Adversaries in space. From the security forming forum in colorado, this is 30 minutes. Now we will get some good guidance and some good commercial oversight. I want to begin with this. I dont know about you, but when i saw the images from the james webb space telescope, i thought about the majesty of this space adventure venture. It blew me away to see those images of our universe. Jake sullivan, who you work for what is the vision you have about space . Let me ask you about one thing that is on your agenda. The International Space station that is part of our presence in space, it will be retired in seven years. We have to have some new platform. Talk about that but talk more broadly about the vision as you talk with your colleagues. Good day, it is an honor to be here. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Overarching purpose our overarching purpose is to strengthen, advanced strengthen advanced science and technologies to help our nations greatest aspirations. We think about the richly complex innovation vehicles that we have and where we are today, we are using this complex system to move us into the next chapter, the next era. In space, what that means is creating resilient critical infrastructure. That does not have to be that is resilient against all of this. Ensuring that we are mitigating and tracking and remediating orbital debris. Ensuring that we are successfully transitioning International Space station to a u. S. Commercially on space station and that we remain the partner of choice among our allies and partners. We really strive to continue to achieve safety, security, stability and sustainability. That is the vision. With the International Space station, we are at an exciting inflection point. I remember when the Shuttle Program was hired and i was working at nasa at the time. Here we are. We have agreed to retire the International Space station by 2030 and we will be replacing it and hoping to bring all of our partners with us. Partners that are allied with us, partners who are strategic competitors and new partners as we want them to come with us to a commercial space station that will be owned by u. S. Entity. We want to be active in that area of scientific knowledge. We want to retain u. S. Preeminence. While we have this focus where there programs, we are not yielding our preeminence for Space Research and development. I miss the space shuttle. I used to love to watch it. You are the secretary of defense for space policy and last november, your colleagues and you completed a document that was called the space strategy review. Space strategic review. Nicknamed scissors. I wondered about that. That document, i dont believe it exists in an unclassified version but i am hoping you can give this audience a sense of the broad concepts that frame our strategy as you put together that document and as you have been trying to carry that out. Thank you to the aspen security form for this opportunity. The space strategic review, scissor was a herculean undertaken by my department. To really take a base level relook at the necessary security environment and a couple of really important things, number one, space is in our dna for the military. It is essential to the way we fight, it is part of the way of war. That is how space has become increasingly important. Secondly, as secretary austen has directed us to focus on china, china is our challenge in space. This allows us to focus what we need to do. As we look at the environment, it is much different than 10 years ago. Massive change. We need to make sure that we can deter conflict in space. The conflict in space is completely related to conflict in the ground. Every military mission relies on space. We have to protect and defend and devalue adversary attacks. How do we devalue an attack . The second part is our men and women in harms way are in harms way when they face space enabled threats. We have to be able to protect them from those as well. You mentioned resilience. I just want to followup. Our National SecuritySpace Architecture often described as exquisite, the satellites, and a string piece of technology. We are also very vulnerable. In recent years, i think you and your colleagues have realized that vulnerability is a serious problem and that somehow you have to put more eggs in more baskets and reduce vulnerability. Have you completed that . Do we have genuinely resilient Space Architecture . First, resilience is never complete. It will be a constant back and forth. Second, we are truly investing in becoming resilient, we are picking up this awareness, missile tracks. We are moving from an architecture that has a few very large and expensive satellites to a proliferated architecture in leo. That has a couple of advantages. Number one is devaluing the attack. In the refresh rate provides the ability to not have to look out for requirements 20 years from now. A lot of advantages there from a military standpoint. I think we are all in on getting there but resilience is kind of a neverending request. Your new maker] is the vulcan. You have you had a setback in march. An explosion, the initial launch of that rocket, i think it was scheduled for may. It has now been put back and it appears to me while quickly scanning the press just when it is going to go off. Are you confident it will be in space . The first launch will be up by the end of this year. We did a pretty detailed discussion for the press just a few days ago and explained everything that happened and when we are going to fly. To put it in context, when i came to you and start of the development of this new rocket, i had a choice to make. Do i develop a rocket that is optimized for commercial leo missions like every other rocket in the world . Do i choose to focus on the National Security space that only the government uses . The government uses leo and it also uses these much more complex much longer duration, much more Difficult Technology