Beyond the Artemis Accords: The Case for a Space Treaty Organization

Space Force Association: Lastly, in 2019, the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program Director equated the moon and other celestial bodies in the solar system to a series of island chains currently controlled by the Philippines and Japan, of which has been a point of contention in the CCP's illegal territorial expansion in the South China Sea. Given actions here on Earth, the potential for great power competition in the space domain, particularly over space resources, is not on the horizon. It has already arrived. Space is no longer a domain defined by inspiration alone. Two rival institutional architectures are already taking shape beyond Earth. One led by the free world, one by those who would govern it differently. The gap between them is growing and the window to act is narrowing. The Artemis Accords brought dozens of nations together around shared principles. But principles without structure aren't policy. And in a domain where commerce, exploration and national security increasingly overlap. non-binding norms aren't enough. Today's guest has a specific answer to that problem, and it's more urgent than most people realize. I'm Bill Wolff, and this is Space Power. Welcome to the Space Power Podcast. I'm your host, Bill Wolf, and I'm honored to have today with me, Dr. Lang Eric Sundby. Eric, board member of the Space Force Association, probably volunteer number one or two. I remember that conversation a long time ago. And thanks for everything you've been doing. But you're also the CEO over at Terra Space, focusing on AI plus critical minerals on Earth and space. So welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Hippie. Now, really what we want to talk about today, is a couple of op-eds that you just published and really want to talk about your dissertation as you went through your PhD program. so before we set up that dissertation, let's talk about a moment that happened just recently where Scott Kelly showed up at a summit in New Delhi. So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So there was an NXT summit regarding kind of space cooperation. right, in the world. And the Gaganya astronauts, which are the four ⁓ hand-selected, right, ISRO astronauts, so that's Indian Space Research Organization astronauts, they're going to fly on their own domestically produced and developed capsule. And so they brought Scott Kelly in, right, a veteran NASA astronaut to kind of talk about how ⁓ states interact in space and how there can be more cooperation. ⁓ ISRO, right, in India are signatories to RMS accords. And so they kind of talked about, you know, how can we get to that next level of cooperation? Right now we have very loose principles ⁓ and they ⁓ conceptualized a world space organization. So something that's entirely global and connects all the countries together in cooperation in outer space. So now let's talk about your dissertation, something you've been working on for several years. So walk us through the process and how you came up with the dissertation topic and then some of the key findings. So interestingly enough, I came up with the topic from discussions with you and others ⁓ in the earlier days of SFA. ⁓ And really, I wanted to understand how can we better cooperate with our allies or just other countries in space. ⁓ Space is a highly classified domain, as you know. There's a lot of difficulties in being able to cooperate across ⁓ borders that actually limit some of our capabilities and strengths in the domain. ⁓ There's a lot of strengths that other countries have and that they can tap into ⁓ in ways in which we can kind of develop the domain in a peaceful manner, but make sure that we have freedom of action ⁓ in space. so that really kind of led me down a path of how do we get to that formalization? ⁓ There were concepts, there have been very loose discussions about a world space organization. And so what I wanted to understand is how can you... How can you get to that level? ⁓ Definitely took me down a path that I didn't expect and conclusions were very different than what I had thought they'd be, but ⁓ pretty interesting research for sure. What's interesting, and I don't think people understand it, is how important the Space Force is to a future economy. we've got military capabilities in every domain. Exactly. And what those capabilities do is allow freedom of action in that domain. Just because we haven't had to fight through a World War conflict that started or extended into the space domain doesn't mean we don't have a requirement for a strong Space Force. And so I think that's just important for folks to understand and to keep kind of repeating the fact that a Space Force isn't just there for itself. The Space Force is there for the civil sector, the commercial sector as it continues to thrive, but also the international community. which gets to your thesis of why you think we need a space treaty organization. