Pod Save the World - "Space Force all the way!"

Episode Date: August 15, 2018

Tommy talks with defense expert Katherine Charlet from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace about President Trump's plan to create a Space Force!!! How much is the military currently operating in space? Is this proposal smart, necessary or a gigantic waste of taxpayer money. Listen to this episode (which includes lasers) to find out!

Our adversaries have transformed space into a warfighting domain. And the United States will not shrink from this challenge. As President Trump has said, in his words, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space. Now the time has come to write the next great chapter in the history of our armed forces. to prepare for the next battlefield, where America's best and bravest will be called to deter and defeat a new generation of threats to our people, to our nation. The time has come to establish the United States Space Force. Damn right it is.

That was the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, a man who will say and do anything for Donald Trump with some flourishes added by our fantastic producer here at Ponce of the World. Michael Martinez. Thank you for those edits. I love the lasers. The show today is about the Space Force. President Trump has been talking about it for a long time. Mike Pence gave a big speech last week rolling out this big serious idea that will, as discussed, have a lot of money behind it. So I wanted to do something we don't always do here at POTSafe the World, which is take Donald Trump seriously. Let's talk about this idea on the merits and see if there's something behind this decision or if it's just Trump tweeting and making policy based on something someone told him. So I got on the phone a woman named Kate Charlotte.

She's a defense expert. She's worked at the Pentagon on a whole host policy areas, including cyber policy, the implications of new evolving technology. And I reached out to her for a couple of reasons. One, she has this defense expertise, but she also has expertise in managing the process of trying to elevate a policy area in the Pentagon and manage the DOD bureaucracy because, boy, That can be as challenging as the actual work itself. So this is a fun episode.

We've got to talk about cool things in space. There may be some nerdy Star Trek, Star Wars references sprinkled throughout. That's fine. But you should listen because your tax dollars are about to go into spending a whole shitload of money on this space force. So we need to be ready for it and see if it's worth the spend. So here's the interview. So, Kate, last week, Vice President, President Pence delivered a speech where he outlined the administration's plan to create a military

command dedicated to space and establish a space force as the sixth branch of the U.S. military as soon as 2020. So it's easy to laugh at President Trump and his dumb tweets like Space Force all the way, exclamation mark, but I wanted to take the idea seriously and see if there's some merit here and if there's a need for the United States to double down on its investments in space and specifically military. military technology in space. So I'm really grateful for you for being here with me and talking through all this complicated stuff. Great. Thanks. Yeah, everybody is joking about Space Force, but we do have some legitimately big problems in space that need to be fixed. Right. Okay. And so,

you know, an important point, I think, is that the military is already operating in space, I think, right? We've got satellites for communication. There's intelligence collection satellites. You've got missile defense. There's GPS and other similar technologies used to guide precision munitions. We've got missiles that go into space before coming back down into the atmosphere to hit their targets. What is the military footprint like in space? And what is the cost to the U.S. taxpayer to invest in those technologies? Yeah. Well, so space is really important to the military.

It generally allows the Pentagon to fight the kind of wars that it wants to fight. And that means operating anywhere in the world. It means getting there quickly, fighting in very precise and effective. effective ways. So all the things you mentioned, and I would also add that they play a role in the command and control of our own nuclear forces and weapons, play into how the military does business. It's part of almost any operation you can imagine or conflict that the military plans for involves and relies upon space assets. Our adversaries, you know, according to Pence's speech, are investing in space defense technology. Do you think they're investing more than we are?

I mean, Penn specifically mentioned that in 2007, China hit an old weather satellite with a missile, which he called a very provocative demonstration of China's growing capability to militarize space. But is that a big concern that you could use a missile to take out a bunch of satellites and suddenly we don't have eyes and ears? Yeah, that's actually one of a lot of concerns. The United States, the space acquisition budget is around $10 billion a year. It's not jump change. It is big. But that's actually why Russia and China are trying to contest that, because there are

ways to do that that don't require them to spend nearly that amount of money. So you mentioned, of course, the anti-satellite weapons, the China test in 2007, which destroyed its own weather satellites. and in fact we're still dealing with the thousands of pieces of debris in space from that. But there are a lot of other threats too. You can theoretically use cyber operations to spy on satellites, collect that data. You could spoof or even change data, so what we are seeing might be wrong. You can maybe even hijack satellites theoretically.