missions. I chose to go that way because the challenges our country is facing, especially relative to china and russia, we will demand that of our industrial partnership. This is a fairly sophisticated rocket. What you are referring to, david is a structural Qualification Test you are performing on that very exquisite upper stage back at the Marshall Space Flight center. The very last test i needed to do before flying the rocket and sitting down on the pad at cape canaveral. What happened was this paperthin 40 foot long 18 foot across stainless steel tank, so thin i have had with wedding invitations that were thicker than the steel on this thing. It wont hold its own shape if it is not pressurized. Every kilogram, every ounce of man matters. It is another kilogram of payload. The bottom line was it was a little too thin at the top. There was a local stress riser. Exquisite technology but the corrective action is i wish it was 20 thicker. I guess i will weld a plate over the top of the stage. That is it. Building it now. A few days from now you can ask me. Then we will fly before the end of the year. The take away for me is the image there. The image of the wedding invitation. What is it like competing with elon musk . You are big competitor and spacex of space x. What is space x like as a competitor . Space x is a very aggressive competitor and competition is good. There was only one Domestic Company that could fly before i got to uli. We were a sole source a monopoly. Our mission had been to have extreme reliability coming through an era where the spacecraft was aging out. They were technologically ambitious. Our job was to fly anything that showed up to the launchpad and dont break any. We are short. When i got there, elon musk had just shown up. Our competitor was litigious. The first thing they did was to our customer but i will tell you that competition is good for industry and at the time when our country is facing these challenges, a broader Industrial Base is something we need. I have been supportive of that since day one. I am not afraid to compete. We have developed a rocket, we have competed. We beat him in the National Security space for first place and then we landed i National Commercial this National Commercial contract with amazon. This is a healthy environment. I hope it continues. I welcome new entrants as well. Quick select we said we beat him. I like the way you said we beat him. What does this white house think about project artemis . Our return to the moon. I would be interested in hearing how you would describe the goal of that project, the benefits. Since we are talking about elon musk, elon musk and jeff bezos, the owner of my newspaper, they see going to mars as a way of saving our civilization. They had the biggest ideas about planet earth decay and the need to leap into the heavens to save ourselves. Does this white house have a similar vision when you think about project artemis and going to the moon . President biden is very clear on ensuring that we have the first woman on the moon. And the first person of color on the moon. The astronauts were recently announced and we have three americans and an astronaut from another country. Not only is there prioritization to going back to the moon but there is a desire to go back to the moon together with other nations. That for astronaut is canadian. We are going with an allied partner. We had a successful rocket test and then the astronauts can fly into years. There we have a followon mission. We are very excited to have the first woman and person of color on the surface of the moon in less than two years. With the excitement on the civil side, we have excitement on the commercial side with individuals. Which in and of itself as a Seismic Shift from where we were historically when the vision of space came from the president. Now we have individuals who are innovating in space. Looking to go to the moon, who are supplying a lot of Critical Services on the civil side for nasa and the defense side as well. And are looking to go to mars as well. What we see here is an abundance of Innovative Technology that will come out of it and space manufacturing on the surface of the moon. Robotics technology and servicing satellites that are low on fuel. This includes talking, maneuvering satellites. We have to consistently innovate and update our thinking and think differently about solutions that are for each respective orbit. There is, we rely on the private sector to provide. Those are the strategies and guidelines we have to follow to ensure the ecosystem remains exciting and remains at the core , a system that strengthens and meets our greatest aspiration. I have to answer that. She is being so modest. This is a moment in time, every human destiny is going to be changed by this exploration. We understand there are more Natural Resources on the moon just beyond space that we can than we can comprehend of. We are zero skipping and conserving materials and thinking of a model in which we are living on a planet where every diminishing resource will eventually be used up and our children will not have the lives we had now. When we go to space and develop these resources that identify human imagination, where there is such abundance, this will change everything. It will start on the moon. It is possible because resources are there but also because the resources exist on the moon. We will go from there out further into the solar system. This is the time. You will tell your grandchildren that you were there when the destiny of humanity changed. Ebony is part of that. That is cool. Well said. You sound like my boss, jeff who says our descendants will think of earth as a national park. John, every time i try as a journalist, to ask detailed questions about space weapon systems and how we are going to compete with china, the usual answer is i cant talk about it, it is classified. But it reaches somebody you know well. General