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, right now the United States cooperates with other countries in various ways, right? ⁓ They generally take a departmental approach or an agency level approach rather than a full whole of nation approach. ⁓ I think that that is not necessarily the best way of going about it. So to give you an example, right, we have defense security cooperation. That's the ⁓ mechanisms in which the space force itself will work with allied states, right, in space. And then you have the Artemis Accords, which are ⁓ non-binding principles that the United States developed, and they enter into bilateral agreements. So this is the United States entering into agreement with a singular other country. Now, there's a lot of signatories to those accords. So it looks like they're all cooperating with each other, but really they're directly cooperating with the US, not necessarily across. to others, to other signatories. ⁓ And one of the issues that I just mentioned is it's non-binding. ⁓ you can sign those accords and then you can go work with countries that we actually have domestic law that prevents us from cooperating with them. So for instance, we have the Wolf Amendment. It makes it illegal for the United States to cooperate with ⁓ the People's Republic of China and the CCP. ⁓ There's a problem in that there are multiple now. signatories to the Artemis cords that are actual signatories as well to the ILRSCO, which is the International Lunar Research Station Organization, ⁓ which is a treaty-based organization with China and Russia at the helm. So you can kind of see that what does that mean? Can those countries actually cooperate with us on space technology development now, or does that prevent them? And they're signatories, so we normally would let them work with Artemis. So it can create a conundrum, right? That's entirely separate from security cooperation with Space Force and whatnot. So there's a lot of disparate parts to this. And it can create kind of confusion. It's really complex how states interact in space, unlike in other domains. But let's talk about the Space Treaty Organization model. What could this be modeled after? You talked about the potential adversary countries leading the helm under this other construct. what would this construct be modeled after? Really, the construct can be modeled after existing treaty institutions that we've seen such as... And when I say this, I don't mean, we're going to follow this verbatim, right? But you can kind of see how states interact already. ESA is a good example. The European Space Agency is across Europe. It is not connected to the European Union directly. It's independent of that. So you have countries that sign on to it that aren't part of the EU, for instance. ⁓ And it enables them to, ⁓ you know, kind of have a burden sharing capability as well as being able to jointly contribute to space programs in an easier format. ⁓ We have a lot of red tape, right? That does cut out some red tape. Admittedly, ESA is a bureaucracy, right? So I wouldn't say that it's the perfect example of what can, you what we should build this on, but it exists as a legal structure, you know, showing us what can we create. So. A space treaty organization can follow multilateral structures that we've seen. Others that are more in different realms like NATO, for instance, ⁓ have been quite effective at cooperation. ⁓ We are entering a period in geopolitical relations in which ⁓ it's tough to have these multilateral institutions. The problem is the United States, ⁓ if it wants to keep its hegemonic power in the world, needs to make sure that it's, you know, is able to have those friends, right? If not, those friends are going to get picked up by other entities such as China and Russia. And they already are in some cases, right? Yeah, scary proposition you're bringing up. And what's interesting, if you look across social media and some of the short clips that are coming from folks, Americans who are visiting China, there seems to be a pro-China marketing campaign that's going on that's saying, hey, China is not such a bad place. Look at how great this is. There's robots walking around restaurants and it's really a cool place to visit. We had a podcast with General Gagnon recently and he brought up this really important point about the CCP and what it does to basically project power. And they just poured sand on a reef. And they said, don't worry about it. We're just going to pour the sand on the reef. And then they militarized that reef. and then they put an airstrip on that reef. And then they said, this is our territorial waters and don't dare do anything around them. And so they're doing a lot of effort to do that. And his point was, why wouldn't they do the same thing on the moon? Exactly. And I don't want to live in a world where we have contestation between countries, but I can't make the world what I want it to be. ⁓ There are realities out there. China has repeatedly violated international law, right? And when I say that, I mean, they've violated laws that we agreed to them, you know, they agreed to them. However, there's still signatories to that law, right? So what we're talking about here is what is the foundational law, outer space treaty, right? That's the foundational law. It doesn't go so far to really operationalize space. It just kind of says, hey, these are the rules of the road. If they're willing to violate the Convention on the Law of the Sea, They're probably willing, especially with territorial claims, they're probably willing to do the same with the outer space treaty. I highly doubt there's really much of a difference between how they think. They've also had ⁓ CCP officials ⁓ relate the moon, Mars, the asteroid