There's also electronic warfare, so you can jam signals that are going to, to and from satellites. So Iran reportedly did this in 2009 when they used electronic warfare capabilities to jam transmissions from Voice of America into Iran. And then the newer set of threats that a lot of people are talking about is directed energy or lasers to blind and confuse satellites. And so we hear that Russia may be trying to field an airborne laser. laser that would be able to blind our satellites in coming years.

So it's definitely the anti-satellite kind of physical, destructive component of this is worrisome, but that's not nearly the only threat that we have. Are we going to have like spaceship equivalent of C-130s with Star Trek enabled or looking men and women on them with laser guns? Like is that a very distant future? Yeah, I don't know about that. I mean, it's this, you know, the logo later we can. talk about that. But I mean, so many of the capabilities that DOD has are satellites, right?

It's not the traditional vision and depiction of the sci-fi future. But I would also mention that it's not just the military. These same assets are something that we all as civilians really rely on. So GPS is the obvious one that's used for military purposes, but we all rely on it for our, you know, map services and future automated vehicles. but the timing component of it is also really interesting. Space assets synchronized time so that we are all exactly on the same clock. And that doesn't just matter that you and I are like meeting up at our meeting spot at the same time. It matters because cell phone towers, for example, doing the kind of transition between different cell phone towers as we move around depends on this precise timing.

Someday the electrical grid might rely on this very precise timing to manage the power flows of electricity. So the civilian reliance is really big and given the vulnerabilities, something that's pretty concerning. So it seems like just based on what you've told me so far, you know, there is a lot to talk about important things to invest in. It seems like the idea isn't on its face silly. But we also have a bit of a checkered history of investing in space technology, right? I'm not thinking about NASA, which did incredible things, Land and the Moon, spun out all this technology that we all use today. But Reagan had his so-called Star Wars program, which I think blew through $30 billion in 10 years before being effectively abandoned. Should that worry us, that history?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, this is one of my big concerns with the proposal is the bureaucracy and the resources and the potential, not just for waste, but for energy. and attention to be spent on an organizational move that will take a lot of energy but won't necessarily fix the things that needs to be fixed in space. Right. I mean, Space Force may ultimately be a bad idea, but it's not a crazy idea. The idea, it's been raised many times over the years. Congress has been asking DoD to do better organizationally in space for several years.

have been pretty dissatisfied with the trajectory of that. And there are good arguments for and against all these things. It's not just a totally crazy idea. So let's talk about the process you mentioned for how they'll create the Space Force. By understanding, it sounds like they start with a space command that's overseen by a four-star general, and that has a special acquisitions office. I guess that would sort of sounds like Special Forces Command or like SentCom. Is that an accurate comparison?

Yeah, so there were four major announcements that Vice President Pence made, and the first one was the Space Operations Force. So these are like the elite war fighters who really know space. This kind of already exists, but it's not really being dealt with in a really cohesive way where these forces are being managed. These are the guys that operate satellites. They track objects in space. They monitor and detect the threats.

And I think the good thing about this part of the proposal is this cadre of more elite operational space war fighters will go to places like Pacific Command, which has to think about and plan for conflict with China or European Command, which has to think about and plan for conflict with Russia. and they will integrate and kind of up the game of space in that planning in some of the other commands. The second thing that Vice President Pence announced was creation of a space development agency. So this would, to get to your acquisition question earlier, this would be the agency that buys things, that purchases the $10 billion and figures out how to prioritize. that money. And what is supposedly good about this organization is that it wouldn't have to follow the very painful acquisition rules that are so slow and really just pretty broken within the Department of Defense in general. So it would circumvent some of those rules. And then it would also

engage better with the private sector, which is going pretty gangbusters with new space capabilities and things like, you know, satellite swarms and other things that the military could really get in on. My skepticism of this particular part of the plan is, do you really need a whole new agency to make the rules a little bit easier for space? I think it could be an addition of bureaucracy that you could probably find other ways around. And then the other major announcement was the creation of Space Command. So space command is not a space force. A space force would be a military department or a service.

