satellite from you. The second one, you kind of teach us. And then over time, we'll be able to run. That's the UAE model too, right? And they do that with Korea. Yeah.

So it's interesting that it went kind of the other direction. I've had some conversations with some Chilean folks. And I do think it also matters that the Chilean expertise still is in the military. They have a civil, military kind of governance framework. That's institutional framework. That's kind of like a space council. It doesn't have its own funding or anything like that. It's more of a coordinating body.

but it's meant to represent both defense and civil needs. But the expertise, because of the history of the program, still isn't the military. And to them, I would say, you know, you could launch and you could access a lot of these capabilities in the market. Yeah, but, you know, that's not autonomy, right? We want to have autonomy. So I think that does stem back from the very early beginning

of how we've always thought about space as strategic area and all those things. So some of that is kind of hard to let go. My dream is, yeah, that some of the smaller countries think Costa Rica, you know, Guatemala, et cetera, that they do find their niche and just become experts in that and become a leader in the region. I feel like that's like such a good opportunity to study that idea too. Like I personally am very obsessed with the idea of like trying to answer the question of why the hell do we do anything in space. Like what is the point? Like I'm always like, I think we should we should always be asking that question just like 24.

And I think with something like with the United States and Russia, they were so early and it was like a mad dash. It's just like, we don't know what space is for. We just think it's going to be important. We want to beat those guys to like build literally everything. We're like we're just going to just throw so much money this and build all the things that there are. And then you have the infrastructure. And the momentum of that, we're still riding that momentum. And so in some ways, it's hard to look at something like the United States and be like,

oh, well, they're building rockets, so building rockets is important. It's like, is it, though? Like, if you're a new country today is building a rocket important, I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is, but I feel like these new countries can help us answer that in some way. I completely agree. Actually, rationales was one of the things I first started looking at. And I think you started with this too. So I compare even a country like Brazil today, which, you know, Brazil sees itself as a major player in the international realm.

Certainly as a regional leader, but also as a country that deserves a seat at the table. For example, they want it to be on the UN Security Council, things like that. So even a country like that, when you read it space plans, it says, oh, we need to get back to societal benefit. Like they almost, and if you read, you know, you hear the head of the space agency today talking about Arnames, he's like, we're not interested in astronauts. We're not doing this for that. We're going to do science. They have a project called Selenita. They have another one that's tied to agriculture that they're pitching as a contribution to Artemis.

And they're like, it's going to have to do with growing things because agriculture is so important for us today. And so, and I think that comes from two things. I think that comes from just the time we're living now. I don't find prestige-oriented rationales compelling. me as a space professional. I think a lot of people don't. Now, that doesn't mean that they don't work. They're just compelling at a very particular time in history for certain people.

I think today there's others rationales that are compelled, that people find compelling. And then also, again, you're struggling to kind of link space to other needs, other priorities. And so you can't really argue it for other reasons. It has to be linked. And plus, as you were saying, you see that the U.S. has been able in other countries, India, they reference India a lot. For example, they're like, oh, you know, Indian invested in space, it helped with its economy, it helped with jobs, you know, prevent brain drain, that type of thing.

And they've been able to accrue all these other benefits. That's what we want. It's not so much, oh, we're going to be the first, we want to plan a flag. No, no, we want the applications, we want the societal benefit, that type of thing. And I'll end saying what I find really fascinating is that it's not enough to say, oh, it's just because you're in developing country economically. You don't have the money to afford prestige. No, because you know, Sweden is the same.

You read the Swedish national kind of space plans. It begins with we want to invest in space to derive economic and societal benefit. And I don't think anyone would argue Sweden needs money to feed its people or anything like that. they're doing okay they got like yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah it is funny though

that like you know you're saying maybe rockets aren't the right start for some of these countries and like I mean just look at the map I'm like damn that's some good coastline for spaceports

I don't think there's a better continent on this earth for space ports you know like we're trying to be aware to jam them and not overfly stuff and it's like what if I shaped it exactly like launching off

into all the good directions and left no one around you anywhere else nearby. It's like, yeah. You know, hard to get to some of those spots, but they certainly aim their direction. Yeah, there's a lot of energy for that. Brazil has a launch site that's only two degrees south of the equator, El-Cantra launch center. And then there's at least, I've heard of at least four other interested projects in the region. I'm not sure the demand is there, but hopefully they'll prove me wrong. Well, and if you have this coordinated Latin American space agency, you can also have this situation where different countries that are members of that do a specialization and together they form like a complete, you know, capability, right?