belt to the Da'yu Islands. The Da'yu Islands are actually the Senkaku Islands, which are controlled and ⁓ administered by Japan. ⁓ They claim them and they have been very... They circle them, their naval fleet circle them. They enter Japanese territorial waters when they're not supposed to, with military vessels. And so if they're willing to do that there and then reference these celestial bodies in the same way, it's very probable that they're going to do the same there. So I think General Gagnon is pretty much, he's on the, he's on the money with that one. Your new father. Yes. Congratulations to you and your wife. And I was in a bookstore not long ago up in Bozeman. And I wanted to get a childhood book, you know, just a coloring book or a pop-up book that I could provide to you to give your son. So I always go looking around for space books. so I picked up two space books in this, you know, child book area. And I started flipping through them and they had ESA stamped all over them. they also had Chinese capabilities posted in them. no NASA capabilities, no US capabilities. As a new father who's bringing a young person into this world, realizing that space is the most important domain of our time, how does it make you feel realizing that there's propaganda basically being provided by China distributed across the US? Yeah, it does bother me. You know, I look at China and I see a country of over a billion people. many of which I'm sure you and I would be friends with, right? I mean, they're human beings. ⁓ However, their government is ruled by a party that does not value human life. We've seen this repeatedly throughout history. And knowing that and knowing what they do, especially across the world, the way in which they treat other countries, especially small countries, right? They promise them things. and they get them in debt and then they have a stranglehold over them and they control them. ⁓ Knowing that they influence ⁓ social media here in the United States, that they actually fund ⁓ extremism on both sides of the aisle here in an effort to destabilize us, it concerns me. Yes, I want my children to grow up seeing Americans accomplishing amazing things. I want them to see humans. accomplishing amazing things. ⁓ But when we see these flags, when we see these ⁓ organizations represented, those organizations are based off of values. in America, for ⁓ all of our greats and our faults, ⁓ we have the ability to speak freely and to live freely. ⁓ And I want him to grow up knowing that that is what we're going to carry that torch into space. You JFK said it great when he set us on the course to the moon. He said that we do not want to see space conquered by a hostile banner, but by a flag of freedom and peace. And I think that our flag and many of our allies' flags represent that. And I want to see that carried into the domain. So hopefully he gets to see that. ⁓ Hopefully there are more books that come out that have that in it. sounds like we got a job to do. Yes. You guys are making kids books. You know, I mean, we did pretty great with Space Force Association. So I think, you know, we can go into that. I agree with you. Why not a world space organization? You know, I would love to see a world space organization be created, right? Where every country can cooperate. ⁓ As most people paying attention to world politics understand, we have multiple wars taking place right now as you and I are speaking. ⁓ And we have international institutions that have received a lot of pushback ⁓ by countries for their ineffectiveness. We're spending a lot of money on these institutions and they're not really showing results. ⁓ We're seeing fragmentation of the planet around ⁓ Do you want to support Western powers? Do want to support Chinese and Russian powers? China didn't want to take part in Artemis. We have a domestic law saying that they can't, but they said that even if they could, they would never want to because it's an imperialist ⁓ organization, which is not even an organization. It's not even binding. ⁓ So there are a lot of ⁓ frictions that make it, I don't want to say impossible, but extremely improbable that a world space organization would be able to be created. The next best thing is formalizing our relationship with our partners. right. Artemis is a great first step in that. It's mainly based on exploration. It doesn't necessarily include security cooperation, which it doesn't need to. ⁓ But getting to formal binding principles can get us to a little bit more seriousness in how we're approaching space. ⁓ It can also give a little bit more oomph for countries to buy in and go and really participate in our Artemis program. and other commercial things that are happening. It can make it easier for countries to cooperate. We have a lot of ITAR and international trafficking and arms regulations requirements, all these laws that make it really difficult to work beyond borders. We can try to use this to break some of that down, to create kind of unified ways in which we can approach these things. ⁓ This isn't perfect, but it's probably one of the best approaches that we have because... ⁓ in a non-binding format, you don't do any of that. It's just says, hey, we like these principles and that's it. ⁓ And the great thing about it is while you see other organizations and you see NATO, you see the United Nations, you see