TDI 2021 – Space Packet Complete

Aff/Neg – Space Mining

Aff – Space Mining

AC – Inherency Private space mining and ownership allowed nowWilliams 20 [(Matt Williams, Reporter) “Trump signs an executive order allowing mining the moon and asteroids,” Phys Org, April 13, 2020, https://phys.org/news/2020-04-trump-moon-asteroids.html] TDI

Trump signs an executive order allowing mining the moon and asteroids

In 2015, the Obama administration signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSLCA, or

H.R. 2262) into law. This bill was intended to "facilitate a pro-growth environment for the developing commercial space industry" by making it legal for American companies and citizens to own and sell resources that they extract from asteroids and off-world locations (like the moon, Mars or beyond).

On April 6th, the Trump administration took things a step further by signing an executive order that formally recognizes the rights of private interests to claim resources in space . This order, titled "Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources," effectively ends the decades-long debate that began with the signing of the Outer Space Treaty in 1967.

New investments coming and companies are launching – economic incentives make it alluringTosar 20 [(Borja Tosar, reporter) “Asteroid Mining: A New Space Race,” OpenMind BBVA, May 18, 2020, https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/physics/asteroid-mining-a-new-space-race/] TDI

This is not science fiction. There are now space mining companies, such as Planetary Resources, which has already launched several mini-satellites to test several of its patents. Other companies like Asteroid Mining Corporation or Trans Astronautica Corporation, although still far from their goal, are already attracting millions of dollars of private investment interested in being on the front line of a possible future space business.

Is asteroid mining possible? This new space race already began back when the Hayabusa missions successfully returned a few grams of an asteroid’s regolith, so the technology to harvest asteroid material exists, we just have to change the scale. It is no longer a technological problem.

Is it economically viable? We are increasingly dependent on rare elements (such as those in the palladium group), which are expensive to exploit on Earth and come with a high environmental cost, so the sum of these two factors could make it profitable to travel to the asteroids to extract these raw materials . Astrophysicist Neil

deGrasse argues that the planet’s first trillionaire will undoubtedly be a space miner.

AC – Debris Advantage Asteroid mining spikes the risk of satellite-dust collisionsScoles 15 [(Sarah Scoles, freelance science writer, contributor at Wired and Popular Science, author of the books Making Contact and They Are Already Here) “Dust from asteroid mining spells danger for satellites,” New Scientist, May 27, 2015, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630235-100-dust-from-asteroid-mining-spells-danger-for-satellites/] TDI

- Study this is citing – Javier Roa, Space Dynamic Group, Applied Physics Department, Technical University of Madrid. Casey J Handmer, Theoretical Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology. Both PhD Candidates. “Quantifying hazards: asteroid disruption in lunar distant retrograde orbits,” arXiv, Cornell University, May 14, 2015, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1505.03800.pdf

NASA chose the second option for its Asteroid Redirect Mission, which aims to pluck a boulder from an asteroid’s surface and relocate it to a

stable orbit around the moon. But an asteroid’s gravity is so weak that it’s not hard for surface particles to escape into space. Now a new model warns that debris shed by such transplanted rocks could intrude where many defence and communication satellites live – in geosynchronous orbit.

According to Casey Handmer of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and Javier Roa of the Technical University of Madrid in Spain,

5 per cent of the escaped debris will end up in regions traversed by satellites. Over 10 years, it would cross geosynchronous orbit 63 times on average. A satellite in the wrong spot at the wrong time will suffer a damaging high-speed collision with that dust.

The study also looks at the “catastrophic disruption” of an asteroid 5 metres across or bigger. Its total break-up into a pile of rubble would increase the risk to satellites by more than 30 per cent (arxiv.org/abs/1505.03800).

Space dust wrecks satellites and debris exponentially spiralsIntagliata 17 [(Christopher Intagliata, MA Journalism from NYU, Editor for NPRs All Things Considered, Reporter/Host for Scientific American’s 60 Second Science) “The Sneaky Danger of Space Dust,” Scientific American, May 11, 2017, https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/the-sneaky-danger-of-space-dust/] TDI

When tiny particles of space debris slam into satellites, the collision could cause the emission of hardware-frying radiation, Christopher Intagliata reports.

Aside from all the satellites, and the space station orbiting the Earth, there's a lot of trash circling the planet, too. Twenty-one

thousand baseball-sized chunks of debris, according to NASA. But that number's dwarfed by the number of small particles. There's hundreds of millions of those.

"And those smaller particles tend to be going fast. Think of picking up a grain of sand at the beach, and that would be on the

large side. But they're going 60 kilometers per second."

Sigrid Close, an applied physicist and astronautical engineer at Stanford University. Close says that whereas

mechanical damage—like punctures—is the worry with the bigger chunks, the dust-sized stuff might leave more insidious, invisible marks on satellites—by causing electrical damage.

"We also think this phenomenon can be attributed to some of the failures and anomalies we see on orbit, that right now are basically tagged as 'unknown cause.'"

Close and her colleague Alex Fletcher modeled this phenomenon mathematically, based on plasma physics behavior. And here's what they think happens. First, the dust slams into the spacecraft. Incredibly fast. It vaporizes and ionizes a bit of the ship—and itself. Which generates a cloud of ions and electrons, traveling at different speeds. And then: "It's like a spring action, the electrons are pulled back to the

ions, ions are being pushed ahead a little bit. And then the electrons overshoot the ions, so they oscillate, and then they go back out again.”

That movement of electrons creates a pulse of electromagnetic radiation, which Close says could be the culprit for some of that electrical damage to satellites. The study is in the journal Physics of Plasmas. [Alex C. Fletcher and Sigrid Close, Particle-in-cell simulations of an RF emission mechanism associated with hypervelocity impact plasmas]

Scenario 1 is Climate

Earth observation satellites key to warming adaptationAlonso 18 [(Elisa Jiménez Alonso, communications consultant with Acclimatise, climate resilience organization) “Earth Observation of Increasing Importance for Climate Change Adaptation,” Acclimatise, May 2, 2018, https://www.acclimatise.uk.com/2018/05/02/earth-observation-of-increasing-importance-for-climate-change-adaptation/] TDI

Earth observation (EO) satellites are playing an increasingly important role in assessing climate change. By providing a constant and consistent stream of data about the state of the climate, EO is not just improving scientific outcomes but can also inform climate policy.

Managing climate-related risks effectively requires accurate, robust, sustained, and wide-ranging climate information. Reliable observational climate data can help scientists test the accuracy of their models and improve the science of attributing certain events to climate change. Information based on projections from models and historic data can help decision makers plan and implement adaptation actions.

Providing information in data-sparse regions

Ground-based weather and climate monitoring systems only cover about 30% of the Earth’s surface. In many parts of the

world such data is incomplete and patchy due to poorly maintained weather stations and a general lack of such facilities.

EO satellites and rapidly improving satellite technology, especially data from open access programmes, offer a valuable source information for such data-sparse regions . This is especially important since countries and regions with a lack of climate data are often particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts.

International efforts for systematic observation

The importance of satellite-based observations is also recognised by the international community. Following the recommendations of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) programme, the UNFCCC strongly encourages countries that support space agencies with EO programmes to get involved in GCOS and support the programme’s implementation. The Paris Agreement highlights the need for and importance of effective and progressive responses to the threat of climate change based on the best available scientific knowledge. This implies that climate knowledge needs to be strengthened, which includes continuously improving systematic observations of the Earth’s climate.

To meet the need of such systematic climate observations, GCOS developed the concept of the Essential Climate Variable, or ECV. According to WMO, an ECV “is a physical, chemical or biological variable or a group of linked variables that critically contributes to the characterization of Earth’ s climate.” In 2010, 50 ECVs which would help the work of the UNFCCC and IPCC were defined by GCOS. The ECVs, which can be seen below, were identified due to their relevance for characterising the climate system and its changes, the technical feasibility of observing or deriving them on a global scale, and their cost effectiveness.

The 50 Essential Climate Variables as defined by GCOS.

One effort supporting the systemic observation of the climate is the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI). The programme taps into its own and its member countries’ EO archives that have been established in the last three decades in order to provide a timely and adequate contribution to the ECV databases required by the UNFCCC.

Robust evidence supporting climate risk management

Earth observation satellites can observe the entire Earth on a daily basis (polar orbiting satellites) or continuously monitor the disk of Earth below them (geostationary satellites) maintaining a constant watch of the entire globe. Sensors can target any point on Earth even the most remote and inhospitable areas which helps monitor deforestation in vast tropical forests and the melting of the ice caps.

Without insights offered by EO satellites there would not be enough evidence for decision makers to base their climate policies on, increasing the risk of maladaptation . Robust EO data is an invaluable resource for collecting climate information that can inform climate risk management and make it more effective.

Warming causes extinctionKlein 14[(Naomi Klein, award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics, member of the board of directors of 350.org), This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, pp. 12-14]

In a 2012 report, the World Bank laid out the gamble implied by that target. “As global warming approaches and exceeds 2-degrees Celsius, there is a risk of triggering nonlinear tipping elements . Examples include the disintegration

of the West Antarctic ice sheet leading to more rapid sea-level rise, or large-scale Amazon dieback drastically affecting ecosystems, rivers, agriculture, energy production, and livelihoods. This would further add to 21st-century global warming and impact entire continents.” In other words, once we allow temperatures to climb past a certain point, where the mercury stops is not in our control.¶ But the bigger problem—and the reason Copenhagen caused such great despair—is that because governments did not agree to binding targets, they are free to pretty much ignore their commitments. Which is precisely what is happening. Indeed, emissions are rising so rapidly that unless something radical changes within our economic structure, 2 degrees now looks like a utopian dream. And it’s not

just environmentalists who are raising the alarm. The World Bank also warned when it released its report that “we’re on track to a 4-C warmer world [by century’s end] marked by extreme heat waves , declining global food stocks , loss of

ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise .” And the report cautioned that, “there is also

no certainty that adaptation to a 4-C world is possible .” Kevin Anderson, former director (now deputy director) of the

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, which has quickly established itself as one of the U.K’s premier climate research institutions, is even blunter;

he says 4 degrees Celsius warming—7.2 degrees Fahrenheit—is “incompatible with an organized, equitable, and civilized global community.”¶ We don’t know exactly what a 4 degree Celsius world would look like, but even the best-case scenario

is likely to be calamitous. Four degrees of warming could raise global sea levels by 1 or possibly even 2 meters by 2100 (and would lock in at least a few additional meters over future centuries). This would drown some island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, and inundate many coastal areas from Ecuador and Brazil to the Netherlands to much of California and the northeastern United States as well as huge swaths of South and Southeast Asia. Major cities likely in jeopardy include Boston, New York, greater Los Angeles,

Vancouver, London, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.¶ Meanwhile, brutal heat waves that can kill tens of thousands of people, even in wealthy countries, would become entirely unremarkable summer events on every continent but Antarctica. The heat would also cause staple crops to suffer dramatic yield losses across the globe (it is possible that Indian wheat and U.S. could plummet by as much as 60 percent), this at a time when demand will be surging due to population growth and a growing demand for meat. And since crops will be facing not just heat stress but also

extreme events such as wide-ranging droughts, flooding, or pest outbreaks, the losses could easily turn out to be more severe than the models have predicted. When you add ruinous hurricanes, raging wildfires, fisheries collapses, widespread disruptions to water supplies, extinctions, and globe-trotting diseases to the mix, it indeed becomes difficult to imagine that a peaceful, ordered society could be sustained (that is, where such a thing exists in the first place).¶ And keep in mind that these are the optimistic scenarios in which warming is more or less stabilized at 4 degrees Celsius and does not trigger tipping points beyond which runaway warming would occur. Based on the latest modeling, it

is becoming safer to assume that 4 degrees could bring about a number of extremely dangerous feedback loops—an Arctic that is regularly ice-free in September, for instance, or, according to one recent study, global vegetation that is too saturated to act as a reliable “sink”, leading to more carbon being emitted rather than stored. Once this happens, any hope of predicting impacts pretty much goes out the window. And this process may be starting sooner than anyone predicted. In May 2014, NASA and the University of California, Irvine scientists revealed that glacier melt in a section of West Antarctica roughly the size of France now “appears unstoppable.” This likely spells down for the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, which according to lead study author Eric Rignot “comes with a sea level rise between three and five metres. Such an event will displace millions of people worldwide.” The disintegration, however, could unfold over centuries and there is still time for emission reductions to slow down the process and prevent the worst. ¶ Much more frightening than

any of this is the fact that plenty of mainstream analysts think that on our current emissions trajectory, we are headed for even more than 4 degrees of warming . In 2011, the usually staid International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a report

predicting that we are actually on track for 6 degrees Celsius—10.8 degrees Fahrenheit—of warming. And as the IEA’s chief

economist put it: “Everybody, even the school children, knows that this will have catastrophic implications for all of us.”

(The evidence indicates that 6 degrees of warming is likely to set in motion several major tipping points—not only

slower ones such as the aforementioned breakdown of the West Antarctic ice sheet, but possibly more abrupt ones, like massive releases of methane from Arctic permafrost.) The accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers as also published a report warning businesses that we are headed for “4-C , or even 6-C” of warming.¶ These various projections are the equivalent of every alarm in your house going off simultaneously. And then every alarm on your street going off as well, one by one by one. They mean, quite simply, that

climate change has become an existential crisis for the human species . The only historical precedent for a crisis of

this depth and scale was the Cold War fear that we were headed toward nuclear holocaust, which would have made much of the planet uninhabitable. But that was (and remains) a threat; a slim possibility, should geopolitics spiral out of control. The vast majority of nuclear scientists never told us that we were almost certainly going to put our civilization in peril if we kept going about our daily lives as usual, doing exactly what we were already going, which is what climate scientists have been telling us for years. ¶ As the Ohio State University climatologist

Lonnie G. Thompson, a world-renowned specialist on glacier melt, explained in 2010, “Climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group. We are not given to theatrical rantings about falling skies. Most of us are far more comfortable in our laboratories or gathering data in the field than we are giving interviews to journalists or speaking before Congressional committees. When then

are climatologists speaking out about the dangers of global warming? The answer is that virtually all of us are now convinced that

global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization .”

Scenario 2 is Miscalc

Early warning satellites going dark signals attacks – causes miscalc and goes nuclearOrwig 16 [(Jessica, MS in science and tech journalism from Texas A&M, BS in astronomy and physics from Ohio State) “Russia says a growing problem in space could be enough to spark a war,” Insider,’ January 26, 2016, https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-says-space-junk-could-spark-war-2016-1] TDI

NASA has already warned that the large amount of space junk around our planet is growing beyond our control, but now a team of Russian scientists has cited another potentially unforeseen consequence of that debris: War.