So maybe Brazil turns themselves into the launching country of that, of that group, right? It's aimed exactly right for sunsynchronous orbit. That's like the best angle for SSO on this earth. So that's all I'm saying. As somebody who's like, where's all the SSO going to come from from the U.S. Because Alaska's hard to get to. There are, and Vandenberg, you can't build anything else at. And also there's L.A. there.

I'm like, man, Peru looks just like the SSO destination. Now, I know that's treading on the Canadian territory. They want that whole, you know, the thing that's going to fly on the East Coast. Go up. I'm constantly, like, thinking about this since, was it Artemis, Andy Wears, Artemis that had the Kenya space port? Which one was, was that Artemis? Yeah. Where like Kenya was like, hey, we've got the right coastline.

We're going to make a space port and make a billion dollars off of this. Which was a real thing. The Italians launched a bunch of stuff from Kenya. That's correct. But like I just, that thought of like, my market is our coastline. That's an interesting concept in this. And not even like, you know, we're going to start a spaceport because X, Y, or Z reasons. Just literally, we got the right geography and try to attract talent that way versus what I think

has happened in the U.S. with this like surge of spaceports. versus I want a spaceport and I will try to attract people versus I have the right basis for a spaceport and I will try to attract people. And I think I think there's something to that. I wish I had more time to look at though. I think there's policy and regulatory incentives for the existing spaceports that some of these new ones won't have. And that's tied to the demand. So put another way, you know, in 2019, the U.S. and Brazil, signed a technology safeguards agreement so that components, U.S. made components could launch

out of Brazil, right? And we've launched, we've signed similar ones with Australia, for example. So it removes a hurdle, right? So it removes an obstacle, but I'm not sure it creates an incentive. So if I'm a U.S. company, what's my incentive? Yes. Yes, there's actually spend the money to do that and invest in that. Exactly, because you've got to ship all your stuff there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We barely ship it to Alaska, to my previous point. Yeah. Exactly.

And so I'm sure where Alaska has some incentives, right, at the either state or federal level where maybe we need. You get a free barrel of oil from the oil. From anwar, yeah. Whatever, it's the Freedom Fund or whatever. What is it that Alaskans get? They get like some freedom, dividend or something. Yeah, you get that.

Sounds right. Yeah. It's like a barter deal. It's weird. If you successfully got a boat to coast. Bodiac Island. Here's like, here's just some prizes for doing that. So. Giveaways, you know.

If you have a successful launch. Yeah. So, so that, I mean, I, I don't think I'm going to have a lot of time to like look into this. But I think there's something to be said. So yes, there's a market incentive. But is there, but there are other pieces, right? As we know, you know, space is a highly regulated, highly incentivized kind of industry. And so. it's hard to talk about it in terms of just regular market forces.

Yeah, yeah. We've talked a lot about like domestic needs and domestic demands and, you know, why I get into this. I'm curious to know, though, like, is there, if we look at the kind of space superpowers, are there things that they are looking to Latin America for as, you know, what's an opportunity to that? You know, why should NASA be interested in partnering with Latin America? What are they seeing in this region that is a new or novel capability? So I think, let me start with superpowers in general.