ESA, and they're spending a lot of money on this, you don't have to spend a lot of money on creating a space treaty organization. Really you want binding principles and then you can have a fairly ⁓ cheaply funded institution that is able to just enable. cooperation, enable coordination and communication across countries. Kind of like that central system, that node that can kind of fuse everyone together, if that makes sense. So there's a lot of concern about bureaucracies and growing budgets. You can do things for less. That is totally possible. I think we've seen the private sector do a great job with that. So it can be modeled here. Yeah. And it seems like under this administration, the edict is... lay a foundation and let the organization get established. Meaning, if there's something out there, and I think the Space Objective Order that was published late last year is a perfect opportunity to say, hey, this would fit directly within that. Exactly. As it continues to move forward. So why not NATO in space? You know, the issue is, I ⁓ I think NATO itself as an institution is doing good things as it's moving forward in space. and trying to enable better cooperation across the NATO alliance in space. what we are talking about is there's a lot of countries that have amazing space capabilities that are not part of NATO, right? You have Japan, South Korea, Australia, countries that are investing heavily into the domain that do not have formal, they're not part of the NATO treaty, right? Another reason is, let's say NATO in space is just kind of a moniker for a more space security organization. ⁓ I would say that trying to keep my research when we went through it, there was a lot of concern about including security alongside exploration and development. ⁓ People were very concerned about that. ⁓ Many people did understand that yes, very similar to the US Navy, protecting ⁓ trade routes and international commerce. The US Navy rarely goes around just blowing ships out of the water. In fact, sometimes they get hit from pirates and other institutions that are trying to attack us. ⁓ They enable global shipping. US Navy protects other ships that are not delivering goods to the United States. They're delivering goods to Europe or to Africa or Asia. ⁓ The Space Force and other space forces around the world are going to have that role. So they do need to be included in the communication aspect of this. So when we designed, you know, a potential framework ⁓ in our findings, it was to have security included in this, but not the centerpiece, right? ⁓ And it also kind of alleviated having to have a NATO-like structure where you really embed your forces together, right? ⁓ This was more of a consultative, you know, body that's inside the organization where the security institutions, the militaries, the space forces, would be able to have consistent multilateral communication in a formal setting. And they can inform what's happening in exploration and development. So that's why I would say it's better to include it because you don't want to over-silo things, if that makes sense. Sure does. Let's talk about what the Space Treaty Organization would do. So it would do a handful of things. One, it would enable better cooperation across the signatories states. So being able to break down barriers of things like I mentioned earlier, like ITAR, allowing better direct investment across these countries ⁓ into other countries. ⁓ More coordination on space missions, ⁓ exploration, development, coordination on what are we going to do about property rights on the moon? private entities, right? There's executive orders, there's space policy directives, there's laws that now exist saying that private entities can have ownership over space resources, right? Well, how do we make sure that that is in such a formalized way that it's coordinated, that there are proper mechanisms in which you log those property rights, right? ⁓ Sure, they have property rights, but who do you communicate? Hey, this is my stuff, right? Don't touch it. Because all that's doing is actually de-conflicting, right? And if you don't do that, you have potential for conflict to rise. Even between people, mean, look, you have conflicts even here domestically. Your neighbor does something wrong. They say that part of your property is theirs. That's gonna create a conflict at a very micro level. Same thing in a macro. ⁓ Other areas in which it can assist is being able to break down the burden of one country having to do everything. NASA does a lot, right? The United States does a lot. We pretty much put, I don't know the percentage, don't quote me on that, but we put up probably 75, 80 % of mass in orbit, probably even more, admittedly. That's great, but there are other countries that have real estate where we could develop launch sites. we have congestion at our launch sites. We this, right? We talk about this all the time. Being able to expand into these countries because of the more ease of access through a treaty organization would help. So there's many facets. Security cooperation is another, right? Being able to communicate better across not just the NATO alliance. but across Japan, South Korea, Australia, and other countries that would most likely be interested in signing on this ⁓ would probably be very helpful to the United States, right? And especially in its position in