Scientists estimate that anywhere from 500,000 to 600,000 pieces of human-made space debris between 0.4 and 4 inches in size are currently orbiting the Earth and traveling at speeds over 17,000 miles per hour.

If one of those pieces smashed into a military satellite it "may provoke political or even armed conflict between space-faring nations," Vitaly Adushkin, a researcher for the Institute of Geosphere Dynamics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, reported in a paper set to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Astronautica, which is sponsored by the International Academy of Astronautics.

Say, for example, that a satellite was destroyed or significantly damaged in orbit — something that a 4-inch hunk of space junk could easily do traveling at speeds of 17,500 miles per hour , Adushkin reported.

(Even smaller pieces no bigger than size of a pea could cause enough damage to the satellite that it would no longer operate correctly, he notes.)

It would be difficult for anyone to determine whether the event was accidental or deliberate.

This lack of immediate proof could lead to false accusations, heated arguments and, eventually, war, according to Adushkin and his colleagues.

A politically dangerous dilemma

In the report, the Adushkin said that there have already been repeated "sudden failures" of military spacecraft in the last two decades that cannot be explained.

"So, there are two possible explanations," he wrote. The first is "unregistered collisions with space objects." The second is "machinations" [deliberate action] of the space adversary.

"This is a politically dangerous dilemma," he added.

But these mysterious failures in the past aren't what concerns Adushkin most.

It's a future threat of what experts call the cascade effect that has Adushkin and other scientists around the world extremely concerned.

The Kessler Syndrome

In 1978, American astrophysicist Donald Kessler predicted that the amount of space debris around Earth would begin to grow exponentially after the turn of the millennium.

Kessler 's predictions rely on the fact that over time, space junk accumulates. We leave most of our defunct satellites in space, and when meteors and other man-made space debris slam into them, you get a cascade of debris.

The cascade effect — also known as the Kessler Syndrome — refers to a critical point wherein the density of space junk grows so large that a single collision could set off a domino effect of increasingly more collisions.

For Kessler, this is a problem because it would "create small debris faster than it can be removed," Kessler said last year. And this cloud of junk could eventually make missions to space too dangerous.

For Adushkin, this would exacerbate the issue of identifying what, or who, could be behind broken satellites.

The future

So far, the US and Russian Space Surveillance Systems have catalogued 170,000 pieces of large space debris (between 4 and 8 inches wide) and are currently tracking them to prevent anymore dilemmas like the ones Adushkin and his colleagues cite in their paper.

But it's not just the large objects that concern Adushkin, who reported that even small objects (less than 1/3 of an inch) could damage satellites to the point they can't function properly.

Using mathematical models, Adushkin and his colleagues calculated what the situtation will be like in 200 years if we continue to leave satellites in space and make no effort to clean up the mess. They estimate we'll have:

1.5 times more fragments greater than 8 inches across

3.2 times more fragments between 4 and 8 inches across

13-20 times more smaller-sized fragments less than 4 inches across

"The number of small-size, non-catalogued objects will grow exponentially in mutual collisions," the researchers reported.

Nuke war causes extinction – it won’t stay limitedEdwards 17 [(Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky/card is only parts of the interview directly from Paul Edwards.) “How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate,” EarthSky, September 8, 2017, earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate] TDI

We are not talking enough about the climatic effects of nuclear war.

The “nuclear winter” theory of the mid-1980s played a significant role in the arms reductions of that period. But with the collapse of the Soviet

Union and the reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, this aspect of nuclear war has faded from view. That’s not good. In the mid-2000s, climate scientists such as Alan Robock (Rutgers) took another look at nuclear winter theory. This time around, they used much-improved and much more detailed climate models than those available 20 years earlier. They also tested the potential effects of smaller nuclear exchanges.

The result: an exchange involving just 50 nuclear weapons — the kind of thing we might see in an India-Pakistan war, for example — could loft 5 billion kilograms of smoke, soot and dust high into the stratosphere. That’s enough to cool the entire planet by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.25 degrees Celsius) — about where we were during the Little Ice Age of the 17th century. Growing seasons could be shortened enough to create really significant food shortages. So the climatic effects of even a relatively small nuclear war would be planet-wide.

What about a larger-scale conflict?

A U.S.-Russia war currently seems unlikely, but if it were to occur, hundreds or even thousands of nuclear weapons might be launched. The climatic consequences would be catastrophic: global average temperatures would drop as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) for up to several years — temperatures last seen during the great ice ages. Meanwhile, smoke and dust circulating in the stratosphere would darken the atmosphere enough to inhibit photosynthesis, causing disastrous crop failures, widespread famine and massive ecological disruption.

The effect would be similar to that of the giant meteor believed to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. This time, we would be the dinosaurs.

Many people are concerned about North Korea’s advancing missile capabilities. Is nuclear war likely in your opinion?

At this writing, I think we are closer to a nuclear war than we have been since the early 1960s. In the North Korea case, both Kim Jong-un and President Trump are bullies inclined to escalate confrontations. President Trump lacks impulse control, and there are precious few checks on his ability to initiate a nuclear strike. We have to hope that our generals, both inside and outside the White House, can rein him in.

North Korea would most certainly “lose” a nuclear war with the United States. But many millions would die, including hundreds of thousands of Americans currently living in South Korea and Japan (probable North Korean targets). Such vast damage would be wrought in Korea, Japan and Pacific island territories (such as Guam) that any “victory” wouldn’t deserve the name. Not only would that region be left with horrible suffering amongst the survivors; it would also immediately face famine and rampant disease. Radioactive fallout from such a war would spread around the world, including to the U.S.

It has been more than 70 years since the last time a nuclear bomb was used in warfare. What would be the effects on the environment and on human health today?

To my knowledge, most of the changes in nuclear weapons technology since the 1950s have focused on making them smaller and lighter, and making delivery systems more accurate, rather than on changing their effects on the environment or on human health. So-called “battlefield”

weapons with lower explosive yields are part of some arsenals now — but it’s quite unlikely that any exchange between two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.

AC – Africa Mining Advantage Space mining destroys the African economy Oni 19 [(David, a space industry and technology analyst at Space in Africa. He’s a graduate of Mining Engineering from the Federal University of Technology Akure.) “The Effect of Asteroid Mining on Mining Activities in Africa,” Africa News, 9/24/19, https://africanews.space/the-effect-of-asteroid-mining-on-mining-activities-in-africa/]

At the moment, Asteroid mining poses no threat to terrestrial mining; however, this will not hold for long. The space industry is

progressing at such a rapid pace, and the prospects are unequivocally mouth-watering . The big question is, will asteroid mining lure away investors in Africa? The planetary resources company estimates that a single 30-m asteroid may contain 30 billion dollars in platinum alone and a 500m rock could contain half the entire world resources of PGM. Considering the abundance of minerals in asteroids, once asteroid mining materialises,

it will severely affect the precious metals market , usurp the prices of rare earth minerals, and a whole lot more because minerals that are usually somewhat scarce on earth will be easily accessible on asteroids. While foreign investors run the majority of the large-scale mining activities in the region,

reports say that many African countries are dangerously dependent on mining activities . For some African

countries, despite massive mineral wealth, their mining sectors are underdeveloped, and this is as a result of much focus on oil resources and a couple of other challenges. The million-dollar question is, what will become of the mining activities in Africa?

Economic decline causes Africa warTollefsen 17 [(Andreas Forø, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and Ph.D. in Human Geography from the University of Oslo) “Experienced poverty and local conflict violence," Conflict Management and Peace Science, 12/21/17, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320740608_Experienced_poverty_and_local_conflict_violence]

Civil wars are more frequent than any other type of conflict in the modern era, with the majority

occurring in low-income countries (Hegre and Sambanis, 2006; Jakobsen et al., 2013). While most country-level studies find that poverty and inadequate economic development increase the risk of conflict—a relationship that appears to be causal (Braithwaite et al., 2016)—we lack consensus on the precise mechanisms driving this phenomenon (Justino, 2009). Researchers have explained a correlation between low GDP per capita and conflict using diverse hypotheses, including lowered opportunity costs for individuals to rebel (Collier et al., 2009) and responses to a state’s weak capacity (Fearon and Laitin, 2003).

However, as argued by Hegre (2016), development’s highly correlated indicators make it difficult to distinguish between the theoretical mechanisms underlying the development– conflict nexus. Moreover, previously proposed models often represent processes operating on various geographical scales at individual, group, and state levels. Few researchers have backed up theoretical expectations with data at scientifically fitting levels of analysis, consequently ignoring intra-country variations of explanatory variables and outcomes. Furthermore, aggregated measures are incapable of capturing significant variations in economic conditions (Elbers et al., 2003) and conflict intensity (Rustad et al., 2011) within countries. In addition, conflict areas are, in general, atypical of a nation as a whole (Buhaug and Lujala, 2005), which calls for a subnational level analysis.

Addressing these disconnects—and the fact that most conflict operates at a local level (Rustad et al., 2011)—a recent body of studies has focused on how subnational variations in poverty determine the locations within a country where conflicts break out (Buhaug et al., 2011; Hegre et al., 2009; Østby et al., 2009). To date, their findings are largely mixed, with no consensus yet on strength, direction, or mechanisms behind the relationship. The problem here may be the use of varying proxies for poverty that are only loosely linked to the rationale for conflict and/or insufficient attention on the local sociopolitical context.

The present study’s empirical contributions seek to help rectify the inadequate measures of poverty that have come to characterize the literature. To begin with, the article improves our understanding of whether and where a local poverty–conflict nexus exists by deploying experiential data on

individuals’ actual wellbeing —which I argue is more closely connected to people’s motives and rationale for taking up arms. Second, the article examines the sociopolitical context’s conditioning effect on the poverty–conflict nexus. This is achieved by including data on individuals’ perceptions surrounding the quality of their local institutions, the presence of group grievances, and local unemployment rates. These factors, I argue, are more closely linked to reasons for fighting than are common proxies such as night-time luminosity and estimates of economic activity, both of which are often derived from dividing GDP per capita by local population counts.

Poverty—a state in which individuals’ basic needs go unmet—has been shown to motivate people to join rebellions. Humphreys and Weinstein (2008), for instance, found that poverty predicted inscription in the Revolutionary United Front during Sierra Leone’s civil war. Barrett (2011) similarly saw how promises of loot lured the poor to enlist in the 1997– 1998 dispute in Nigeria’s local government area known as Toto. Combatants of the Toto conflict were also more likely to join the rebellion if they stood to gain personal protection, food, and shelter.

For the present study, I developed a dataset by aggregating survey responses from the pan-African Afrobarometer survey to

subnational districts and combining the results with information on post-survey violent conflicts. The dataset consists of 4008 subnational districts, spanning 35 African countries. As most districts were only assessed once, thus restricting study of within-unit variation, survey responses were also aggregated to higher-order subnational regions, resulting in a dataset of 111 regions that were surveyed at least twice ; this permitted a region-level fixed-effects model design.

Using a pooled cross-sectional dataset of districts, I found that high levels of poverty were linked to increases in local conflict-based violence . Districts with a large share of poor individuals, both in absolute terms and relative to country average, had a higher risk ofconflict than more affluent areas. This relationship held in a coarsened exact matching setup, as well as in a region-level fixed effects design with repeated measurements across time. While the results reveal a local poverty–conflict link, they do not aid in uncovering underlying mechanisms.

Using interactions models, I found that poverty increased the risk of conflict, although only where local institutions are weak. The results also show that poverty-stricken areas in which individuals strongly perceive group injustice have a greater risk of conflict than similarly impoverished regions with no aggrieved population. A departure from the local individual opportunity cost explanation, local economic opportunities do not seem to condition the poverty–conflict nexus. In sum, the results

suggest that while poverty is significantly connected to conflict, high-quality institutions and inclusiveness of ethnic groups can prevent violence. Although a wide range of robustness checks and alternative model specifications were implemented, including matching and fixed-effects models, the issue of endogeneity could not be ruled out; doing so would require some kind of exogenous instrument, which I have been unable to identify.

The remainder of this article elaborates on the theoretical framework linking subnational poverty to local conflict-based violence. This is followed by a discussion of existing methods for measuring local poverty and their potential shortcomings. Next presented is the study’s research design and modeling strategy, followed by a discussion of empirical results. The conclusion considers the study’s limitations and proposes avenues for future research on poverty in locations that support rebel groups.

Poverty and conflict

A direct link

A connection between low income and risk of conflict is among the most robust findings in the literature on civil wars (Hegre and Sambanis, 2006). However, there is little consensus on the mechanisms through which poverty may produce conflict. Collier and Hoeffler (1998) claimed that low per-capita income lowers the opportunity cost of rebellion because when they have less to lose from taking up arms, poorer individuals become more inclined to rebel. Fearon and Laitin (2003) observed that poorer countries experience more conflict because they are unable to monitor and control all of their territory, thereby creating pockets of hospitable conditions for insurgents; Tollefsen and Buhaug (2015) identified a similar scenario at the local level.

Great power warYeisley 11 [(USAF Lieutenant Colonel Mark O. Yeisley, assistant professor of international relations at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. MA Colorado State, PhD in international relations from Duke University) “Bipolarity, Proxy Wars, and the Rise of China,” Strategic Studies Quarterly, Winter 2011, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26270538?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents] TDI

Bipolarity, Nuclear Weapons, and Sino-US Proxy Conflict in Africa

It is likely China will achieve economic and then military parity with the United States in the next two decades. China currently possesses 240 nuclear warheads and 135 ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States or its allies; that number of nuclear warheads is estimated to double by the mid 2020s.43 As during the Cold War, a bipolar system in which war between the United States and China is too costly will lead to policy decisions that seek conflict resolution elsewhere.44 But why would China’s rising necessarily lead to geostrategic competition with the

United States, and where would this most likely occur? Unlike the Cold War, access to strategic resources rather than ideology would lie at the heart of future US-Sino competition, and the new “great game” will most likely be played in Africa.