So even from the beginning, the United States, China, Russia, were interested in South America to fill a technical need because you need a ground stations, right? And so, you know, for the space shuttle way back when and for, you know, Chinese kind of sensors that are very far into space and things like that, there's just a geographic benefit to having sensors there. And so some of what you see, you know, agreements with Argentina, for example, that type of thing,

have to do with just being able to place command and control capabilities in these countries. So that is one benefit. I think another one that you're seeing today, yeah. So I'd say three, that's one. The second one is on a governance and policy, standpoint and that's that's a lot of what I focus on you know a lot of the battles over who gets to set the rules in space are fought in the UN and in these multilateral bodies and you know you mentioned the accords and even though I don't think countries are are letting themselves be

thrown into you know a or B camp for the most part the there are strong diplomatic kind of debates going on in these forums and so when you look at the you know the US-led moratorium on kinetic anti-satellite testing and stuff like that. Like you do want more and more countries, and these are real players, right? So, and then also for certain things, you want other people to be explaining their own rationales for they want to do things and potentially attract

other nations, right? So the US is in the only one saying, hey, these principles are important, but the voice can't carry it on its own. And so from that standpoint, point, so one concrete example, a few years ago when the United Nations Committee on the Peace, when the long-term sustainability guidelines were being developed, and, you know, Russia started kind of acting up, and it wanted to invade other countries, and, you know, started to

really kind of put blocks on that process. The Latin American nations under a group, grouping called Grulak, they played a very key part in making sure that those passed. So from that standpoint, it's important to engage countries on space governance topics. And then the third, the last one is, as capabilities continue advancing in the region, then there's real expertise that you can rely on, right? You know, like I said, Brazil has been operating Earth Observation satellites for decades in its partnership with China, but then also doing its own satellite imagery analysis of data from the U.S. and other sources. And so there's real capability there that it could offer in more of a sense of parity with potential partners.

So I think you see that more. And obviously you see that in all the regions too, right? But I think you'll see that more in Latin America. Yeah. Yeah. There's another aspect that is more obscure probably, but, you know, if you think about, like, pure numbers of smart people who are interested in space, like, we're, I don't know where the top line is on Americans that are going to fit those requirements, but, like, we're going to run out of them at some point. And what if we could attract all the other smart people that are interested in space to collaborate with and to build other things that we need or to continue working with us. different directions. Like, you know, I don't know the last time you checked population numbers,

but we have less people than China. So we strategically would run out of those people that could fill those roles first. And so it would be really helpful if, you know, the entire other continent were attached to that is within our same time zones and easy to work with in that regard. And in large cases, speak many of the same languages. Like, pretty good spot for collaborating across different projects or different roles or even just finding more use cases for the stuff that we're building, right? I mean, if you think of, you know, let's just take the U.S. and South America as an example, if we're building capabilities that are a satellite constellation, they're only providing

services useful to our country when they're in the north half of the earth. And if those same satellites have to cross over the south half of the earth and we can find other users down there that could either buy those services or help contribute, like that's just a win on the actual architecture as well. So finding more collaborators is beneficial in all those directions. You do see some commercial activities going on in that direction. You know, you have companies like Vyazad and Amazon and, you know, expanding South and doing that, especially for broadband and connectivity demand.

But on the workforce, I think that would be of a lot of interest, especially because you get really highly educated communities in some of their kind of. countries in the region. But my argument is rather than just making it from a space standpoint, because then it becomes very narrow and you're only looking at, say, like Space Force and NASA or something like that would be to connect it with broader strategic things like where, you know, we're collaborating with Costa Rica on chips, right?

And trying to combat some of the dependencies on China that way, then, okay, well, if they're building facilities to build chips in Costa Rica, then it shouldn't be a far cry to build other advanced space sensors. And that's kind of the logic for Mexico, too. You know, obviously we have USMCA, you know, the Canada, U.S.-Mexico agreement. And Mexico has a very, very big aviation sector, smaller on the aerospace side, right? But, you know, I would wish we would be a little bit more intentional and some of those choices to make that easier.

You know, some of the concrete limitations I've heard are, for example, security clearances are hard. So some of the technologies are going to be more sensitive and so really hard to actually hire the people and need to do that work. Yeah. I always thought that the like United States should be like really, really, really interested in Latin America developing like indigenous kind of supply chains and things like that because like that, you know, the immigration problems that the U.S. deals with are like they're

economically driven, right? Like if you can't get a good job in Latin America and you can get a good job in United States, of course you want to go there. Right. And so like if there are our options for really rich industries and, you know, and space is one of those things. Space is an industry that has really like a super big depth of different kinds of talent, right? You can fill out lots of different sort of skill sets across space industry.