space as there are other entities like what China's doing with the Asia Pacific Space Cooperation Organization and ⁓ the International Lunar Research Station Cooperation Organization. They really like doing long names. ⁓ that's what they're doing, we can have something that's similar, that's a little bit more robust than what we have. Although I'm not critiquing what we have. What we have is great. We needed to lay the foundation. I'm just saying, you I think we need to go that next step. Yeah, there's definitely an opportunity. being a resident of Texas, I mean, under probably the current construct, you're probably pretty content with where we're at with the law because there's more Texas flags on the moon right now than any other state or nation. Yes. That is true. That is true. Right. We have two of the ⁓ landing companies, Eclipse commercial ⁓ lunar payload services companies there, ⁓ Admittedly, TerraSpace, right, what we're doing. I just came from a meeting with one of them to discuss how we could put a payload on the surface of the moon. ⁓ And so, yes, I do think that, especially Texas has done a lot of great things, but that leads into How do states contribute individually to the national approach to space? And Texas recently, as you know, a couple of years ago, established Texas Space Commission gave it a lot of money, hundreds of millions of dollars to invest into this. ⁓ That's creating jobs. That is boosting the economy and the state. And it's positioning it as a powerhouse. But other states can do the same in various ways. And that enables us. That goes even to other countries, right? You know, I meet with people all across the world, Australia. I've met with individual provinces, know, leaderships in Australia about what they're trying to do and how they can contribute to space. So it's pretty remarkable. Yeah. That's a model that I think is becoming, you know, more normal. So this could provide a blueprint for everyone to now engage around. Yes. It's really what this ends up being is other folks are demonstrating success. And therefore, because it's successful, let's get more folks involved and have more collaboration, more cooperation under the premise of eventually establishing standardization. Because right now it is completely unknown. We don't have ⁓ really the laws written out such that everyone knows when they go into space, this is the expectation. Exactly. Yeah. So let's talk about the stakes. What if we don't do something like this? From my research, from discussion with people, experts across ⁓ the space industry, from civil to commercial to military, to people not in the United States and those here, I am concerned that if we do not get to some formal cooperation capability, ⁓ there will be interest at some point by states to join an entity that is. Right? ⁓ Obviously what we talked about the only other entities out there right now are led by China and given their more nefarious actions that we discussed here and You know in many other domains ⁓ It would be concerning to me and I definitely think that the stakes are pretty high if we don't do something like this I wouldn't say that we have to do this today, but I definitely believe that in the near future ⁓ if something like this doesn't get established we have the Possibility of being overtaken simply because other countries go to work with them I know a lot of people think American can go it alone and do everything by itself. We have an amazing Capability we are the powerhouse ⁓ But if you are a student of history ⁓ That's that's happened to many empires that they were the powerhouse in many fields and you know Those countries still exist, but they're no longer empires, right? And so I don't want to ever see that happen to us ⁓ I think that being proactive in this way would help us, you know, secure our position for a much longer period of time, especially in the largest domain there is. That's right. In action, at this point in history, equals seeding ground. Yes, a hundred percent. Let's talk about real life Starfleet. What does real life Starfleet mean? Yeah. So I use, I like to use science fiction because it's relatable to a lot of people, right? There's a lot of people that don't... work in the space industry, but they'll sometimes read about it or you know ⁓ They'll they'll you know, maybe they're fans, right? ⁓ When we talk about real-life Starfleet what I like to say, you know is is I'm not talking about Klingons and Vulcans and you know all that stuff What I'm talking about is cooperation, right? Starfleet, you know was a Exploratory organization it had security elements to it, but it had a little bit more of a utopian feel, right? There were characters in the Star Trek universe that came from a multitude of species, all working together. They came from different planets, right? ⁓ There's the United Federation of Planets, right? ⁓ And really what I'm trying to get at there is, hey, you know, we can work better with our allies, right? And our friends. ⁓ They want to work with us, we want to work with them. I've never heard anybody saying, I don't want to work with... you know, all of these other countries out there, we can combine our efforts, our strengths, our intelligence to be able to tackle problems. And while it is certainly a starry-eyed vision and a hopeful vision of what can be, ⁓ as we expand into our solar system and