And that is the component that trains, organizes, and equips your forces. The space command would be an operational element that uses those forces. Got it. So this kind of confuses me because there is no other area where you have both the operational command and a service. So it's really unclear how these things eventually turn into a space force over time. And if you don't take the right time to evolve it and figure out what your plan is, I think you could end up with a pretty messy situation. Yeah. It sounds like the near-term step, they'll create a new civilian position, which is Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space,

who will report up to the Secretary of Defense. But that is on the road to creating a fully independent secretary of space force as a whole new branch of the armed forces. So I would guess it would be Air Force Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy, Space Force, right? I mean, that feels like a huge bureaucratic, monstrous process that would worry me in any scenario. It is. And not only would Space Force be like the Marine Corps, so the Marine Corps is within the Department of Navy. There have been ideas floated. In fact, the House of Representatives passed some legislation that never made it to final, but to make a space corps within the Air Force. But the president was

very clear that in this case, it is a freestanding, independent, separate branch of the military. I mean, just as an example of the trappings that goes with that, when you make a command, so when they makes space command as a combatant command. That comes with a historian, right? An inspector general, public affairs officers, legislative affairs officers. It comes with a security detail for the commander. So there's a lot of trappings that come with that. If you do a service, I mean, services in the Pentagon have hallways upon hallways of offices doing manpower, logistics, intel, force structure. So there's a huge amount of structure that goes into any of these organizations. And even if you try to go light, you could go light on this conceivably, but these things

really have a way of taking on a life of their own. You did a lot of work on standing up Cyber Command, right? And writing and thinking and work at the Pentagon. Was that process messy? Was it worth it? Was it important? I mean, how would you compare the Space Force command to what you guys did in terms of cyber? Yeah, I mean, I think the debate over what to do with cyber and what to do with space has been very similar in nature. When I led the Cyber Command elevation packages, I mean, we looked at that at least three times over five years and sometimes made the decision not to do anything. And then finally, we decided to elevate. So it was a very long and consistent.

process. The same has kind of been happening on the space side. They've been talking and thinking about a space force or a space command for a long time. So it's not like the idea is new. But what really strikes me is if you ask anybody in the Department of Defense right now, why is cyber command an operational command and space is going to be a military department? like why did you choose to take one, what we call a domain and make it one thing and another domain and make it something else? Right. Nobody, I guarantee nobody would be able to give you, you know, fully reasoned answer to that. Yeah.

There's a lot of things about the DOD structure that has never made sense to me. For example, why is the second largest Air Force in the world, the U.S. Navy? I kind of get it. They defend ships, right? but like you'd think this could be somehow made a component of the Air Force. Is there a reason not to make Space Force a component of the Air Force? Yeah, well, so the argument is that the Air Force just doesn't really have it in their DNA to do space well.

They are too focused on air power. They are too focused on what is necessary for air and not space. And so that culturally they can just never, you know, truly be. a strong advocate for space. So this is actually, it's the same argument that they used to pull the Air Force out of its original home in the Army, because the Army so focused on land warfare, could never truly understand air. So there is an argument and a feeling among some space experts over time that the Air Force just hasn't been able to do what it really needs to, that you need a more focused advocate for space. Are there, like, game-changing,

military technologies being developed that aren't necessarily space-based, but that might touch on space that were you. For example, I think Pence in his speech talked about Russia and China working to develop a hypersonic, low altitude missiles that go, you know, something like five or more times the speed of sound that could strike us in hours if launched from, say, China, that are maneuverable, that would be able to circumvent all our missile defense systems. You know, you mentioned earlier, laser-based weapons. there's always reports about ship-killing missiles. Are there, like, things that are out there that could be game-changing and truly put us at a disadvantage? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that they all fall into the bucket of kind of asymmetric weapons. I mean, things that are relatively cheap and relatively easy to do on a shoestring

that can counter our advantage. Cyber operations falls into this category as well. well as some of the other kind of counter-satellite, anti-satellite capabilities that we've talked about, I would add to your list drones and automated capabilities that could really change what Secretary Mattis calls the character of warfare. Oh, God, space drones. He believes that it'll never change the nature of warfare, but in terms of the character of warfare, there's a real possibility that that is changing over time.