And so like I feel like that's the best way to solve an immigration problem in the United States is like help help countries develop their own great jobs so they don't have to worry about that anymore, right? Yeah, and I think that's where, you know, we remember where space comes from and also just it's very nature. It's always going to be strategic. It's always going to be dual-used. And so, yeah, it's not necessarily something I think we're ever going to change where we're like, yes, we're going to help build capacity in other countries where there might be concerned. So for example, the collaboration with China is one of the concerns. Like for certain countries, you want to make sure that if you're building up certain capacities there,

that technology is maybe not being then handed over to China as a competitor. So I think there's inherent tensions there that are never fully going to go away, but I agree with you the premise of, yes, we could be doing more. And I think we could be doing more not just to help country ABC, but to help us. because it's just about building up certain resilience, I think, in the region. One of the things I write about is, for example, cyber security is a big, big concern.

There's been some high-profile attacks in the last few years in the region, Costa Rica being one of the ones that suffered a really, really big one a few years ago. So they've made a big focus into that. And I'm like, okay, but remember, cyber and space do overlap. And so, kind of drawing some examples of where,

as you start relying on some of the satellite data to say disaster risk response or, or planning purposes, communications, et cetera, then you need to secure the cyber piece as well, because otherwise users on the line are gonna get threatened, right? So it gets really complicated, but yeah, I do think there's always gonna be attention.

I am not very kumbaya when it comes to, space cooperation, I think it's important, I think it's super valuable, but I don't think it's going to be one or the other, right? I don't think. And I, you know, I would hope one day we get to a place like that with China, where we can have our own assurances of the things we need to protect. But that, you know, in certain topics in science, you know, that should be, that should be available to us, that path to cooperate, right? It's like a sort of a built-in tension with space because like it is taking a boundaryless domain and trying to put boundaries in it, right? You know, like you're, it's just you put a satellite up and then immediately you violate every

country's aerospace, you know, airspace. You're just like, that just happens by default. Like, you cannot not do that. And so it's, it's a, it's a weird kind of tension that has been there since day one of space, right? And it's as soon as soon as Sputnik overfrew the US, everyone's like, what is happening? Like, this is a, this is a different. Yeah, but then we forgot about that. And then a goddamn spy balloon flew across the country. We all freaked out. So like, no one's thinking about the thousands of satellites are flying over the country at any given moment. So I think like we forgot whatever those lessons were. And the spy balloon really freaked us out. But that, you know, but my kind of my point though is like it permeates

the whole like not just the domain, but then that permeates down through the supply chain to a, to a point like you said, like you can't just go to, you know, Peru and teach him how to build a satellite with American ideas because then they, they go to China. And it's like, okay, well, I know, I understand that logically, but also it's just like, we got to figure out how to get over that at some point, right? Like if we, at some point, I don't know if it's like, if it's like a hundred years, a thousand years in the future. We got to figure out a way to not have the lines we drew on the map on Earth matter as much, right? Yeah. Even just like, I tire is funny to me right now. Like, you can't take pictures up rocket engines. And I'm like, man, I'm keeping a list of like our enemy's

list. And I'm pretty sure they're all flying rockets with engines. It seemed to be doing okay in the whole rocket engine development. Yeah. You can send them to Brazil, but you can't show to the Canadians, right? No, definitely not. Like, don't let Jake free in Kennedy Space Center. But relatedly, there was that year or two ago, there was a reclassification of when you're applying for, like, imagery licensing. And there's now three lanes, which is, like, you can get imagery licensing if you're

using technology that is clearly available worldwide on a pretty easy basis. And then there's a second tier that's, like, only U.S. competitors or only U.S. companies have that. that. You can get it as long as your U.S. company. And then there's, like, the top tier, which is only the spy satellites have these kind of sensors. And they made this tiered system to try to address the fact that there are so many different people building this stuff worldwide right now, but that clearly has not happened

in the like, don't take pictures of my injector plates category. I don't know who runs that, but they still don't allow pictures of injector plates. So I will say there is an expert control review going on. I believe that was tasked in, hmm, right after the SLS umbilical plates weren't allowed to be shown on the live streams? Is that maybe right around the time period? I don't remember if it was legislation or if it was like a space council direction or something. But I understand there's an expert control review going on. But yeah, the licensing review that you mentioned, that took a long time in coming.