Despite Communist Party control of its government, China is not interested in spreading its version of communism and is much more pragmatic in its objectives—securing resources to meet the needs of its citizens and improve their standard of living.45 Some estimates show that China will overtake the United States to become the world’s largest economy by 2015, and rising powers usually take the necessary steps to “ensure

markets, materials, and transportation routes.”46 China is the leading global consumer of aluminum, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, tin, and iron ore, and its metal needs now represent more than 25 percent of the world’s total.47 In contrast, from 1970 to 1995, US consumption of all materials, including metals, accounted for one-third of the global total despite representing only 5 percent of the world’s population.48 China is the largest energy consumer, according to the International Energy Agency,

surpassing the United States in consumption of oil, coal, and natural gas in 2009.49 As the two largest consumers of both global energy and materials, the United States and China must seek foreign policy prescriptions to fulfill future resource needs. While the United States can alleviate some of its energy needs via bio- or coal-based fuels, hydrogen, or natural gas

alternatives, China currently lacks the technological know-how to do so and remains tied to a mainly nonrenewable energy resource base. Since the majority of these needs are nonrenewable, competition of necessity will be zero-sum and will be conducted via all instruments of power.50

Africa is home to a wealth of mineral and energy resources, much of which still remains largely unexploited. Seven African states possess huge endowments of oil, and four of these have equally substantial amounts of natural gas.51 Africa also enjoys large deposits of bauxite (used to make aluminum), copper, lead, nickel, zinc, and iron ore, all of which are imported and highly desired by China. Recent activity serves to prove that China seeks greater access to natural resources in Africa by avidly promoting Chinese development in a large number of African nations. South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, has recently allowed China

to help develop its vast mineral wealth; it is China’s number one African source of manganese, iron, and copper.52 Chinese involvement in Africa is not wholly extractive; the continent provides a booming export market for China’s goods and a forum to augment its soft power in the region by offering alternatives to the political and economic baggage that accompanies US foreign aid .53

Of primary interest is open access to Africa’s significant deposits of oil and other energy resources. For example, China has 4 ,000

military personnel in Sudan to protect its interests in energy and mineral investments there; it also owns 40 percent of the Greater Nile Oil Production Company.54 Estimates indicate that within the next few decades China will obtain 40 percent of its oil and gas supplies from Africa .55 Trade and investment in Africa

have also been on the rise; trade has grown more than 10 percent annually in the past decade. Between 2002 and 2004, African exports to China doubled, ranking it third behind the United States and France in trade with the continent. Chinese investment is also growing; more than 700 Chinese business operations across Africa total over $1 billion. Aid and direct economic assistance are increasing as well, and China has forgiven the debt of some 31 African nations.56

Africa is thus a vital foreign interest for the Chinese and must be for the United States; access to its mineral and petroleum wealth is crucial to the survival of each.57 Although the US and Chinese economies are tightly

interconnected, the nonrenewable nature of these assets means competition will remain a zero-sum

game . Nearly all African states have been independent entities for less than 50 years; consolidating robust domestic state institutions and stable governments remains problematic.58 Studies have shown that

weak governments are often prime targets for civil conflicts that prove costly to control.59 Many African nations possess both strategic resources and weak regimes, making them vulnerable to internal conflict and thus valuable candidates for assistance from China or the United States to help settle their domestic grievances. With access to African resources of vital strategic interest to

each side, competition could likely occur by proxy via diplomatic, economic, or military assistance to one

(or both) of the parties involved.

Realist claims that focusing on third-world issues is misplaced are thus fallacious; war in a future US-China bipolar system remains as costly as it

was during the Cold War. Because of the fragile nature of many African regimes, domestic grievances are more prone to result in conflict; US and Chinese strategic interests will dictate an intrusive foreign policy to be both prudent and vital. US-Sino proxy conflicts over control of African resources will likely become necessary if these great powers are to sustain their national security postures, especially in terms of strategic defense.60

AC – Plan Plan – states ought to ban the appropriation of outer space for mining activities by private entities.

Normal means is ratification of the Moon TreatyMallick and Rajagopalan 19 [(Senjuti Mallick, graduated from ILS Law College, Pune, in 2016. She was a Law Researcher at the High Court of Delhi from 2016 to 2018 and is currently pursuing LL.M in International Law at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, USA. She has been doing research on Outer Space Law since she was a student at ILS. Presently, she is working on different aspects of Space Law, in particular, Space debris mitigation and removal, and the law of the commons. She has published articles on Space Law in the All India Reporter Law Journal and The Hindu.)( Dr Rajeswari (Raji) Pillai Rajagopalan is the Director of the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology (CSST) at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. Dr Rajagopalan was the Technical Advisor to the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Prevention of Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) (July 2018-July 2019). She was also a Non-Resident Indo-Pacific Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre from April-December 2020. As a senior Asia defence writer for The Diplomat, she writes a weekly column on Asian strategic issues.) “If space is ‘the province of mankind’, who owns its resources?” Occasional Papers, January 24, 2019, https://www.orfonline.org/research/if-space-is-the-province-of-mankind-who-owns-its-resources-47561/] TDI

A third possible option is to get a larger global endorsement of the Moon Treaty, which highlights the common heritage of

mankind. The Moon Treaty is important as it addresses a “loophole” of the OST “by banning any ownership of any extraterrestrial property by any organization or private person, unless that organization is international and governmental.”[lxiv] But the fact that it has been endorsed only by a handful of countries makes it a “failure” from the international law perspective.[lxv] Nevertheless, efforts must be made to strengthen the support base for the Moon Agreement given the potential pitfalls of resource extraction and space mining activities in outer space. Signatories to the Moon Treaty can take the lead within multilateral platforms such as the UN to debate the usefulness of the treaty in the changed context of technological advancements and new geopolitical dynamics, and potentially find compromises where there are disagreements.

Aff – AT: US REM PIC

1AR – US REM PICMining isn’t needed – efficient usage and alternatives checkDodd 18 [(Jan, Wind Power Monthly magazine journalist) “Rethinking the use of rare-earth elements,” Wind Power Monthly, November 30, 2018, https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1519221/rethinking-use-rare-earth-elements] TDI

Technological innovation

Another response to rising prices is to use less. In the wake of 2011, as well as moving away from offering PSMGs onshore,

turbine manufacturers also started improving material efficiency.

The main target has been to reduce the dysprosium content. The metal, which allows the permanent magnets to operate at high temperatures, is used in relatively small quantities, but is significantly more costly than neodymium.

SGRE, for example, has worked with its suppliers to reduce the amount of dysprosium to "significantly below 1%", the company says. Improvements were made not only in the composition of the magnet, but also in the generators’ cooling systems.

Goldwind too has been upgrading its direct-drive PMSG turbines. "Some of the permanent magnets used in Goldwind wind turbines now contain no dysprosium, while others contain less than 1%," Cao states.

The high-temperature superconductor (HTS) generators currently under development also require very small amounts of REEs.

The HTS being developed under the EU-funded EcoSwing research project uses "much less than 1kg of REEs" — largely Yttrium — per megawatt, says Jürgen Kellers, managing partner of engineering firm ECO5. The world’s first superconducting generator was installed in an Envision turbine in Denmark this autumn (below).

Others are aiming to eliminate rare earths altogether. UK-based GreenSpur Renewables is developing a multi- megawatt direct-drive generator using cheap and plentiful ferrite magnets.

These are about one third the strength of neodymium-iron-boron magnets, but GreenSpur’s unique axial design means the overall weight of the generator is approximately the same, says Alex Freeman, the company’s operations director.

Recycling

Industry and research bodies have also been looking at recycling permanent magnets. Goldwind is already doing so, smelting old magnets to make new ones, Cao says.

"Due to their large size and standardised model, the permanent magnets used in wind turbines can be recycled more easily than those used in other rare-earth permanent magnet products," he notes.

Decline and Chinese LIO inevitable – the US either ushers in multipolarity or breaks into Sino-US war Layne 18 [(Christopher, Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University) “The US–Chinese power shift and the end of the Pax Americana.” International Affairs Vol 94, 2018, https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/images/ia/INTA94_1_6_249_Layne.pdf]

The fate of international orders is closely linked to power transition dynamics . Throughout modern

international history the prevailing international order has reflected the balance of power that existed at the time of its creation. When that balance changes sufficiently, the old order will be replaced by a new one. Viewed from this perspective,

what are the Pax Americana’s prospects? How will China’s rise, and America’s decline, affect the international

order in the years ahead? The surprising answer given by top US security studies scholars is: ‘ Not much. ’ The United States, so the argument goes, can ‘lock in’ the Pax Americana’s essential features, including its rules, norms and institutions.65 John Ikenberry, Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth are the leading proponents of the lock-in thesis.

Ikenberry was the first to set out the concept, arguing in After victory that a hegemon, by building an institutionalized, rules-based

international order, ‘can lock-in favorable arrangements that continue beyond the zenith of its power’.66 In

other words, the international order can remain intact even after the hegemonic power that created it has lost its pre-eminent position in the international political system. On this point, Ikenberry echoes Robert Keohane’s

argument in After hegemony that, once a liberal international order has been established by a hegemonic power, if the hegemon declines it is possible for a small group of Great Powers to take the place of the former hegemon and collectively manage the international system .67 That is, under certain conditions ‘ hegemonic stability’ can

exist even if there is no hegemonic power . In Liberal Leviathan, Ikenberry built on this logic to argue that, even if the Pax Americana were to wither completely, the LRBIO would nevertheless survive. As Ikenberry put it:

‘America’s position in the global system may decline but the international order it leads can remain the dominating logic of the twenty-first century.’68 Ikenberry’s view seems to have evolved, however. In jointly authored articles in International Security and Foreign Affairs, Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth embrace hegemonic stability theory.69 That is, they contend that, like all international orders, the post-1945 international order does, in fact, require a hegemonic power to maintain it—and not just any hegemon, but the United States. The logic of their argument is that the LRBIO and the Pax Americana are one and the same, and that US pre-eminence is a necessary condition for the LRBIO. According to them, the United States must exercise ‘global leadership’—the US foreign policy establishment’s code phrase for hegemony—by acting as a security provider and geopolitical stabilizer; by maintaining an open, liberal international economy; and by promoting global cooperation through upholding and revising the post-1945 liberal order—which is both ‘institutional and normative’—created by the Pax Americana.70 They also claim that the post-1945 Pax Americana ‘allows the United States to … wrap its hegemonic rule in a rules-based order’.71 This helps to conceal the actual motives of self-interest and realpolitik that underlie American hegemony. Read together, the International Security and Foreign Affairs articles by Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth make clear the authors’ view that the post-1945 LRBIO is inextricably linked to US hegemony; that is, to the Pax Americana. This is in keeping with the common understanding of hegemonic stability theory. As they see it, the post-1945 international order based on American pre-eminence ‘has served the US well for the past six decades and there is no reason to give it up now’.72 The argument has special force given that, according to the— correct—logic of their argument (and of hegemonic stability theory), if American hegemony goes, the LRBIO goes with it. In their preference for maintaining the post-1945 hegemonic American international order, Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth echo the renowned late nineteenthcentury British statesman Lord Salisbury. Presiding over a hegemonic Britain that was already perceptibly declining, he famously said: ‘Whatever happens will be for the worse. Therefore, it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible.’ The post-1945 international order is (or was) a concrete manifestation of America’s hegemonic status. So, of course, the US foreign policy establishment wants as little change as possible in international politics. Why would it wish otherwise, when change would inevitably be both the cause and effect of diminishing American power and influence? The United States has every incentive for wanting to prolong the post-1945 international order.

After all, for most of the last 70 years or so, the US has occupied the geopolitical penthouse (‘when America ruled the world’). From that lofty height, however, t he only direction it can go is down . The

lock-in strategy is seductive because it holds out (or appears to hold out) the possibility that the United States can preserve the status quo—the post-1945 international order—even as the geopolitical status quo of American hegemony is changing. Lock-in is attractive—superficially—because it assumes that China’s rise will not effect a major change in the international system. Specifically, lock-in holds that China’s rise can be managed by integrating it into the post-1945 international order, and ensuring that the exercise of Chinese power takes place within that order’s rules and institutions.73 By doing so, it is claimed, the United States can offset its declining power and ‘ensure the international order it leads can remain the dominating logic of the twenty-first century’.74 Lock-in assumes that China has no interest in overturning—or significantly modifying—the post-1945 international order in which it rose and became wealthy. Certainly, China did rise within the Pax Americana’s LRBIO. However, China did not rise to preserve that American-dominated order. For some three decades (beginning with Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms) China took a low profile in international politics, and avoided confrontation both with the United States and with its regional neighbours. Integration into the open international economy spurred China’s rapid growth. China’s self-described ‘peaceful rise’ followed the script written by Deng Xiaoping: ‘Lie low. Hide your capabilities. Bide your time.’ However, the fact that China bandwagoned with the United States in joining the international economic order did not mean that its longer-term intention was—or is—to preserve the post-1945 international order. In joining the liberal economic order, Beijing’s goal was not simply to get rich; by integrating itself into the post-1945 international order, China was able to avoid conflict with the United States until it became wealthy enough to acquire the military capabilities necessary to compete with America for regional hegemony in east Asia.75 Judging from Xi Jinping’s policy pronouncements, China’s days of biding its time and hiding its capabilities are over. Lock-in proponents argue that even as the Sino-American military and economic balance continues to tilt increasingly in Beijing’s favour, the post-1945 international order’s rules, institutions and norms will offset America’s loss of hard power. There is historical evidence that suggests this is wishful thinking. Take the case of Britain after the Second World War. Despite the

dramatic weakening of Britain’s economic and financial clout caused by its efforts in the two world wars, after 1945 British leaders believed that the United Kingdom could remain one of three major world powers. In pursuit of this goal, they formulated their own version of lock-in. As the historian John Darwin puts it, officials in London thought that by transforming the Commonwealth, Britain could transition ‘from an empire of rule to an empire of influence’.76 Specifically, they believed that ‘free from the authoritarian, acquisitive and exploitative traditions of the old version of empire’, the reconfigured Commonwealth ‘would make the British connection voluntary, democratic, and mutually beneficial’.77 The reformed Commonwealth therefore would serve as the institutional instrument of continuing British world power, within which shared values and norms would bind Britain’s former colonies and dominions to London’s leadership.78 The reasons why British policy makers bought into this vision sound an awful lot like the reasons why the presentday American proponents of lock-in think it will preserve the United States’ global leadership even as its hard power erodes. Lock-in did not work for Britain following the Second World War, and there is scant reason to think it will work for the United States in the coming years of the twenty-first century. The lock-in strategy also assumes that if the Pax Americana’s institutions are reformed, Beijing (and other non-western emerging powers) will find it more attractive to remain in the post-1945 international order than to overturn it. That assumption, however, is logically flawed: achieving lock-in by reforming the existing international order presumes that the United States can have its cake (preserving the Pax Americana) and eat it too (reforming the current international system’s legacy institutions). But, as we all know, when the cake is eaten, it’s gone. Reform—at least, any kind of reform that would appeal to China—would mean the United States yielding significant power in international institutions to accommodate Beijing. However, doing so would reduce US ability to shape outcomes, diminish Washington’s voice in international institutions, and impose constraints on US autonomy in foreign and domestic policy.79 As University of Birmingham lecturer Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou observes with respect to institutional reform: ‘It is questionable whether this will really preserve US influence or rather, on the contrary, diminish it, as the United States will have to share power in a reformed order and thus will be restricted in its ability to act unilaterally.’80 The US foreign policy establishment may talk the talk of reforming the international order (and the institutions that underpin it), but it is doubtful it will walk the walk with respect to reform, because