eventually beyond, I'm probably not going to be alive to see that at all. But when that does happen, we need to do it together and we are stronger together. But I just want to make sure that the values, the values that you see, you know, even in Starfleet, right? That was a free, right, system. That was a free government, right, and free people. That is what I want to see. All so that's why I use the Starfleet ⁓ analogy is that I would like to see us get to a point in which we can cooperate with each other, but the values that we share are carried into that domain. And ⁓ that would make me feel, especially going back to, you know, my son growing up, that would make me feel very comfortable knowing that he lives in a world that that's the direction. It doesn't mean that you're not going to have... ⁓ know, with other values and other ideas out there. But, you know, I do believe that the values we have are better for people. yeah. Let's talk about CEDAW versus NATO as a cautionary tale versus the success mob. It's a very good question. So a lot of people don't know what CEDAW is, right? That's the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. And we established that particularly ⁓ during the Vietnam era, right? To try to create better cooperative frameworks between our allies in the Southeast Asia region, right? ⁓ There were a few principles in there that did not follow immediately from NATO. Most of it was copied, right, from the NATO charter. ⁓ However, ⁓ it kind of left open, hey, if one of you get attacked, we may come to help, right? So you can tell how that quickly was gonna be like, okay, that's probably not gonna last long, right? ⁓ Eventually, after we pulled out of Vietnam, we shut the organization down, right? All the various countries decided it wasn't really needed. I will say that CEDAW is, it's kind of ⁓ an issue or event-driven creation of an organization. People could say the same for NATO, but obviously the Soviet Union was a threat to Western Europe and North America for quite some time. Whereas Vietnam is a war. While it was long, I mean, it certainly wasn't as long as the Cold War it was, you know, was. however, the way they structured, right, like I said earlier, they put some things in there that dissuaded states from feeling like it actually had value. When you create principles to, you know, have states better cooperate together ⁓ in whatever you're doing, you need to have principles that has a buy-in. Why should you be part of this, right? ⁓ There is just that basic level, foundational economic thinking of like, why should I be part of this? Why should I put my time into this? ⁓ CEDAW didn't have that, it failed. NATO did, right? And while NATO is going through a lot of ⁓ reforms and just, right now what we're seeing is a very interesting period in NATO's history. ⁓ Most people would say that there's still a lot of value in that alliance, right? Now it may have to shift, it may have to pivot. That's the nature of the world, right? The United States is pivoted in many, many aspects, right? ⁓ Space actually was impacted by that. Terrorist attacks of 9-11 led to many of our space institutions in the military being shut down, right? Because we pivoted to the global war on terror. And we did not, you know, pursue things like a space corps that was being discussed, you know, at that same time, the Rumsfeld Commission. ⁓ All that got tabled, right? And so, you know, while we can be event driven, we need to be proactive in long-term thinking, right? And so ⁓ NATO kind of had that, but it still was focused on the Soviet Union. We do not need to think of a space treaty organization being solely focused on China. We need to think of how do we better cooperate in space? Maybe one day China can join a space treaty organization. Maybe we can all work together at some point. That's how we need to think of this institution. realizing that as of right now, that's not probably going to happen, right? ⁓ But laying that foundation in which we are proactive about how we cooperate in space. Because while we think it's out there and it's not like here, at some point it will become like here. And there will be people from all sorts of countries working in that environment. How do they interact? You need laws to really help that. And while the OST, the Outer Space Treaty, is great, It was written in the sixties, right? So times have changed, right? I don't think they were thinking, how much, you know, there's going to be these mining companies interested in extracting resources, you know, um, and doing all these various activities that now are becoming more close to reality. let's pivot a little bit to the commercial sector and let's use your company as, as an example. How does that, how does your company factor into this vision? In your case, it's critical minerals in space and then the under-reported story. Yeah, yeah. you know, what's interesting is what we do is we do mineral analysis to define mineral characterization, right? So like in the mining sector, when you are trying to find an ore body or you're trying to find like lithium or copper, you need to understand what that looks like subsurface and, you know, and where are we going to extract it from, right? If there's no copper over here, you're not going to dig over there. So you need to do that exploration and mind mapping, right? ⁓ What we do is