And it's actually built to have a presumption of approval. And then it gets not that you will definitely get a no. It just goes through a bit more review, right? Yes, and then they reject versus the other direction. No, it always assumes approval. It's just you go through higher and then, you know, at a certain point, you can still push back in the decision, et cetera. But it's meant to remove some of the restrictions that industry,

U.S. industry perceived made them less competitive than in other countries. Like we suffer that with like radar. As you may know, radar technology advanced far faster in Europe and in other countries and it did here. And so that was one of the ways to do it. But I mean, part of that is just a function of anything you said in law, anything you said in regulation, it's going to be just really hard to change. Yeah. It's sticky. And it's, you know, and then you've got to go through often public consultation process and stuff like that. It just sticks forever. And so it's one of those things that sometimes when I go, when I'm studying emerging

countries and they're like, oh, we should change the constitution to talk about place. And I'm like, oh, you're like, how often? How often do you want to change your constitution, right? You've got to think about your whole suite of options from a governance standpoint and be like, okay, where do I want to put certain principles high level that are really going to be on change? I mean, if you look at the U.S. space policy from 2010, 2020 and even before, it didn't change that much. It kind of changes the areas of emphasis. There might be, you know, one or two new things added, but the core language doesn't change.

And that's intentional, right? Like if we really made it so that each one had its own flavor entirely, it would just cost way too much churn. Yeah. I always, like the exact argument I bring out when people complain about some things. You know, there's always like, oh, this space program thing is a Senate jobs program. It's bad. You know, the Senate is ruinous. And I was like, okay, but like, you're not going to change the way the U.S. Senate works to make the space program better.

It's just like it is an option nowhere in the realm of possibility. So like we got to, we can't complain about it. It's not productive. We got to figure out. Do you want the space project or the other one? Yeah. Which one do you want? It's part of treating, it's part of sometimes we want to treat space as a

own thing and it's not. It's part of any state activity, right? And so it's going to be subject to all the politics and all the, you know, the good and bad things that we have. And so, and so the same with other countries. Like, I do think sometimes even in trying to protect it into this little precious thing, it just means that then it's a lot lower. on the list of priorities because it just doesn't seem connected to anything else that matters,

right? Yeah. So we're getting near the end here. I thought maybe if we could have some, maybe like the last few minutes of like kind of more fun topics. Can you share with the listeners? Like in your studies and stuff, like what are some maybe unknown, like really fascinating space projects that you've come across like in these different countries?

Like what are things that maybe we've never heard of that we should be like paying attention to because they're awesome? You know, I think about like the telescopes and the Atacama is like a pretty, pretty amazing thing that's happening down in South America, right? I'm just curious to see what you've learned about in your project. So I may, I'll start by excusing myself and being a little less exciting because I'm not, I don't focus so much on hardware and projects and things. I'm a policy person, so I love institutional frameworks. And, you know, but I'll, I'll give you two. So one of the projects I'm watching for both reasons.

So Argentina and Brazil are working on a project called Sabia Mar, which would translate to Y's Ocean or Y's Sea. And each country is building its own satellite to take measurements of the ocean, and then they would fly in tandem and kind of cooperate that way. And each country would get access to the data. It would be, it's been described as such by some. from the space agency in Brazil, it would be the most significance of South cooperation project in the region. So I think that on its own, if it were to succeed,

I think it's going to be a real big show of countries that, even though in so many ways and politically they compete and they don't always see I-2-I, they've helped each other out over the years. The first couple of satellites Argentina had, for example, were integrated and tested in Brazil because Argentina didn't have those capabilities. So that's one project that I'm keeping an eye on, that I think is really interesting, Sabia Mar. The other sort of development that I found really interesting, and I don't know that I'm going to get to really cover fully in my work, but maybe in a future paper or project,

is I think because the governance is so much of a challenge in these countries and having sustained space programs with sustained budgets, all that stuff, you do see a lot of private sector activity and civil society activity. And so there's these fascinating, emergence of clusters, for example. Like Costa Rica has a national space cluster that has 30 companies. There's one in Mexico that has 70.