that would mean accepting a downsized American role in international politics. On the contrary, Washington’s opposition to the AIIB indicates that the United States is not prepared to see its influence in the international order diminished. And, with respect to reforming the post-1945 international order to accommodate the reality of a risen China, this is the nub of the problem: instead of preserving the Pax Americana, reform would lead to changes in the international order that would undermine it. Of course, regardless of

whether there is institutional reform, the coming decades are likely to witness major changes in the international order irrespective of America’s preferences. What will happen to the international order as China continues to rise, and America’s relative power continues to decline? As Yogi Berra, the greatest of all American philosophers (immortalized in baseball’s Hall of Fame), said: ‘Making predictions is hard. Especially about the future.’ However, one thing seems pretty certain: China is not on the verge of either of ruling the world, or becoming a global hegemon comparable to the United States after the Second World War; not yet, anyway. Thus, for the next several decades (at least) it will be neither China’s world nor America’s: international leadership will be contested.81 During this period, China can be expected to act pretty much as one would expect any Great Power to act while making the shift from rising to risen: it will use its newfound power to seek a much greater voice in managing—and shaping—the international order, and its underlying norms. For example, China will want others to acknowledge its ‘core interests’, including respect for its territorial integrity and its sovereignty. Beijing has expanded the geographic scope of its core interests beyond Tibet and Taiwan to include the South and East China Seas and Xinjiang. And, reflecting its insistence that states should refrain from intervening in others’ internal affairs, preservation of its political, economic and social systems also has been defined as a core interest.82 During the period of contested international leadership there is unlikely to be wholesale abandonment of the post-1945 international institutions. For example, as one of the five permanent members

of the UN Security Council, Beijing is an acknowledged part of the Great Power club. Similarly, we should not expect to see a dramatic overhaul of the international economic system. As the world’s top-ranking exporter and trading state, China benefits hugely from economic openness. However, the state plays a much greater role in China’s economy than it does in the United States and Europe. Beijing will want rules that protect its semimercantilist economic policies and also ensure that its state-owned industries are not disadvantaged. Beijing will continue pressing for an even greater voice, both for itself and for the developing world, in institutions such as the IMF and World Bank (unless or until they are superseded by new ‘made in China’ institutions). In this respect, China will position itself as the developing world’s champion—a role for which it is well suited. Like many nations in the developing world— but unlike the United States—China has been a victim of western Great Power policies of imperialism and colonialism. As such, China has a claim to prominence in constructing a new international order that reflects the values of the developing world rather than those of the United States and the West.83 Even though the international economy will remain (more or less) open, in other respects the international system is likely to become much less liberal politically. The Chinese Communist Party’s 19th Congress demonstrated that China is not converging with the West: it is not going to become a democracy any time soon—if ever. Consequently, as China’s role in shaping the international agenda increases, democracy and human rights will become less salient. China will almost certainly try to change the norms that favour democracy promotion, ‘humani tarian’ intervention, human rights and the Responsibility to Protect. Beijing will resist norms that divide states into two camps, ranging democratic ‘good guys’ against non-democratic ‘bad guys’.84 Instead, it will offer its policy of ‘market authoritarianism’ to developing states as a better model of political, social and economic development than the US model based on the Washington Consensus. As its power continues to increase, China will seek to recast the world order in a way that not only advances its interests but also acknowledges both its enhanced power and its claims to status and prestige equal to those of the declining hegemon.85 For

now, Beijing is (mostly) ‘working within the system’ to revise the post-1945 international order while simultaneously laying the groundwork for an alternative international order that eventually could displace the Pax Americana. As a 2007 report by the Center for a New American Security concluded: Rather than seeking to weaken

or confront the United States directly, Chinese leaders are pursuing a subtle, multifaceted, long-term grand strategy that aims to derive as many benefits as possible from the existing international system while accumulating the economic wherewithal, military strength, and soft power resources to reinforce China’s emerging position as at least a regional great power.86 Even as it stays within the post-1945 international

order, Beijing is not doing so to preserve it. In this sense, as Martin Jacques has observed, China is playing a double game. It is operating ‘both within and outside the existing international system while at the same time, in effect, sponsoring a new China-centric international system which will exist alongside the present system and probably slowly begin to usurp it’.87 The creation of the AIIB, which Beijing intends should ultimately eclipse the IMF and World Bank, is a good example of this strategy. American scholars and policy-makers believe that a lock-in strategy can be employed to head off any Chinese attempt to create a new international order, or to create a parallel order. They believe this because they have imbued the concept of a ‘rules-based, institutionalized, liberal international order’ with a talismanic quality. In so doing they have air-brushed Great Power politics out of the picture. As they see it, rules and institutions are politically neutral and, ipso facto, beneficial for all. Hence, they can be an effective substitute for declining hard power. However, rather than existing separately from the balance of power, rules, norms and institutions reflect it. Hence the world is no more likely to continue upholding the Pax Americana once

US power declines than Britain’s dominions and former colonies were inclined to perpetuate the empire after the Second World War. The fate of the Pax Americana, and that of the international order, will be determined by the outcome of the Sino-American rivalry As the British scholar E. H. Carr observed, a rules-based international order ‘cannot be understood independently of the political foundation on which it rests and the political interests which it serves’.88 The post-Second World War international order is an American order that privileges US interests.89 Even the discourse of ‘liberal order’ cannot disguise this fact. Today, the ground is shifting beneath the Pax Americana’s foundations. Those who believe that lock-in can work view international politics as being ,

in essence, geopolitically antiseptic. For them, Great Power competition and conflict are transcended by international institutions,

rules and norms. This is not how the real world works, however.90 Great Power politics is about power. Rules and institutions do not exist in a vacuum, hermetically sealed off from Great Power politics. Nor are they neutral. Rather, they reflect the distribution of power in the international system. In international politics, who rules makes the rules. In his classic study of international relations between the world wars, The Twenty years’ crisis, Carr analysed the political crisis of the 1930s caused by the breakdown of the post-First World War order symbolized by the Versailles Treaty.91 The Versailles system cracked, Carr argued, because of the widening gap between the order it represented and the actual distribution of power in Europe. Carr used the events of the 1930s to make a larger geopolitical point.

International orders reflect the balance of power that exists at time of their creation. Over time, however, the relative power of states changes, and eventually the international order no longer reflects the actual distribution of power between or among the leading Great Powers. When that happens, the legitimacy of the prevailing order is called

into question, and it will be challenged by the rising power(s). When the balance of power swings—or is perceived to swing—in its direction, a rising power becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the international order, and seeks to revise it. The challenger wants to change the rules embodied in the existing international order—rules written, of course, by the once dominant but now declining Great Power that created it. It also wants the allocation of prestige and status changed to reflect its newly acquired power. The incumbent hegemon, of course, wants to preserve the existing international order as is—an order that it midwifed to advance, and consolidate, its own interests. The E. H. Carr Moment presents the incumbent hegemon with a

choice. It can dig in its heels and try to preserve the prevailing order —and its privileged position therein; or it can accede to the rising challenger’s demands for revision. If it chooses the former course of action, it runs the risk of war with the dissatisfied challenger. If it chooses the latter, it must come to terms with the reality of its decline, and the end of its hegemonic position . The E. H. Carr Moment

is where the geopolitical rubber meets the road: the status quo power(s) must choose between

accommodating or opposing the revisionist demands of the rising power(s). Liberal internationalists such as John

Ikenberry argue that China will not challenge the current international order, even as the distribution of power

continues to shift in its favour. This is a doubtful proposition. The geopolitical question—the E. H. Carr Moment—of our time is whether the declining hegemon in east Asia, the United States, will try to preserve a status quo that is becoming increasingly out of sync with the shifting distribution of power, or whether it can reconcile itself to a rising China’s revisionist demands that the international order in east

Asia be realigned to reflect the emerging power realities. Unless the United States can adjust gracefully to this

tectonic geopolitical shift, the chances of a Sino-American war are high —as they always are during

power transitions.92 However, whether change comes peacefully or violently, the Pax Americana’s days

are numbered.

Neg – Off Case

1NC – US REM PICCP Text: States, except the United States, should ban the appropriation of outer space for asteroid mining by private entities. The United States should fund the appropriation of outer space for the mining of rare earth metals from asteroids by private entities.The PIC is key to beat China and protect against Chinese REM gatekeepingStavridis 21 [(James, retired US Navy admiral, chief international diplomacy and national security analyst for NBC News, senior fellow at JHU Applied Physics Library, PhD in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts) “U.S. Needs a Strong Defense Against China’s Rare-Earth Weapon,” Bloomberg Opinion, March 4, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-04/u-s-needs-a-strong-defense-against-china-s-rare-earth-weapon] TDI

You could be forgiven if you are confused about what’s going on with rare-earth elements. On the one hand, news reports indicate that China

may increase production quotas of the minerals this quarter as a goodwill gesture to the Joe Biden administration. But other sources say that China may ultimately ban the export of the rare earths altogether on “ security concerns .” What’s really going on here?

There are 17 elements considered rare earths — lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium — and while many aren’t

actually rare in terms of global deposits, extracting them is difficult and expensive. They are used across high-tech manufacturing, including smartphones, fighter aircraft and components in virtually all advanced electronics. Of particular note, they are essential to many of the clean-energy technologies expected to come online in this decade.

I began to focus on rare-earth elements when I commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s presence in Afghanistan, known as the International Security Assistance Force. While Afghans live in an extremely poor country, studies have assessed that they sit atop $1 trillion to $3 trillion in a wide variety of minerals, including rare earths. Some estimates put the rare-earth levels alone at 1.4 million metric tons.

But every time I tried to visit a mining facility, the answer I got from my security team was, “It’s too dangerous right now, admiral.” Unfortunately, despite a great deal of effort by the U.S. and NATO, those security challenges remain, deterring the large foreign-capital investments necessary to harvest the lodes. Which brings us back to Beijing.

China controls roughly 80% of the rare-earths market, between what it mines itself and processes in raw material from elsewhere. If it decided to wield the weapon of restricting the supply — something it has repeatedly threatened to do — it would create a significant challenge for manufacturers and a geopolitical predicament for the industrialized world.

It could happen. In 2010, Beijing threatened to cut off exports to Japan over the disputed Senkaku Islands. Two years ago, Beijing was reportedly considering restrictions on exports to the U.S. generally, as well as against specific companies (such as defense giant Lockheed Martin Corp.) that it deemed in violation of its policies against selling advanced weapons to Taiwan.

President Donald Trump’s administration issued an executive order to spur the production of rare earths domestically, and created an Energy Resource Governance Initiative to promote international mining. The European Union and Japan, among others, are also aggressively seeking newer sources of rare earths.

Given this tension, it was superficially surprising that China announced it would boost its mining quotas in the first quarter of 2021 by nearly 30%, reflecting a continuation in strong (and rising) demand. But the increase occurs under a shadow of uncertainty, as the Chinese Communist Party is undertaking a “review” of its policies concerning future sales of rare earths. In all probability, the tactics of the increase are temporary, and fit within a larger strategy.

China will go to great lengths to maintain overall control of the global rare-earths supply. This fits neatly within the geo-economic approach of the One Belt, One Road initiative , which seeks to use a variety of

carrots and sticks — economic, trade, diplomatic and security — to create zones of influence globally. In terms of rare earths, the strategy seems to be allowing carefully calibrated access to the elements at a level that makes it economically less attractive for competitors to undertake costly exploration and mining operations. This is similar to the oil-market strategy used by Russia and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries for decades.

Some free-market advocates believe that China will not take aggressive action choking off supply because that could precipitate retaliation or accelerate the search for alternate sources in global markets. What seems more likely is a series of targeted shutdowns directed against specific entities such as U.S. defense companies, Japanese consumer electronics makers, or European industrial concerns that have offended Beijing.

The path to rare-earth independence for the U.S. must include: Ensuring supply chains of rare earths necessary for national security; promoting the exploitation of the elements domestically (and removing barriers to responsibly doing so); mandating that defense contractors and other critical-infrastructure entities wean themselves off Chinese rare earths; sponsoring research and development to find alternative materials, especially for clean energy technology; and creating a substantial stockpile of the elements in case of a Chinese boycott.

This is a bipartisan agenda. The Trump administration’s strategic assessment of what needs to be done (which

goes beyond just 17 rare earths to include a total of 35 critical minerals) is thoughtful, and should serve as a basis for the Biden administration and Congress.

REM access key to military primacy and tech advancement – alternatives failTrigaux 12 (David, University Honors Program University of South Florida St. Petersburg) “The US, China and Rare Earth Metals: The Future Of Green Technology, Military Tech, and a Potential Achilles‟ Heel to American Hegemony,” USF St. Petersberg, May 2, 2012, https://digital.stpetersburg.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=honorstheses] TDI

The implications of a rare earth shortage aren’t strictly related to the environment, and energy dependence, but have distinct military implications as well that could threaten the position of the United States world’s strongest military. The United States place in the world was assured by powerful and decisive deployments in World War One and World

War Two. Our military expansion was built upon a large, powerful industrial base that created more, better weapons of war for our soldiers. During the World Wars, a well-organized draft that sent millions of men into battle in a

short amount of time proved decisive, but as the war ended, and soldiers drafted into service returned to civilian life, the U.S. technological superiority over its opponents provided it with sustained dominance over its enemies, even as the numerical size of the army declined. New technologies, such as the use of the airplane in combat, rocket launched missiles, radar systems, and later, GPS, precision guided missiles, missile defense systems, high tech tanks, lasers, and other technologies now make the difference between victory and defeat.