john heitman. He said it in 2021. He said in space, we over classify everything. Deterrence does not happen in the classified world. Deterrence does not happen in black super classified systems. You said yourself a couple of months ago that space is over classify. I know you think that general hayden overstated the matter. These are supersensitive secret but it is important that the chinese get some sense of public pushback. Quick thank you for this question. Thank you for your question. The basic idea of being able to take a picture from space when only the u. S. Government could do that, that is the thing we want people to know. We are working on that. I would say it is a heart problem set to think about how things could be less classified. I would you say that deterrence is in the mind of the adversary. You know that china still secret from us constantly. We need to keep them guessing. I do not think that requires him classifying anything. Unclassified anything. Quick because of their deep concern. About creating more debris fields in space, we are not in the connecticut tech business. We are looking at other things that can be done. Jamming, the use of directed energy. Am i correct in thinking that is a guidepost for you . Quick the United States continues to be the leader in the world and space. We need to make sure we are minimizing debris and normal operations. In many any military operations you may consider our within that. Space is increasingly valuable to every citizen of the world. Space is a unique domain. It is not like air or sea. If you do in asap test like china did, the material stays in orbit. It circles the earth. From the chinese test, there are still thousands of pieces of debris. We are all stuck with it for many years. It is in the mind of the adversary. But there are a couple of different schools of deterrence. There is the classic. Many of you are familiar where we say go ahead and attack. We will artificially impose a retaliatory constant that will make it not worth it. There is a whole another school of deterrence. That would that one is inappropriate for space for many reasons. There is likely loss of life. They wont be immediate loss of life so it is inappropriate. If we retaliate in space, the other schools go ahead and attack. That is where we are focusing. So there is no pearl harbor easy first punch. They can take a hit and keep on going. The Weapons Technology as they are developing now are things i personally worked on many years ago. We set them down to prosecute the global war on terror. China still that technology 20 years ago. They have been working on and all this time. While that may sound like a daunting challenge as they have a twentyyear advantage on us, it is also an opportunity. This country innovates. We will innovate and invent solutions that render those old ideas of our own irrelevant. We will deter them by showing them their actions wont work, we will maintain peace in space. That is our ultimate goal. Well said. I want to ask a quick last question. We talked about rules of the road for space this morning. In particular, i am curious about whether there was any dialogue between the United States and china that is meaningful. Is there any channel in which we are exchanging useful information about this domain that we share . You mentioned the Vice President has discussed in order in or biddable debris. We have a policy to ensure that we are leading by example, leading bilaterally. Leaning leading multilaterally and making sure that we all use space responsibly. We have this field of debris that is large, small and lethal. That was part of our response. Any dialogue with the chinese . Not in particular. Anyone in the audience, identify yourself by raising your hand. Yes. I was talking to someone who is planning to launch a data center to land on the moon and he told me that china was claiming to land on the moon. Can you talk about what type of threat that is to us . The mystic back let me step back. I dont think militarizing the moon is good for anybody. I think the logistics chamber that is unsupportable in a military contested environment, i think there are trees that say we should not be doing that. I am not tracking the specific instance. If china wants to land on the moon, they should do that. We continue to follow all the trees that we work very closely with in the human, or relationship with the multilateral institutions. Those are strong and we have to. We all have to follow those treaties. Lets see if we can grab another question or two. Thank you. Just to pick up on that last point about creating norms, there are parties in the outerspace treaty what sort of International Conversation should we be having . Lets put that here. We are very interested in developing the moons national resources. There are some pretty big gaps. We are not supposed to stay territorial claims and we should not. It does say we should develop resources that are there. That is easily said. That means it is a business. I have to be able to go there. I have to have exclusive access to a site if i am going to extract minerals. That is not currently covered by any legal regime. I need to be able to sell it. All of this has to be international. There is still a pretty big gap between the theoretical and the aspirational ideas. Even under the eisenhower administration. This is a classical international u. N. Led by the west where we value things like innovation and the ability to invest and create large swaths of human beings. Lets get going. May Henry Kissinger talked about this in his meetings with Chinese Defense minister. Who knows . We will conclude the panel because we have run out of time. Space is cool. Space is just so interesting intellectually, as a business. I want to thankthis is about 50. We are almost at the finish line so thank you for sticking with us. By the end of this 40 minutes, we hope that you will leave the session feeling