Like, it's fascinating. And then they create this tendrils all over the region, right? Because they're like, you know, we want to be able to participate in the international market. We know that one of the challenges is that entities don't know each other. And so they're taking it up on themselves to build these networks with academia, with

government, and with, with other companies. And I find that pretty fascinating. I did not know that before I started this work. I didn't know that there were all these, or even, you know, small.orgs that are doing consulting services, trying to get to train, you know, really smart people that have a wonderful idea, but have no idea how to run a business, you know, how to help them do a pitch and try to get funds from, you know, venture capital from other countries, et cetera. So a long way to say, I do think the emerging space market in the region is really interesting. it's really unique and it should be something of interest to keep an eye on.

Wow. Okay. I have a question that could potentially blow out the rest of the time of this podcast, and I don't know why I decided to 53 minutes of the recording bring this one up. It's how we do it. Yeah, yeah. This is appropriately a French goodbye. There's an entire spaceport that is technically France that is situated in and amongst these countries. And I'm curious what the relationship is there, officially,

but also in terms of the workforce, the people that work at that space center that might trickulate through the entire rest of the continent or if there are people that had moved there to work in that industry since it is such a successful place for area and space to launch from. That is a great question that I don't know the answer to. So you can't ask France that, but I, my understanding, I think it is a French run. Like I would be surprised that there's a lot of local talent. but I might be wrong. I will say I think that is going to be one of the fascinating pieces in the puzzle of what we were talking about earlier, like all these different spaceboards potentially emerging.

You've got like a full-blown operational one there. Exactly. Now, but that, as I understand, also really hard to get to. Really hard to get to. Yeah, really hard to keep the jungle away from it. There's a lot of challenges. I mean, the easiest way to describe how hard that is to get to is that the journalists in the United States

that went to those launch flew to France to connect on their flight. Oh my gosh. Well, they flew to France and then to France because it is France. They cleared customs in Paris to go to South America. That's how far away. That's how far away it is.

Continentally, South America, but it is France. So it's such an interesting situation though, right? Because you have like, because of that quirk, like, there's this weird demarcation that, you know, Otherwise would be a really big part of the story of this. But it's separate. That's how it is right now.

If you want a good rabbit hole about like geopolitics and geography and stuff, it's like ask yourself like, you know, what is Latin America? Is French Guiana part of Latin America? And it's like, kind of. I mean,

it's in America and the Latin language speaking country, right? And there's like there's like, and then there's like cultural, there's language. There's like ethnicity. And then there's also like even geopolitical. political side. Latin America, it was actually like an entity that was like a membership at some point. And then I don't think it's due as much around, but that's still kind of part of it, right?

No, but you're right. And that's part of it. I think we have to accept and assume there's a lot of diversity, different cultural traditions. Part of it comes from, you know, original country colonizers and all that, you know, good history. But, but yeah, I, there isn't a single, I think there's a cultural affinity. language affinity, certain things like that, but there isn't the sort of political affinity that you get in Europe. No. And so that's part of why there isn't a thing as,

you know, you get all these regional bodies that, like I said, include some, include only the ones in the South, include only the ones in Central America, include some, you know, some in the north, some of it. I've had a whole thing which had chat TPT because it told me that Brazil wasn't part of Latin America and I'm like, what are you talking about? Anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I speak French and I'm from a French-speaking country. Does that make me a Latin American? I don't know. Let's see. Try it. Try it. You know? See how it goes. Canada should have a membership in this in the Latin American space agency. We're part of Europe. We're trying to get your hands and all these things. Yeah. We can be part of everybody, right? So actually, historical point, and maybe the one I'll leave with, back, I told you this idea of a regional space agency is very old. Back in the 80s, maybe. Yeah, that's what's right. There was a concept. for a pan-American space agency, and that would have included Canada in the U.S.