The United States military now serves many important functions, deterring threats across the world. The United States projects its power internationally, through a network of bases and allied nations. Thus, the United States is a powerful player in all regions of the world, and often serves as a buffer against conflict in these regions. US military presence serves as a buffer against Chinese military modernization in Eastern Asia, against an increasingly nationalist Russia in Europe, and smaller regional actors, such as Venezuela in South America and Iran in the Middle East. The U.S. Navy is deployed all over the world, as the guarantor of international maritime trade routes. The US Navy leads

action against challenges to its maritime sovereignty on the other side of the globe, such as current action against Somali piracy. Presence in regions across the world prevents escalation of potential crisis. These could result in either a larger power fighting a smaller nation or nations (Russia and Georgia, Taiwan and China), religious opponents (Israel and Iran), or traditional foes (Ethiopia and Eretria,

Venezuela and Colombia, India and Pakistan). US projection is also key deterring emerging threats such as terrorism and nuclear proliferation. While not direct challenges to US primacy, both terrorism and nuclear proliferation can kill thousands.

The US Air Force has a commanding lead over the rest of the world, in terms of both numbers and capabilities. American ground forces have few peers, and are unmatched in their ability to deploy to anywhere in the world at an equally unmatched pace.

The only perceived challenge to the United States militarily comes from the People’s Republic of China.76 While the United States outspends all other nations in the world put together in terms of military spending, China follows as a close second, and has begun an extensive modernization program to boot.77 The Chinese military however, is several decades behind the United States in air power and nuclear capabilities.78 To compensate, China has begun the construction of access-

denial technology, preventing the US from exercising its dominance in China’s sphere of influence.79 Chinese modernization efforts have a serious long-term advantage over the United States; access to rare earth metals, and a large concentration of rare earth chemists doing research.80 This advantage, coupled with the U.S. losing access to rare earth metals, will even the odds much quicker than policymakers had previously anticipated. 81

The largest example is US airpower. With every successive generation of military aircraft, the U.S. Air Force becomes more and more dependent on Rare Earth Metals.82 As planes get faster and faster, they have to get lighter and lighter, while adding weight from extra computers and other features on board.83 To lighten

the weight of the plane, scandium is used to produce lightweight aluminum alloys for the body of the plane.

Rare Earth metals are also useful in fighter jet engines, and fuel cells.84 For example, rare earths are required to producing miniaturized fins, and samarium is required to build the motors for the F-35 fighter jet.85 F-35 jets are the next generation fighter jet that works together to form the dual plane combination that cements U.S. dominance in air power over the Russian PAK FA.86

Rare earth shortages don’t just affect air power, also compromising the navigation system of Abrams Tanks, which need samarium cobalt magnets. The Abrams Tank is the primary offensive mechanized vehicle in the U.S. arsenal. The Aegis Spy 1 Radar also uses samarium.87 Many naval ships require neodymium. Hell Fire missiles, satellites, night vision goggles, avionics, and precision guided munitions all require rare earth metals. 88

American military superiority is based on technological advancement that outstrips the rest of the world. Command and control technology allows the U.S. to fight multiple wars at once and maintain readiness for other issues, as well as have overwhelming force against rising challengers. This technology helps the U.S. know who, where, and what is going to attack them, and respond effectively, regardless of the source of the threat.

Rare Earth Elements make this technological superiority possible.

To make matters worse, the defense industrial base is often a single market industry, dependent on government contracts for its business. If China tightens the export quotas further, major US defense contractors will be in trouble.89 Every sector of the defense industrial base is dependent on rare earth metals. Without rare earths, these contractors can’t build anything, which collapses the industry.90

Rare Earth shortages are actually already affecting our military, with shortages of lanthanum, cerium, europium and gadolinium happening in the status quo. This prevents us not only from building the next generation of high tech weaponry, but also from constructing more of the weapons and munitions that are needed in the status quo. As current weapon systems age and they can’t be replaced, the US primacy will be undermined. Of special concern is that U.S. domestic mining doesn’t produce “heavy” rare earth metals that are needed for many advanced components of military

technologies. Given the nature of many military applications, substitutions aren’t possible. 91

Primacy and allied commitments solve arms races and great power war – unipolarity is sustainable, and prevents power vacuums and global escalationBrands 18 [(Hal, Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments) "American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump," Page 129-133]

Since World War II, the United States has had a military second to none . Since the Cold War, America has

committed to having overwhelming military primacy . The idea, as George W. Bush declared in 2002, that America must

possess “strengths beyond challenge” has featured in every major U.S. strategy document for a quarter century; it has also been reflected in concrete terms.6

From the early 1990s, for example, the U nited S tates consistently accounted for around 35 to 45 percent of

world defense spending and maintained peerless global power-projection capabilities .7 Perhaps more

important, U.S. primacy was also unrivaled in key overseas strategic regions — Europe, East Asia, the

Middle East . From thrashing Saddam Hussein’s million-man Iraqi military during Operation Desert Storm, to deploying—with impunity—two carrier strike groups off Taiwan during the China-Taiwan crisis of 1995– 96, Washington has been able to project military power superior to anything a regional rival

could employ even on its own geopolitical doorstep.

This military dominance has constituted the hard-power backbone of an ambitious global strategy.

After the Cold War, U.S. policymakers committed to averting a return to the unstable multipolarity of earlier eras, and to perpetuating the more favorable unipolar order. They committed to building on the successes of the postwar era by further advancing liberal political values and an open international

economy , and to suppressing international scourges such as rogue states , nuclear proliferation ,

and catastrophic terrorism . And because they recognized that military force remained the ultima ratio regum, they

understood the centrality of military preponderance.

Washington would need the military power necessary to underwrite worldwide alliance

commitments . It would have to preserve substantial overmatch versus any potential great-power

rival. It must be able to answer the sharpest challenges to the international system, such as Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 or jihadist

extremism after 9/11. Finally, because prevailing global norms generally reflect hard-power realities ,

America would need the superiority to assure that its own values remained ascendant . It was

impolitic to say that U.S. strategy and the international order required “ strengths beyond challenge ,” but it was not at all inaccurate.

American primacy, moreover, was eminently affordable. At the height of the Cold War, the United States spent over 12 percent of GDP on defense. Since the mid-1990s, the number has usually been between 3 and 4 percent.8 In a historically favorable international environment, Washington could enjoy primacy—and its geopolitical fruits—on the cheap.

Yet U.S. strategy also heeded, at least until recently, the fact that there was a limit to how cheaply that primacy could be had. The American military did shrink significantly during the 1990s, but U.S. officials understood that if Washington cut back too far, its primacy would erode to a point where it ceased to deliver its geopolitical benefits. Alliances would lose credibility ; the stability of key regions would be eroded ;

rivals would be emboldened ; international crises would go unaddressed . American primacy was thus

like a reasonably priced insurance policy . It required nontrivial expenditures, but protected against far costlier outcomes.9 Washington paid its insurance premiums for two decades after the Cold War. But more recently American primacy and strategic solvency have been imperiled.

THE DARKENING HORIZON For most of the post–Cold War era, the international system was— by historical standards—remarkably benign.

Dangers existed, and as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, demonstrated, they could manifest with horrific effect. But for two decades after the Soviet collapse, the world was characterized by remarkably low levels of great-

power competition, high levels of security in key theaters such as Europe and East Asia , and the

comparative weakness of those “ rogue” actors —Iran, Iraq, North Korea, al-Qaeda—who most aggressively challenged American power. During the 1990s, some observers even spoke of a “strategic pause,” the idea being that the end of the Cold War had afforded the United States a respite from normal levels of geopolitical danger and competition. Now,

however, the strategic horizon is darkening , due to four factors.

First, great-power military competition is back . The world’s two leading authoritarian powers— China

and Russia —are seeking regional hegemony , contesting global norms such as nonaggression and

freedom of navigation, and developing the military punch to underwrite these ambitions .

Notwithstanding severe economic and demographic problems, Russia has conducted a major military modernization

emphasizing nuclear weapons , high-end conventional capabilities, and rapid-deployment and special operations forces— and utilized many of these capabilities in conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.10 China,

meanwhile, has carried out a buildup of historic proportions, with constant-dollar defense outlays rising from US$26 billion

in 1995 to US$226 billion in 2016.11 Ominously, these expenditures have funded development of power-projection

and antiaccess/area denial (A2/ AD) tools necessary to threaten China’s neighbors and complicate U.S. intervention on their behalf. Washington has grown accustomed to having a generational military lead; Russian and Chinese modernization efforts are now creating a far more competitive environment.

Counterplan solves scenario 1 – climate solutions rely on REMsArrobas et al 17 [(Daniele La Porta Arrobas is a senior mining specialist with the World Bank based in Washington DC and has degrees in Geoscience and Environmental Management, Kirsten Hund is a senior mining specialist with the Energy and Extractives Global Practice of the World Bank and holds a Master’s in IR from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, Michael Stephen McCormick, Jagabanta

Ningthoujam has an MA in international economics and international development from JHU and a BS in MechE from Natl University of Singapore, John Drexhage also works at the Intl Institute for Sustainable Development) “The Growing Role of Minerals and Metals for a Low Carbon Future,” World Bank, June 30, 2017, https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/207371500386458722/the-growing-role-of-minerals-and-metals-for-a-low-carbon-future] TDI

- Full report - https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/207371500386458722/pdf/117581-WP-P159838-PUBLIC-ClimateSmartMiningJuly.pdf

Climate and greenhouse gas (GHG) scenarios have typically paid scant attention to the metal implications necessary to realize a low/zero carbon future. The 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change indicates a global resolve to embark on development patterns that would significantly be less GHG intensive. One might assume that nonrenewable resource development and use will also need to decline in a carbon-constrained

future. This report tests that assumption, identifies those commodities implicated in such a scenario and explores

ramifications for relevant resource-rich developing countries. Using wind, solar, and energy storage batteries as proxies, the study examines which metals will likely rise in demand to be able to deliver on a carbon-constrained future. Metals which could see a growing market include aluminum (including its key constituent,

bauxite), cobalt, copper, iron ore, lead, lithium, nickel, manganese, the platinum group of metals, rare earth metals including cadmium, molybdenum, neodymium, and indium—silver, steel, titanium and zinc. The report then maps production and reserve levels of relevant metals globally, focusing on implications for resource-rich developing countries. It concludes by identifying critical research gaps and suggestions for future work.

Neg – Case Answers

1NC – AT: Debris Advantage Alt cause – broad space privatization and existing debris. Muelhapt et al 19 [(Theodore J., Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies, Center for Space Policy and Strategy, The Aerospace Corporation, 30 year Space Systems Analyst and Operator, Marlon E. Sorge, Jamie Morin, Robert S. Wilson), “Space traffic management in the new space era,” Journal of Space Safety Engineering, 6/18/19, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsse.2019.05.007] TDI

The last decade has seen rapid growth and change in the space industry, and an explosion of commercial and private activity. Terms like NewSpace or democratized space are often used to describe this global trend to develop faster and cheaper access to space, distinct from more traditional government-driven activities focused on security,

political, or scientific activities. The easier access to space has opened participation to many more participants than was historically possible.

This new activity could profoundly worsen the space debris environment, particularly in low Earth orbit

( LEO ), but there are also signs of progress and the outlook is encouraging. Many NewSpace operators are actively working to mitigate their

impact. Nevertheless, NewSpace represents a significant break with past experience and business as usual will not work in this changed environment. New standards, space policy, and licensing approaches are powerful levers that can shape the future of operations and the debris environment.

2. Characterizing NewSpace: a step change in the space environment

In just the last few years, commercial companies have proposed, funded, and in a few cases begun deployment of very large constellations of small to medium-sized satellites. These constellations will add much more complexity to space operations. Table 1 shows some of the

constellations that have been announced for launch in the next decade. Two dozen companies, when taken together, have proposed placing well over 20,000 [twenty thousand] satellites in orbit in the next 10 [10]years. For perspective, fewer than 8100 [eight thousand one hundred] payloads have been placed in Earth orbit in the entire history of the space age, only 4800 [1] remain in orbit and approximately 1950 [2] of those are still active. And it isn't simply numbers – the mass in orbit will increase substantially, and long-term debris generation is strongly correlated with mass.

[Table 1 Omitted]

This table is in constant flux. It is based largely on U.S. filings with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and various press releases,

but many of the companies here have already altered or abandoned their original plans, and new systems are no doubt in work. Although many of these large constellations may never be launched as listed, the traffic created if just half

are successful would be more than double the number of payloads launched in the last 60 years and

more than 6 times the number of currently active satellites.

Current space safety, space surveillance, collision avoidance (COLA) and debris mitigation processes have been designed for and have evolved with the current population profile, launch rates and density of LEO space.

By almost any metric used to measure activity in space, whether it is payloads in orbit, the size of constellations, the rate of launches, the economic stakes, the potential for debris creation, the number of conjunctions, NewSpace represents a fundamental change.

3. Compounding effects of better SSA, more satellites, and new operational concepts

The changes in the space environment can be seen on this figurative map of low Earth orbit. Fig. 1 shows the LEO environment as a function of altitude. The number of objects found in each 10 km “bin” is plotted on the horizontal axis, while the altitude is plotted vertically. Objects in elliptical orbits are distributed between bins as partial objects proportional to the time spent in each bin. Some notable resident systems are indicated in blue text on the right to provide an altitude reference. The (dotted) red line shows the number of objects in the current catalog tracked by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network (SSN). All the COLA alerts and actions that must be taken by the residents are due to their neighbors in the nearby bins, so the currently visible risk is proportional to the red line.

The red line of the current catalog does not represent the complete risk; it indicates the risk we can track and perhaps avoid. A rule of thumb is

that the current SSN LEO catalog contains objects about 10 cm or larger. It is generally accepted that an impact in LEO with an object 1   cm or larger will cause damage likely to be fatal to a satellite's mission. Therefore, there is a large latent risk from unobserved debris. While we cannot currently track and catalog much smaller than 10 cm, experiments have been performed to detect and sample much smaller objects and statistically model the population at this size [3]. The (solid) blue line represents the model of the 1 cm and larger debris that is likely mission-ending, usually called lethal but not trackable. If LEO operators avoid collisions with all the objects in the red line, they are nonetheless inherently accepting the risk from the blue line. This risk is already present.

The (dashed) orange line is an estimate of the population at 5 cm and larger and is thus an estimate of what the catalog might conservatively be a few years after the Space Fence, a new radar system being built by the Air Force, comes on line (currently planned for 2019) [4]. Commercial companies offering space surveillance services, such as LeoLabs, ExoAnalytics, Analytic Graphics Inc., Lockheed, and Boeing, might also add to the number of objects currently tracked. Space Policy Directive 3 (SPD-3) [13] specifically seeks to expand the use of commercial SSA services.