And that's, I think, reflected in the broader strategy where the Department of Defense has said Russia and China and the competitions there are now our top priority. Is there a scenario where there's some sort of space-based technology developed that people are thinking about when they talk about Space Force, say, I mean, I guess it could be simple as the ability to take out all our satellites at once that would create that overwhelming advantage. Is that something that people have identified and actually talk about? I'm not sure. I don't know as much about the specific space technologies because frankly, a lot of that just happens in the classified world. Right, right, right. What I think would be a game changer for us is if we find a way to be extremely resilient to the threats to our space capabilities. And I think that's actually one of the biggest arguments not to pursue a space force is that you shouldn't be. be so focused on space as a place. You should focus on the things that we need to do in space,

communications and navigations and warning. And so some of those things don't have to be done in space. They might be able to be done through new kinds of terrestrial communication systems. So if you focus too much on space, you fail to identify what some of the other technologies are that might be land-based that can help us make sure that what we use space for is always available to us, even if a China or a Russia is attacking them. So to your question about the game-changers, I think there needs to be a more holistic look, not just at the things that are in space, but making sure that we can still do those missions. What you just said, I think echoes what the U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis had previously said about

the space force, which is he didn't want to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even more parochial approach to space operations. What do you make of him laying down that marker and then seemingly flip-flopping on it not that long after when he now says he supports the Space Force? Is he doing his job and lining up and saluting and doing what the president says, or should he be, stick it to his guns here about tens of billion dollars worth of investment? I will be speculating, but I think that there is a little bit of resignation. I would imagine that this directive has come very, very explicitly from the president and Pence. There's probably been some work in this report that has raised up other ideas that has made the military a bit more comfortable with doing this,

if they can figure out how to phase it the right way and do it in ways that they're doing it. they're more comfortable with. But it was very notable in March and June when Trump started talking about this. And when he directed the Pentagon to do this process, it was not whether we should do a space force. It was how we should do a space force. And it's not clear how he got this bug in his ear, right? If he just liked the ring of the term space force,

or if maybe somewhere in the process of doing, doing the space strategy that they released in March, somebody raised this idea and it just captured him. But he's made no bones about it. And it wasn't the, I would imagine that it was not the normal kind of process where agency comes and says, here are your three or four options to achieve a particular objective. It was directed from on high to do this.

There are a bunch of technologies that we all enjoyed today that came out of of the space program that came out of NASA. There's satellite TV. There's memory foam pillows. There's modern tires on your car. There's the foil blankets that people use after marathons, water purification systems. It goes up the list. Don't forget dried ice cream.

There you go. Dried ice cream. Is there an argument that trying to develop big, bold, new technologies, or take a big swing, like creating a space force, even if it's for a military purpose, could have some greater unintended benefit down the road? I'm looking very hard for a silver lining here. I'm just curious if you think there's merit to the argument. Yeah, I suppose so.

I mean, I do think something bold in space is useful. I don't really think this is the right bold thing in space to do. But I think that if it makes it easier to tap into the commercial capabilities and some of the examples out there are really interesting, like the big, you know, huge swarms of satellites and really 3D printing in space and lots of commercial capabilities that are very interesting and beyond what the military has now. If there is a way to better tap into that world and partner with that world, I think that could bring some really bold ideas in space. There's a net benefit there.