Love it. Yeah. What's old as new again? Yeah. Bring it back. Is that, will that be the name of that episode? Pan Am, we're going to bring it back. You've got really good spaceship designs already, so.

Cool. Okay, so this has been awesome. Or if you're coming to the end of your project, like is this something that will, like we can just go read when it's done? Like how do we see this when it's finished? Like what's the situation here? It will be published. So I'm happy to share it and hopefully people will read it. Like you said, one of my goals was to sort of get this conversation going and also draw attention to all the experts and, you know, expertise that's in the region because of course it is just, you know,

in Portuguese and Spanish that a lot of people can access. But there's definitely a lot. And so I've been producing things over the year that I'm proud of and then I think kind of add to the story. But yeah, the final report will be published here by CSIS not later the summer. And I guess watch the space. I think I have enough that maybe I could write a book. I just haven't convinced myself that that makes sense. So we'll see. Well, this can be the first stop on your media junkie when you do when you do.

I was going to say, you slot us in for the week after that comes out because, yeah, this is, it's much like when we have Andrew Jones on the show and it's like I feel like this is the one person who can fully understand what's going on in a certain space of the space industry like you've got that going on here and it's really really awesome oh thank you and if if I do that we're definitely starting with a drink because I will have a yeah yeah yeah we'll do a live live instead of a live to tape and we'll do it at the right time yeah sure sure it'll be it'll be five o'clock somewhere maybe Brazil but we'll figure it out so Kipinas then sold all right so of it. Let's see. I was about to plug what's coming up next week on the show, Jake, and then I realized I don't know what day it is. Yes. I think next week, as you hear this, is nothing because it'll be the 4th of July and we're taking it off. And then the week after that, you'll be back from some travel.

So we're going to catch up on whatever happens between now and then, which probably some 14 more people will have signed the Artemis Accords. So that'll be the whole thing. I can't keep track, you know. I thought, oh, look at you, reping the shirt. That's awesome. Laura, is there places that people should follow you online? I don't know if you are on any of the platforms or what you hang out on or I don't know. I've got some links to your writing in the show notes, but anywhere else you want to point them?

Oh, thank you. No, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. Outside of that, I am old and I am not on social media. You did say you were active on LinkedIn, so yes. Yes, yes. That's how I get to say that I am off this generation, but other words. I'm active on LinkedIn. Everyone knows exactly what decade you're born in.

Honestly, though, in this day and age, it's like everyone had to use their real name on there. So it has become by way of sheer, like, chaos elsewhere, the really useful spot to go if you want to know what someone's up to. Look, I get great engagement when I post like our content on LinkedIn. It turns out. It's unbelievable. I think the real name thing really worked out for that.

In all seriousness, in the work I've done this year, LinkedIn and WhatsApp. Like, I can't explain how big WhatsApp is on. the region. But LinkedIn has been amazing at just connecting me with people. And then the third, you know, degree connection and whatever has been the right person I needed to talk to. So I'm a big fan. Shout out LinkedIn. Not sponsored. Just a wholehearted endorsement of LinkedIn. Yeah. I will definitely second the WhatsApp thing. And if you really want to make it authentic for a Latin America, you have to do a voice message and not an actual text message. That's how it's all it's done down here.

It's so funny because I still remember the very first one I got from a gentleman that I was connecting with. And in my head, I'm like, I was like, we're not friends. Why are you leaving me a voice mesh? I quickly got over it. Your voice sounds like, yeah, we didn't get there. I quickly got over that because you're exactly right. Everyone, in fact, it's a verb. It's like, WhatsApp me. And, yeah. And that means voice message specifically. Yeah. Exactly. This is great. Wow.

I learned a lot here. So thanks. much for hanging out. Oh, my pleasure. This was a lot of fun. Good to meet you guys. Thanks. See you later, everybody. Bye. Hi, everybody. 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1,000, end of death.