Existing operators can expect a sharp increase in the number of warnings and alerts they will receive because of the increase in the cataloged population. Almost all the increase will come from newly detected debris [5].

The pace of safety operations for each satellite on orbit will significantly change because of the increase in the catalog from the Space Fence. This effect is compounded because the NewSpace constellations described in Table 1 will drastically change the profile of satellites in LEO. The green bars in Fig. 1 represent the number of objects that will be added to the catalog (red or orange lines) from only the NewSpace large LEO constellations at their operational altitudes. This does not include the rocket stages that launch them, or satellites in the process of being phased into or removed from the operational orbits. Neighbors of one of these new constellations may face a radically different operations environment than their current practices were designed to address.

Satellites in these large LEO constellations typically have planned operational lifetimes of 5–10 years. Some companies have proposed to dispose of their satellites using low thrust electric propulsion systems, which would spiral satellites down over a period of months or years from operating altitudes as high as 1500 km through lower orbits where the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station, and other critical LEO satellites operate [6]. Similar propulsive techniques would raise replacement satellites from

lower launch injection orbits to higher operational orbits. These disposal and replenishment activities will add thousands of satellites each year transiting through lower altitudes and posing a risk to all resident satellites in those lower orbits. More importantly, failures will occur both among transiting satellites and operational constellations, potentially leaving hundreds more stranded along the transit path.

Probability – 0.1% chance of a collision.

Salter 16 [(Alexander William, Economics Professor at Texas Tech) “SPACE DEBRIS: A LAW AND ECONOMICS ANALYSIS OF THE ORBITAL COMMONS” 19 STAN. TECH. L. REV. 221 *numbers replaced with English words] TDI

The probability of a collision is currently low. Bradley and Wein estimate that the maximum

probability in LEO of a collision over the lifetime of a spacecraft remains below one in one thousand , conditional on continued compliance with NASA’s deorbiting guidelines.3 However, the possibility of a future “snowballing” effect, whereby debris collides with other objects, further congesting orbit space, remains a significant concern.4 Levin and Carroll estimate the average immediate destruction of wealth created by a collision to be approximately $30 million, with an additional $200 million in damages to all currently existing space assets from the debris created by the initial collision.5 The expected value of destroyed wealth because of collisions, currently small because of the low probability of a collision, can quickly become significant if future collisions result in runaway debris growth.

Time frame – Kessler effect 200 years away

Stubbe 17 [(Peter, PhD in law @ Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt) “State Accountability for Space Debris: A Legal Study of Responsibility for Polluting the Space Environment and Liability for Damage Caused by Space Debris,” Koninklijke Brill Publishing, ISBN 978-90-04-31407-8, p. 27-31] TDI

The prediction of possible scenarios of the future evolution of the debris p o p ulation involves many uncertainties. Long-term forecasting means the prediction of the evolution of the future debris environment in time periods of decades or even centuries. Predictions are based on models84 that work with certain assumptions, and altering these parameters significantly influences the outcomes of the predictions. Assumptions on the future space traffic and on the initial object environment are particularly critical to the results of modeling efforts.85 A

well-known pattern for the evolution of the debris population is the so-called Kessler effect’, which assumes that there is a certain collision probability among space objects because many satellites operate in similar orbital regions. These collisions create fragments, and thus additional objects in the respective orbits, which in turn enhances the risk of further collisions. Consequently, the num ber of objects and collisions increases exponentially and eventually results in the formation of a self-sustaining debris belt aroundthe Earth. While it has long been assumed that such a process of collisional cascading is likely to occur only in a very long-term perspective (meaning a time 1 n of several hundred years),87 a consensus has evolved in recent years that an uncontrolled growth of the debris population in certain altitudes could become reality much sooner.88 In fact, a recent cooperative study undertaken by various space agencies in the scope of i a d c shows that the current l e o debris population is unstable, even if current mitigation measures are applied. The study concludes:

Even with a 90% implementation of the commonly-adopted mitigation measures [...] the l e o debris population is expected to increase by an average of 30% in the next 200 years. The population growth is primarily driven by catastrophic collisions between 700 and 1000 km altitudes and such collisions are likely to occur every 5 to 9 years.89

No ‘space war’ – Insurmountable barriers and everyone has an interest in keeping space peaceful

Dobos 19 [(Bohumil Doboš, scholar at the Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, and a coordinator of the Geopolitical Studies Research Centre) “Geopolitics of the Outer Space, Chapter 3: Outer Space as a Military-Diplomatic Field,” Pgs. 48-49] TDI

Despite the theorized potential for the achievement of the terrestrial dominance throughout the utilization of the ultimate high ground and the ease of destruction of space-based assets by the potential space weaponry, the utilization of space weapons is with current technology and no effective means to protect them far from fulfilling this potential (Steinberg 2012, p. 255). In current global international political and technological setting, the utility of space weapons is very limited, even if we

accept that the ultimate high ground presents the potential to get a decisive tangible military advantage (which is unclear). This stands among the reasons for the lack of their utilization so far. Last but not the least, it must be pointed out that the states also develop passive defense systems designed to protect the satellites on orbit or critical capabilities they provide. These further decrease the utility of space weapons . These systems include larger maneuvering capacities, launching of decoys, preparation of spare satellites that are ready for launch in case of ASAT attack on its twin on orbit, or attempts

to decrease the visibility of satellites using paint or materials less visible from radars (Moltz 2014, p. 31). Finally, we must look at the main obstacles of connection of the outer space and warfare. The first set of barriers is comprised of physical obstructions . As has been presented in the previous chapter, the outer space is very challenging domain to operate in. Environmental factors still present the largest threat to any space military capabilities if compared to any man-made threats (Rendleman 2013, p. 79). A following issue that hinders military operations in the outer space is the predictability of orbital movement. If the reconnaissance satellite's orbit is known, the terrestrial actor might attempt to hide some critical capabilities-an option that is countered by new surveillance technique s (spectrometers, etc.) (Norris 2010, p. 196)-but the hide-and-seek game is on. This same principle is, however, in place for any other space asset-any nation with basic tracking capabilities may quickly detect whether the military asset or weapon is located above its territory or on the other side of the planet and thus mitigate the possible strategic impact of space weapons not aiming at mass destruction. Another possibility is to attempt to destroy the weapon in orbit. Given the level of development for the ASAT technology, it seems that they will prevail over any possible weapon system for the time to come. Next issue, directly connected to the first one, is the utilization of weak physical protection of space objects that need to be as light as possible to reach the orbit and to be able to withstand harsh conditions of the domain. This means that their protection against ASAT weapons is very

limited, and, whereas some avoidance techniques are being discussed, they are of limited use in case of ASAT attack. We can thus add to the issue of predictability also the issue of easy destructibility of space weapons and other military hardware (Dolman 2005, p. 40; Anantatmula 2013, p. 137; Steinberg 2012, p. 255). Even if the high ground was effectively achieved and other nations could not attack the space assets directly, there is still a need for communication with those assets from Earth. There are also ground facilities that support and control such weapons located on the surface.

Electromagnetic communication with satellites might be jammed or hacked and the ground facilities infiltrated or destroyed thus rendering the possible space weapons useless (Klein 2006, p. 105; Rendleman 2013, p. 81). This issue might be overcome by the establishment of a base controlling these assets outside the Earth-on Moon or lunar orbit, at lunar

L-points, etc.-but this perspective remains, for now, unrealistic. Furthermore, no contemporary actor will risk

full space weaponization in the face of possible competition and the possibility of rendering the

outer space useless. No actor is dominant enough to prevent others to challenge any possible attempts to dominate the domain by military means. To quote 2016 Stratfor analysis, "(a) war in space would be

devastating to all, and preventing it, rather than finding ways to fight it, will likely remain the goal" (Larnrani 20 16). This stands true unless some space actor finds a utility in disrupting the arena for others.

Public sector mining thumpsNASA 19 [“NASA Invests in Tech Concepts Aimed at Exploring Lunar Craters, Mining Asteroids,” NASA, June 11, 2019, https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invests-in-tech-concepts-aimed-at-exploring-lunar-craters-mining-asteroids] TDI

NASA Invests in Tech Concepts Aimed at Exploring Lunar Craters, Mining Asteroids

Robotically surveying lunar craters in record time and mining resources in space could help NASA establish a sustained human presence at the Moon – part of the agency’s broader Moon to Mars exploration approach . Two mission concepts to explore these capabilities have been selected as the first-ever Phase III studies within the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

“We are pursuing new technologies across our development portfolio that could help make deep space exploration more Earth-independent by utilizing resources on the Moon and beyond,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. “These NIAC Phase III selections are a component of that forward-looking research and we hope new insights will help us achieve more firsts in space.”

The Phase III proposals outline an aerospace architecture, including a mission concept, that is innovative and could change what’s possible in space. Each selection will receive as much as $2 million. Over the course of two years, researchers will refine the concept design and explore aspects of implementing the new technology. The inaugural Phase III selections are:

Robotic Technologies Enabling the Exploration of Lunar Pits

William Whittaker, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

This mission concept, called Skylight, proposes technologies to rapidly survey and model lunar craters. This mission

would use high-resolution images to create 3D model of craters. The data would be used to determine whether a crater can be explored by human or robotic missions. The information could also be used to characterize ice on the Moon, a crucial capability for the sustained surface operations of NASA’s Artemis program. On Earth, the technology could be used to autonomously monitor mines and quarries.

Mini Bee Prototype to Demonstrate the Apis Mission Architecture and Optical Mining Technology

Joel Sercel, TransAstra Corporation, Lake View Terrace, California

This flight demonstration mission concept proposes a method of asteroid resource harvesting called optical mining. Optical mining is an approach for excavating an asteroid and extracting water and other volatiles into an inflatable bag. Called Mini Bee, the mission concept aims to prove optical mining, in conjunction with other innovative spacecraft systems, can be used to obtain propellant in space. The proposed architecture includes resource prospecting, extraction and delivery.

Asteroid mining failsFickling 20 [(David, Bloomberg opinion columnist, previously at Guardian and Financial Times, MA in Eng Lit from Cambridge) “We’re Never Going to Mine the Asteroid Belt,” Bloomberg Opinion, December 21, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-21/space-mining-on-asteroids-is-never-going-to-happen] TDI

It’s wonderful that people are shooting for the stars — but those who declined to fund the expansive plans of the nascent space mining industry were right about the fundamentals. Space mining won’t get off the ground in any foreseeable future — and you only have to look at the history of civilization to see why.

One factor rules out most space mining at the outset: gravity. On one hand, it guarantees that most of the solar system’s best mineral resources are to be found under our feet. Earth is the largest rocky planet orbiting the sun. As a result, the cornucopia of minerals the globe attracted as it coalesced is as rich as will be found this side of Alpha Centauri.

Gravity poses a more technical problem, too. Escaping Earth’s gravitational field makes transporting the volumes of material needed in a mining operation hugely expensive. On Falcon Heavy, the large rocket being developed by Elon

Musk’s SpaceX, transporting a payload to the orbit of Mars comes to as little as $5,357 per kilogram — a

drastic reduction in normal launch costs. Still, at those prices just lofting a single half-ton drilling rig to the asteroid belt would use up the annual exploration budget of a small mining company.

Power is another issue. The international space station, with 35,000 square feet of solar arrays, generates up to 120 kilowatts of electricity. That drill would need a similar-sized power plant — and most mining companies operate multiple rigs at a time. Power demands rise drastically once you move from exploration drilling to mining and processing. Bringing material back to Earth would raise the costs even more. Japan’s Hayabusa2 satellite spent six years and 16.4 billion yen ($157 million) recovering a single gram of material from the asteroid Ryugu and returning it to Earth earlier this month.

Extinction from warming requires 12 degrees and intervening actors will solve before then Farquhar 17 [(Sebastian, leads the Global Priorities Project (GPP) at the Centre for Effective Altruism) “Existential Risk: Diplomacy and Governance,” 2017, https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Existential-Risks-2017-01-23.pdf] TDI

The most likely levels of global warming are very unlikely to cause human extinction .15 The existential

risks of climate change instead stem from tail risk climate change – the low probability of extreme levels of warming – and interaction with other sources of risk. It is impossible to say with confidence at what point global warming

would become severe enough to pose an existential threat. Research has suggested that warming of 11-12°C would render most of the planet uninhabitable,16 and would completely devastate agriculture.17 This would pose an extreme threat to human civilisation as we know it.18 Warming of around 7°C or more could potentially produce conflict and instability on such a scale that the indirect

effects could be an existential risk, although it is extremely uncertain how likely such scenarios are.19 Moreover, the timescales over which such changes might happen could mean that humanity is able to adapt enough to avoid extinction

in even very extreme scenarios . The probability of these levels of warming depends on eventual greenhouse gas concentrations.

According to some experts, unless strong action is taken soon by major emitters, it is likely that we will pursue a medium-high emissions pathway.20 If we do, the chance of extreme warming is highly uncertain but appears non-negligible. Current concentrations of greenhouse gases are higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years,21 which means that there are significant unknown unknowns about how the climate system will respond. Particularly concerning is the risk of positive feedback loops, such as the release of vast amounts of methane from melting of the arctic permafrost, which would cause rapid and disastrous warming.22 The economists Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman have used IPCC figures (which do not include modelling of feedback loops such as those from

melting permafrost) to estimate that if we continue to pursue a medium-high emissions pathway, the probability of eventual warming of 6°C is around 10% ,23 and of 10°C is around 3% .24 These estimates are of course

highly uncertain . It is likely that the world will take action against climate change once it begins to

impose large costs on human society, long before there is warming of 10°C . Unfortunately, there is significant inertia in

the climate system: there is a 25 to 50 year lag between CO2 emissions and eventual warming,25 and it is expected that 40% of the peak concentration of CO2 will remain in the atmosphere 1,000 years after the peak is reached.26 Consequently, it is impossible to reduce temperatures quickly by reducing CO2 emissions. If the world does start to face costly warming, the international community will therefore face strong incentives to find other ways to reduce global temperatures.

Non UQ – squo debris thumpsOrwig 16 [(Jessica, MS in science and tech journalism from Texas A&M, BS in astronomy and physics from Ohio State) “Russia says a growing problem in space could be enough to spark a war,” Insider,’ January 26, 2016, https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-says-space-junk-could-spark-war-2016-1] TDI

NASA has already warned that the large amount of space junk around our planet is growing beyond our control, but now a team of Russian scientists has cited another potentially unforeseen consequence of that debris: War.