we provide that essentially on site, right? And automated. So it enables that process of being able to characterize the samples that are pulled out of the ground in a really, really fast way, right? ⁓ The reason the catalyst is why we created this technology was because in space, it's really tough to do that. Right? ⁓ You rely on these sample return missions that bring back very little. You're not really getting great information, especially from an economic perspective. So when we're talking about everything that we just talked about, how terraspace fits into this is, you know, we're going to be sending systems to the lunar surface, to Mars, ⁓ that are going to try to get that ore body understanding, or at least just mineral characterization in general of what's there. These are unexplored regions, right? If we do... If we find a resource, right, that's our data, that's our information, we know that that's there. What are the resource laws? Do we own that resource? Does the country own that resource? No, right? Like, I mean, we know that as much right now. So how does that operate? How does that work? Right? And then you factor in, okay, there's an economic gain to what that is, whether it's Terraspace or any other company. Well, I mean, on Earth, we have militaries to make sure that people don't steal things from other people, right? I mean, that's what the Navy and the high seas does. ⁓ What about in space, right? And so then that goes into the element of the Space Force and its expanded mission. It's not its mission today, but it very well may become that in 10, 20, 30 years, right? And so they need to be thinking proactively about, OK, well, we might have to protect a company that is you know, getting resources from a celestial body, right? So that's kind of how that all plays together. ⁓ And being able to cooperate, you know, internationally from a commercial perspective, it enables us to, you know, work. Maybe we find data, we find resources. Maybe we're working with a company that's not American, right? That's probably going to be easier to do, especially because space is controlled by all these regulations under a space treaty organization rather than, you know, having to go through all of the loopholes and red tape that you do today. yeah. I think you watch For All Mankind. I do. Is that a cautionary tale? Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, it's actually one of my favorite shows. And my wife admitted that I had to rewatch the whole thing because I was like all the way, you know, end of season four and my wife had never seen it. ⁓ She's not the sci-fi nerd that I am. And so I had to like force her into it and then she loved it, right? So now we're keeping up with all episodes, season five now. I am a huge fan and yes, it is a cautionary tale. It's a very realistic, I mean, there's, it's obviously science fiction, but there are very realistic, ⁓ it paints a realistic picture of how humans are probably gonna interact, right? We interact with each other that very same way here on earth. So we're probably gonna end up doing that sometimes in space. ⁓ And it paints a good picture of how that may look, right, and where we can get to, right? Ironically, in this season five, there's the M6, think, one of the kind of, I think North Korea left or something. So there's like the M6, right? It's like Mars Six Alliance. And then there's actually a, I can't remember if it's the INS or something, but there's another organization that's ironically led by China and other non-aligned countries. And there's these two bases of these two organizations. And so it's almost like... That show wasn't out when I was doing my research. It was like, you know, I think people just come to a realization that that's very possible because it's how we operate here on earth. ⁓ yeah, I think it's cautionary tale. think it's and I think it's great to watch. I don't get paid by Apple TV at all, but I definitely suggest you should watch the show. It is a very interesting show. Okay. Next steps. What do we do next? Honestly, you know, this might be more of a grassroots kind of thing, right? You know, there's a lot of skepticism across countries about creating a new organization right now. I think people, you know, should talk more about this topic. There's a lot of people that aren't probably going to agree exactly with my findings and, you know, particularly my opinions on this matter. But we need to have this conversation, right? And admittedly, I don't think this conversation has been being had ⁓ in this way, right? ⁓ So I want people to have the conversation. I think we need to have this conversation at the national level, on the Hill, right? In the halls of NASA, right? In the White House about how do we do this next step? Artemis cords are great. What's that next step, right? What we're doing with security cooperation in space, awesome. What's this next step? How can we streamline? How can we make it easier? Because you know, our government, want to cut bureaucracy. We want to cut, you know, a lot of the ⁓ overhead, so to speak, right? Well, when you have all these different entities operating in space, interacting with all these other different entities in other countries, you can streamline that. that's what I think the next steps really need to be. Thank you. Folks, you heard it here first. Space Treaty Organization