You've worked on Afghanistan policy, cyber policy, you've been a DOD, you've been on the National Security Council. When I look back at the wars we've been fighting for a couple decades, it feels like it's been against mostly, low-tech forces in hard-to-reach places like Afghanistan or Iraq or Somalia, people that are not using the most high-tech weapons and have managed to create huge problems for us. Does it make sense to spend money on areas like space when the near-term focus is so clearly ISIS or counterterrorism or the total lack of development work that's being done to help root out some of those challenges before they pop up? Well, space has been very useful in those conflicts,

so it first really hit the major cognizance within the military with Desert Storm in Iraq when we started using precision guided munitions. At the time, I don't think GPS guided munitions were really highly prevalent there, but they did use GPS to get aircraft closer to targets so they could be very efficient and very precise in taking out those targets. In Afghanistan, for example, space and satellite communications enable people to communicate

from the middle of Afghanistan where they'd never be able to communicate before. So certainly space focus is warranted when you're focused on major competitors like Russia and China, but there are also significant benefits in the lower level kinds of conflict, lower intensity kinds of conflict. The most important question I'll ask you today, what do you think about the Space Force logo or the six proposed logos for the Space Force? Yes, that is the most important question. So I think the competition is just absolutely absurd, but not necessarily for the reasons people think. I am not a designer, so I'll let others comment. on, you know, colors and clip art. But there's a couple reasons that I think it's really stupid.

You know, half of them feature pictures of the shuttle, which is on NASA. And, oh, by the way, was retired years ago, so not exactly cutting edge. Tough metaphor. One of them says Mars awaits, again, not something that the Pentagon has anything to do with that kind of space exploration. We're actually going to blow up Mars. We are going to blow up Mars, no. And then I, and then I, was going to be very upset about the extensive use of rockets because the U.S. actually relies a lot on Russian rockets. But I can't really complain too much about that one because DOD and kind of U.S. government payloads use U.S. rockets to go into space. But, I mean, to me, luckily, this is

all run by a Trump political action campaign. So I'm hoping this will just die a quiet death or at worst end up on some t-shirts. But I don't really trust that this logo won't get pushed on the military.

And if it did, it would be a real shame because the whole purpose of Space Force is to create a cohesive identity for its members. And there's nothing like imposing a nonsensical, politically driven kind of logo for low morale among forces.

Yeah. I mean, file this under the kind of thing that would have been a massive scandal for any other president. You have the vice president of the United States going out and giving a sober, serious speech, announcing the Space Force, and then the blithering fucking idiots over on the campaign blast out an email to fundraise off it with these stupid logos. I mean, it is shameful to politicize and fundraise off of what should be a serious, literally life for death military expenditure, but it's kind of par for the course with these Yahoo's these days. Apparently there's a treaty from like the 1960s, the 1967, that prohibits placing nuclear

weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or to station them in outer space in any other manner. Shouldn't that treaty kind of get in the way of maybe some of the plans of the space force, or do you think that's something you can work around? I mean, I think I'm pretty sure that the policy is that, you know, we do not want to see space militarized with weapons. I know that treaty applies to, you know, the moon and keeping the moon peaceful. But I think it's something that they'll find ways to be consistent with. God, it's so funny that we have a treaty keeping the moon peaceful. That's a real thing.

Just kind of sitting out there. It's a real thing. Do you think Elon Musk is going to run the space for? Is that rumor false? That could be. Mosquerbezos. Take it private. Yeah, take it private, just like your Tesla.

Kate, thank you so much for talking seriously with me about all things Space Force. I greatly appreciate the time. I feel like there's some merit to the idea, but, you know, per usual, the execution is a touch flawed. And then with all things, government, the devil will be in the details because I don't know if I would be more worried about the critical policy and technology development that's going to have to happen. or the massive bureaucratic fight that lays ahead of anyone who tries to touch this thing, it's going to be something else to watch. Yep, I think it's going to be both. And if we're really going to do this, they're going to give it decades to do it.

Unfortunately, I think the Trump administration is going to push it into one or two years. And I think that means some mistakes are going to be made. Yeah. But we'll see. Well, nothing bad happens when mistakes are made in space. We all learn that in the movies. Everything goes fine. Kate, thank you again. It was great talking with you.

And thanks for doing Pod Save the World. Thanks for having me on. That is it for the special Space Force episode of Pod Save the World. Thank you all for tuning in. Don't forget to share the episode with your friends. Rate and review us on iTunes. It really does help people find the show and grow the audience. So thank you all.

See you next week.