Scientists estimate that anywhere from 500,000 to 600,000 pieces of human-made space debris between 0.4 and 4 inches in size are currently orbiting the Earth and traveling at speeds over 17,000 miles per hour .

If one of those pieces smashed into a military satellite it "may provoke political or even armed conflict between space-faring nations," Vitaly Adushkin, a researcher for the Institute of Geosphere Dynamics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, reported in a paper set to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Astronautica, which is sponsored by the International Academy of Astronautics.

Space debris creates existential deterrence and a taboo Bowen 18 [(Bleddyn, lecturer in International Relations at the University of Leicester) “The Art of Space Deterrence,” European Leadership Network, February 20, 2018, https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/the-art-of-space-deterrence/] TDI

Fourth, the ubiquity of space infrastructure and the fragility of the space environment may create a degree of existential deterrence. As space is so useful to modern economies and military forces, a large-scale disruption of space infrastructure may be so intuitively escalatory to decision-makers that there may be a natural caution against a wholesale assault on a state’s entire space capabilities because the consequences of doing so approach the mentalities of total war, or nuclear responses if a society begins

tearing itself apart because of the collapse of optimised energy grids and just-in-time supply chains. In addition, the problem of space debris and the political-legal hurdles to conducting debris clean-up operations mean that even a handful of explosive events in space can render a region of Earth orbit unusable for everyone. This could caution a country like China from

excessive kinetic intercept missions because its own military and economy is increasingly reliant on outer space,

but perhaps not a country like North Korea which does not rely on space. The usefulness, sensitivity, and fragility of space may have some existential deterrent effect. China’s catastrophic anti-satellite weapons test in 2007 is a valuable lesson for all on the potentially devastating effect of kinetic warfare in orbit.

Alliances check miscalc – too costlyMacDonald 13 [(Bruce, teaches at the United States Institute of Peace on strategic posture and space/cyber security issues, leads a study on China and Crisis Stability in Space, and is adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies) “Deterrence and Crisis Stability in Space and Cyberspace,” in Anti-satellite Weapons, Deterrence and Sino-American Space Relations, September 2013, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a587431.pdf] TDI

The US alliance structure can promote deterrence and crisis stability in space, as with nuclear deterrence. China has no such alliance system. If China were to engage in large-scale offensive counter-space operations, it would face not only the United States, but also NATO, Japan, South Korea and other highly aggrieved parties. Given Beijing’s major export dependence on these markets, and its dependence upon them for key raw material and high technology imports, China would be as

devastated economically if it initiated strategic attacks in space. In contrast to America’s nuclear umbrella and extended deterrence, US allies make a tangible and concrete contribution to extended space deterrence through their multilateral participation in and dependence upon space assets. Attacks on these space assets would directly damage allied interests as well as those of the United States, further strengthening deterrent effects.

Rigorous climate simulations prove hydrophilic black carbon would cause atmospheric precipitation – results in a rainout effect that reverses nuclear coolingReisner et al. 18 ([Jon Reisner – Climate and atmospheric scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Gennaro D’Angelo – Climate scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Research scientist at the SETI institute, Associate specialist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at the NASA Ames Research Center, UKAFF Fellow at the University of Exeter. Eunmo Koo - Scientist at Applied Terrestrial, Energy, and Atmospheric Modeling (ATEAM) Team, in Computational Earth Science Group (EES-16) in Earth and Environmental Sciences Division and Co-Lead of Parallel Computing Summer Research Internship (PCSRI) program at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, former Staff research associate at UC Berkeley. Wesley Even - Computational scientist in the Computational Physics and Methods Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Matthew Hecht – Atmospheric scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Elizabeth Hunke - Lead developer for the Los Alamos Sea Ice Model (CICE) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory responsible for development and incorporation of new parameterizations, model testing and validation, computational performance, documentation, and consultation with external model users on all aspects of sea ice modeling, including interfacing with global climate and earth system models. Darin Comeau – Climate scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Randy Bos - Project leader at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, former Weapons Effects program manager at Tech-Source. James Cooley – Computational scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory specializing in weapons physics, emergency response, and computational physics.) “Climate impact of a regional nuclear weapons exchange:An improved assessment based on detailed source calculations,” March 16, 2018, https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017JD027331]

*BC = Black Carbon

The no-rubble simulation produces a significantly more intense fire, with more fire spread,

and consequently a significantly stronger plume with larger amounts of BC reaching into the upper atmosphere than the simulation with rubble, illustrated in Figure 5. While the no-rubble simulation represents the worst-case scenario involving vigorous fire activity , only a relatively small amount of carbon makes its way into the stratosphere during the course of the simulation. But while small compared to the surface BC mass, stratospheric BC amounts from the current simulations are significantly higher than what would be expected from burning vegetation such as trees (Heilman et al., 2014), e.g., the higher energy density of the building fuels and the initial fluence from the weapon produce an intense response within HIGRAD with initial updrafts of order 100 m/s in the lower troposphere. Or, in comparison to a mass fire, wildfires will burn only a small amount of fuel in the corresponding time period (roughly 10 minutes) that a nuclear

weapon fluence can effectively ignite a large area of fuel producing an impressive atmospheric response. Figure 6 shows vertical profiles of BC multiplied by 100 (number of cities involved in the exchange) from the two simulations. The total amount of BC produced

is in line with previous estimates (about 3.69 Tg from no-rubble simulation); however, the majority of BC resides below the stratosphere (3.46 Tg below 12 km) and can be readily impacted by scavenging from precipitation either via pyro-cumulonimbus produced by the fire itself (not modeled) or other synoptic weather systems. While the impact on climate of these more realistic profiles will be explored in the next section, it

should be mentioned that these estimates are still at the high end , considering the inherent simplifications in the combustion model that lead to overestimating BC production . 3.3

Climate Results Long-term climatic effects critically depend on the initial injection height of the soot, with larger quantities reaching the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere inducing a greater cooling impact because of longer residence times (Robock et al., 2007a). Absorption of solar radiation by the BC aerosol and its subsequent radiative cooling tends to heat the surrounding air, driving an initial upward diffusion of the soot

plumes, an effect that depends on the initial aerosol concentrations. Mixing and sedimentation tend to reduce this process , and low altitude emissions are also significantly impacted by precipitation if aging of the BC aerosol occurs on sufficiently rapid timescales. But once at stratospheric altitudes, aerosol dilution via coagulation is hindered by low particulate concentrations (e.g., Robock et al., 2007a) and lofting to much higher altitudes is inhibited by gravitational settling in the low-density

air (Stenke et al., 2013), resulting in more stable BC concentrations over long times. Of the initial BC mass released in the atmosphere, most of which is emitted below 9 km, 70% rains out within the first month and 78% , or about

2.9 Tg, is removed within the first two months (Figure 7, solid line), with the remainder (about 0.8 Tg, dashed line) being transported above about 12 km (200 hPa) within the first week. This outcome differs from the findings of, e.g., Stenke et al. (2013, their high BC-load cases) and Mills et al. (2014), who found that most of the BC mass (between 60 and 70%) is lifted in the stratosphere within the first couple of weeks. This can also be seen in Figure 8 (red lines) and in Figure 9, which include results from our calculation with the initial BC distribution from Mills et al. (2014). In that case, only 30% of the initial BC mass rains out in the troposphere during the first two weeks after the exchange, with the remainder rising to the stratosphere. In the study of Mills et al. (2008) this percentage is somewhat smaller, about 20%, and smaller still in the experiments of Robock et al. (2007a) in which the soot is initially emitted in the upper troposphere or higher. In Figure 7, the e-folding timescale for the removal of tropospheric soot, here interpreted as the time required for an initial drop of a factor e, is about one week. This result compares favorably with the “LT” experiment of Robock et al. (2007a), considering 5 Tg of BC released in the lower troposphere, in which 50% of the aerosols are removed within two weeks. By contrast, the initial e-folding timescale for the removal of stratospheric soot in Figure 8 is about 4.2 years (blue solid line), compared to about 8.4 years for the calculation using Mills et al. (2014) initial BC emission (red solid line). The removal timescale from our forced ensemble simulations is close to those obtained by Mills et al. (2008) in their 1 Tg experiment, by Robock et al. (2007a) in their experiment “UT 1 Tg”, and © 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved. by Stenke et al. (2013) in their experiment “Exp1”, in all of which 1 Tg of soot was emitted in the atmosphere in the aftermath of the exchange. Notably, the e-folding timescale for the decline of the BC mass in Figure 8 (blue solid line) is also close to the value of about 4 years quoted by Pausata et al. (2016) for their long-term “intermediate” scenario. In that scenario, which is also based on 5 Tg of soot initially distributed as in Mills et al. (2014), the factor-of2 shorter residence time of the aerosols is caused by particle growth via coagulation of BC with organic carbon.

Figure 9 shows the BC mass-mixing ratio, horizontally averaged over the globe, as a function of atmospheric pressure (height) and time. The BC distributions used in our simulations imply that the upward transport of particles is substantially less efficient compared to the case in which 5 Tg of BC is directly injected into the upper troposphere. The semiannual cycle of lofting and sinking of the aerosols is associated with atmospheric heating and cooling during the solstice in each hemisphere (Robock et al., 2007a). During the first year, the oscillation amplitude in our forced ensemble simulations is particularly large during the summer solstice, compared to that during the winter solstice (see bottom panel of Figure 9), because of the higher soot concentrations in the Northern Hemisphere, as can be seen in Figure 11 (see also left panel of Figure 12). Comparing the top and bottom panels of Figure 9, the BC reaches the highest altitudes during the first year in both cases, but the concentrations at 0.1 hPa in the

top panel can be 200 times as large. Qualitatively, the difference can be understood in terms of the air temperature increase caused by BC radiation emission, which is several tens of kelvin degrees in the simulations of Robock et al. (2007a, see their Figure 4), Mills et al. (2008, see their Figure 5), Stenke et

al. (2013, see high-load cases in their Figure 4), Mills et al. (2014, see their Figure 7), and Pausata et al. (2016, see one-day emission

cases in their Figure 1), due to high BC concentrations, but it amounts to only about 10 K in our

forced ensemble simulations, as illustrated in Figure 10. Results similar to those presented in Figure 10 were obtained from the

experiment “Exp1” performed by Stenke et al. (2013, see their Figure 4). In that scenario as well, somewhat less that 1 Tg of BC remained in the atmosphere after the initial rainout . As mentioned before, the BC aerosol that remains in the atmosphere, lifted to stratospheric heights by the rising soot plumes, undergoes sedimentation over a timescale of several years (Figures 8 and 9). This mass represents the effective amount of BC that can force climatic changes over multi-year timescales. In the forced ensemble simulations, it is about 0.8 Tg after the initial rainout, whereas it is about 3.4 Tg in the simulation with an initial soot distribution as in Mills et al. (2014). Our more realistic source simulation involves the worstcase assumption of no-rubble (along with other assumptions) and hence serves as an upper bound for the impact on climate. As mentioned above and further discussed below, our scenario induces perturbations on the climate system similar to those found in previous studies in which the climatic response was driven by roughly 1 Tg of soot rising to stratospheric heights following the exchange. Figure 11 illustrates the vertically integrated mass-mixing ratio of BC over the globe, at various times after the exchange for the simulation using the initial BC distribution of Mills et al. (2014, upper panels) and as an average from the forced ensemble members (lower panels). All simulations predict enhanced concentrations at high latitudes during the first year after the exchange. In the cases shown in the top panels, however, these high concentrations persist for several years (see also Figure 1 of Mills et al., 2014), whereas the forced ensemble simulations indicate that the BC concentration starts to decline after the first year. In fact, in the simulation represented in the top panels, mass-mixing ratios larger than about 1 kg of BC © 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights

reserved. per Tg of air persist for well over 10 years after the exchange, whereas they only last for 3 years in our forced simulations (compare top and middle panels of Figure 9). After the first year, values drop below 3 kg BC/Tg air, whereas it takes about 8 years to reach these values in the simulation in the top panels (see also Robock et al., 2007a). Over crop-producing, midlatitude regions in the Northern Hemisphere, the BC loading is reduced from more than 0.8 kg BC/Tg air in the simulation in the top panels to 0.2-0.4 kg BC/Tg air in our forced simulations (see middle and right panels). The more rapid clearing of the atmosphere in the forced ensemble is also signaled by the soot optical depth in the visible radiation spectrum, which drops below values of 0.03 toward the second half of the first year at mid latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, and everywhere on the globe after about 2.5 years (without never attaining this value in the Southern Hemisphere). In contrast, the soot optical depth in the calculation shown in the top panels of Figure 11 becomes smaller than 0.03 everywhere only after about 10 years. The two cases show a similar tendency, in that the BC optical depth is typically lower between latitudes 30º S-30º N than it is at other latitudes. This behavior is associated to the persistence of stratospheric soot toward high-latitudes and the Arctic/Antarctic regions, as illustrated by the zonally-averaged, column-integrated mass-mixing ratio of the BC in Figure 12 for both the forced ensemble simulations (left panel) and the simulation with an initial 5 Tg BC emission in the upper troposphere (right panel). The spread in the globally averaged (near) surface temperature of the atmosphere, from the control (left panel) and forced (right panel) ensembles, is displayed in Figure 13. For each month, the plots show the largest variations (i.e., maximum and minimum values), within each ensemble of values obtained for that month, relative to the mean value of that month. The plot also shows yearly-averaged data (thinner lines). The spread is comparable in the control and forced ensembles, with average values calculated over the 33-years run length of 0.4-0.5 K. This spread is also similar to the internal variability of the globally averaged surface temperature quoted for the NCAR Large Ensemble Community Project (Kay et al., 2015). These results imply that surface air temperature differences, between forced and control simulations, which lie within the spread may not be distinguished from effects due to internal variability of the two simulation ensembles. Figure 14 shows the difference in the globally averaged surface temperature of the atmosphere (top panel), net solar radiation flux at surface (middle panel), and precipitation rate (bottom panel), computed as the (forced minus control) difference in ensemble mean values. The sum of standard deviations from each ensemble is shaded. Differences are qualitatively significant over the first few years, when the anomalies lie near or outside the total standard deviation. Inside the shaded region, differences may not be distinguished from those arising from the internal variability of one or both ensembles. The surface solar flux (middle panel) is the quantity that appears most affected by the BC emission, with qualitatively significant differences persisting for about 5 years. The precipitation rate (bottom panel) is instead affected only at the very beginning of the simulations. The red lines in all panels show the results from the simulation applying the initial BC distribution of Mills et al. (2014), where the period of significant impact is much longer owing to the higher altitude of the initial soot distribution that results in longer residence times of the BC aerosol in the atmosphere. When yearly averages of the same quantities are performed over the IndiaPakistan region, the differences in ensemble mean values lie within the total standard deviations of the two ensembles. The results in Figure 14 can also be compared to the outcomes of other previous studies. In their experiment “UT 1 Tg”, Robock et al. (2007a) found that, when only 1 Tg of soot © 2018 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved. remains in the atmosphere after the initial rainout, temperature and precipitation anomalies are about 20% of those obtained from their standard 5 Tg BC emission case. Therefore, the largest differences they observed, during the first few years after the exchange, were about - 0.3 K and -0.06 mm/day, respectively, comparable to the anomalies in the top and bottom panels of Figure 14. Their standard 5 Tg emission case resulted in a solar radiation flux anomaly at surface of -12 W/m2 after the second year (see their Figure 3), between 5 and 6 time as large as the corresponding anomalies from our ensembles shown in the middle panel. In their experiment “Exp1”, Stenke et al. (2013) reported global mean surface temperature anomalies not exceeding about 0.3 K in magnitude and precipitation anomalies hovering around -0.07 mm/day during the first few years, again consistent with the results of Figure 14. In a recent study, Pausata et al. (2016) considered the effects of an admixture of BC and organic carbon aerosols, both of which would be emitted in the atmosphere in the aftermath of a nuclear exchange. In particular, they concentrated on the effects of coagulation of these aerosol species and examined their climatic impacts. The initial BC distribution was as in Mills et al. (2014), although the soot burden was released in the atmosphere over time periods of various lengths. Most relevant to our and other previous work are their one-day emission scenarios. They found that, during the first year, the largest values of the atmospheric surface temperature anomalies ranged between about -0.5 and -1.3 K, those of the sea surface temperature anomalies ranged between -0.2 and -0.55 K, and those of the precipitation anomalies varied between -0.15 and -0.2 mm/day. All these ranges are compatible with our results shown in Figure 14 as red lines and with those of Mills et al. (2014, see their Figures 3 and 6). As already mentioned in Section 2.3, the net solar flux

anomalies at surface are also consistent. This overall agreement suggests that the inclusion of organic carbon aerosols, and ensuing coagulation with BC, should not dramatically alter the climatic effects resulting from our forced ensemble simulations. Moreover, aerosol growth would likely shorten the residence time of the BC particulate in the atmosphere (Pausata et

al., 2016), possibly reducing the duration of these effects.

No credible scenario for extinction—outdated fringe science and well-meaning threat inflationScouras 19 [(James Scouras, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, formerly served on the congressionally established Comission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack) “Nuclear War as a Global Catastrophic Risk,”

footnotes 2 and 4 included, Cambridge Core, September 2, 2019, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-benefit-cost-analysis/article/nuclear-war-as-a-global-catastrophic-risk/EC726528F3A71ED5ED26307677960962] TDI

It might be thought that we know enough about the risk of nuclear war to appropriately manage that risk. The consequences of unconstrained nuclear attacks, and the counterattacks that would occur until the major nuclear powers exhaust their arsenals, would far exceed any cataclysm humanity has suffered in all of recorded history. The likelihood of such a war must, therefore, be reduced as much as possible. But this rather simplistic logic raises many questions and does not withstand close scrutiny.

Regarding consequences, does unconstrained nuclear war pose an existential risk to humanity? The consequences of existential risks are truly incalculable, including the lives not only of all human beings currently living but also of all those yet to come;

involving not only Homo sapiens but all species that may descend from it. At the opposite end of the spectrum of consequences lies the domain of “limited” nuclear wars. Are these also properly considered global catastrophes? After

all, while the only nuclear war that has ever occurred devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was also instrumental in bringing about the end of the Pacific War, thereby saving lives that would have been lost in the planned invasion of Japan. Indeed, some scholars similarly argue that many lives have been saved over the nearly threefourths of a century since the advent of nuclear weapons because those weapons have prevented the large conventional wars that otherwise would likely have occurred between the major powers. This is perhaps the most significant consequence of the attacks that devastated the two Japanese cities. Regarding likelihood, how do we know what the likelihood of nuclear war is and the degree to which our national policies affect that likelihood, for better or worse? How much confidence should we place in any assessment of likelihood? What levels of likelihood for the broad spectrum of possible consequences pose unacceptable levels of risk? Even a very low (nondecreasing) annual likelihood of the risk of nuclear war would result in near certainty of catastrophe over the course of enough years. Most fundamentally and counterintuitively, are we really sure we want to reduce the risk of nuclear war? The successful operation of deterrence, which has been credited – perhaps too generously – with preventing nuclear war during the Cold War and its aftermath, depends on the risk that any nuclear use might escalate to a nuclear holocaust. Many proposals for reducing risk focus on reducing nuclear weapon arsenals and, therefore, the possible consequences of the most extreme nuclear war. Yet, if we reduce the consequences of nuclear war, might we also

inadvertently increase its likelihood? It’s not at all clear that would be a desirable trade-off. This is all to argue that the simplistic logic described above is inadequate, even dangerous. A more nuanced understanding of the risk of nuclear war is imperative. This paper thus attempts to establish a basis for more rigorously addressing the risk of nuclear war. Rather than trying to assess the risk, a daunting objective, its more modest goals include increasing the awareness of the complexities involved in addressing this topic and evaluating alternative measures proposed for managing nuclear risk. I begin with a

clarification of why nuclear war is a global catastrophic risk but not an existential risk . Turning to the issue of risk

assessment, I then present a variety of assessments by academics and statesmen of the likelihood component of the risk of nuclear war, followed by an overview of what we do and do not know about the consequences of nuclear war, emphasizing uncertainty in both factors. Then, I discuss the difficulties in determining the effects of risk mitigation policies, focusing on nuclear arms reduction. Finally, I address the question of whether nuclear weapons have indeed saved lives. I conclude with recommendations for national security policy and multidisciplinary research. 2 Why is nuclear war a global catastrophic risk? One needs to only view the pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shown in figure 1 and imagine such devastation visited on thousands of cities across warring nations in both hemispheres to recognize that nuclear war is truly a global catastrophic risk. Moreover, many of today’s nuclear weapons are an order of magnitude more destructive than Little Boy and Fat Man, and there are many other significant consequences – prompt radiation, fallout, etc. – not visible in such photographs.

Yet, it is also true that not all nuclear wars would be so catastrophic; some, perhaps involving electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks 2 Many mistakenly believe that the congressionally established Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack concluded that an EMP attack would, indeed, be catastrophic to electronic systems and consequently to people and societies that vitally depend on those systems. However, the conclusion of the commission, on whose staff I served , was only that such a catastrophe could, not would , result from an EMP attack. Its executive report states, for example, that “the damage level could be sufficient to be catastrophic to the Nation.” See

www.empcommision.org for publicly available reports from the EMP Commission. See also Frankel et al., (2015).2 using only a few high-altitude detonations or demonstration strikes of various kinds, could result in few casualties .

Others, such as a war between Israel and one of its potential future nuclear neighbors, might be regionally devastating but have limited global impact, at least if we limit our consideration to direct and immediate physical consequences. Nevertheless, smaller nuclear wars need to be included in any analysis of nuclear war as a global catastrophic risk because they increase the likelihood of larger nuclear wars. This is precisely why the nuclear taboo is so precious and crossing the nuclear threshold into uncharted territory is so dangerous (Schelling, 2005; see also Tannenwald, 2007). While it is clear that nuclear war is a global

catastrophic risk, it is also clear that it is not an existential risk. Yet over the course of the nuclear age, a

series of mechanisms have been proposed that, it has been erroneously argued, could lead to human extinction. The first concern3 arose among physicists on the Manhattan Project during a 1942 seminar at

Berkeley some three years before the first test of an atomic weapon. Chaired by Robert Oppenheimer, it was attended by Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Emil Konopinski, and other theoretical physicists (Rhodes, 1995). They considered the possibility that detonation of an atomic bomb could ignite a self-sustaining nitrogen fusion reaction that might propagate through earth’s

atmosphere, thereby extinguishing all air-breathing life on earth. Konopinski, Cloyd Margin, and Teller eventually published the calculations that led to the conclusion that the nitrogen-nitrogen reaction was virtually impossible from atomic bomb explosions – calculations that had previously been used to justify going forward with Trinity, the first atomic bomb test (Konopinski et al., 1946). Of course, the Trinity test was conducted, as well as over 1000 subsequent atomic and thermonuclear tests, and we are fortunately

still here . After the bomb was used, extinction fear focused on invisible and deadly fallout, unanticipated as a significant consequence of the bombings of Japan that would spread by global air currents to poison the entire planet. Public dread was reinforced by the depressing, but influential, 1957 novel On the Beach by Nevil Shute (1957) and the subsequent 1959 movie version (Kramer, 1959). The story describes survivors in Melbourne, Australia, one of a few remaining human outposts in the Southern Hemisphere, as fallout clouds approached to bring the final blow to

humanity. In the 1970s, after fallout was better understood to be limited in space, time, and magnitude, depletion of the ozone layer, which would cause increased ultraviolet radiation to fry all humans who dared to venture outside, became the extinction mechanism of concern. Again, one popular book, The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell (1982), which described the nuclear destruction of the ozone layer leaving the earth “a

republic of insects and grass,” promoted this fear. Schell did at times try to cover all bases, however: “To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course, be a misrepresentation – just as it would be a

misrepresentation to say that extinction can be ruled out” (Schell, 1982). Finally, the current mechanism of concern for

extinction is nuclear winter , the phenomenon by which dust and soot created primarily by the burning of cities would rise to the

stratosphere and attenuate sunlight such that surface temperatures would decline dramatically, agriculture would fail, and humans and other

animals would perish from famine. The public first learned of the possibility of nuclear winter in a Parade article by Sagan (1983), published a month or so before its scientific counterpart by Turco et al. (1983). While some nuclear disarmament advocates promote the idea that nuclear winter is an extinction threat, and the general public is probably confused to the extent it is not disinterested, few scientists seem

to consider it an extinction threat. It is understandable that some of these extinction fears were

created by ignorance or uncertainty and treated seriously by worst-case thinking , as seems

appropriate for threats of extinction. But nuclear doom mongering also seems to be at play for

some of these episodes. For some reason, portions of the public active in nuclear issues, as well as

some scientists , appear to think that arguments for nuclear arms reductions or elimination will be

more persuasive if nuclear war is believed to threaten extinction , rather than merely the horrific cataclysm that it

would be in reality (Martin, 1982). 4 As summarized by Martin, “The idea that global nuclear war could kill most

or all of the world’s population is critically examined and found to have little or no scientific basis .”

Martin also critiques possible reasons for beliefs or professed beliefs about nuclear extinction, including exaggeration to stimulate action.4 To summarize, nuclear war is a global catastrophic risk. Such wars may cause billions of deaths and unfathomable suffering, as well set civilization back centuries. Smaller nuclear wars pose regional catastrophic risks and also national risks in that the continued functioning of, for example, the United States as a constitutional republic is highly dubious after even a

relatively limited nuclear attack. But what nuclear war is not is an existential risk to the human race. There is

simply no credible scenario in which humans do not survive to repopulate the earth.

1NC – AT: Africa Advantage Asteroid mining not profitable enough to tradeoff with terrestrial miningElvis 17 [(Martin, X-Ray Astronomy PhD @Leicester University, A. Stark, B. Stalder, and C. Desira) “Astronomical Prospecting of Asteroid Resources,” European Planetary Science Congress, 2017] TDI

Asteroids number in the millions and the total mass of industrially useful raw materials they contain is far vaster than the accessible materials in the Earth’s crust [6]. This abundance has drawn great attention lately with a number of commercial companies developing ways to prospect for the most promising asteroids.

The mining industry term for commercially profitable concentrations of materials is ore-bearing . A rich

vein of the desired material is not enough. A profit is essential . Ore-bearing is a technology dependent term.

Improved methods can change material into being ore-bearing. It is also economics dependent, as a drop in price can render material non-ore-bearing, and vice versa.

There are a series of physical factors that reduce the number of asteroids that could be profitable to mine with current technology [3]. In total there remain many potentially ore-bearing asteroids, but as a fraction of the total among known NEAs they are quite rare , roughly 1 in 660 , or 1 in 66 if low delta-v

asteroids are preselected.

This fraction could rise if a thermal infrared survey of NEAs were undertaken, as the optically dark carbonaceous asteroids may well be far more common in such a survey [7]. Until at least the mid2020s though we have only NEAs selected by their reflected optical light.

If a low delta-v NEA is selected at random some 100 must be visited to find one ore-bearing asteroid. Instead, if a rough classification into one of the 3 main type: stony (S), carbonaceous (C) or uncertain, and possibly metallic (X), then this number can be reduced to about 10 [4]. Cutting the number of spacecraft probes by an order-of-magnitude may be enabling for the closing of the business case.

Unfortunately, current investigations of NEAs, while highly successful at discovery, fall behind on the

information gathering needed for prospecting [1]. Of the 2000 or so NEAs being discovered each year,

almost half have ill-determined orbits in the sense that they will be almost impossible to re-

acquire at their next close approach (“apparition”). An even greater fraction, ~ 90% , have no spectral

information , and so have undetermined types .

Space resources aren’t used terrestrially Whittington 17 [(Mark, writes frequently on space, politics, and popular culture. He has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, and the Hill. He is the author of, most recently, Why is it So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? and The Man from Mars: The Asteroid Mining Caper. as well as Dark Crusade: A Vampire Gabriella Adventure) “Why mining asteroids and the moon will not destroy the world's economy,” Blasting News, 1/17/17, https://us.blastingnews.com/opinion/2017/01/why-mining-asteroids-and-the-moon-will-not-destroy-the-world-s-economy-001401771.html] TDI

The idea that asteroid mining is going to destroy the world economy exhibits a misunderstanding about how the new

industry will work. The market for most Space materials, whether from the asteroids or the moon, will not be on

Earth, for the most part, but in space. Water from the moon would be used to make rocket fuel and to support a lunar colony.

Metals from worlds like 16 Psyche would be used to build things in space, not brought back to Earth as a building material. That arrangement would eliminate the need to ship everything from Earth.

No escalationBarrett 05 [(Robert Barrett, PhD Conflict & Post Doctoral Fellow, Conflict Analysis - University of Calgary & Principal and Senior Partner De Novo Group LLC) “Understanding the Challenges of African Democratization through Conflict Analysis,” IACM 18th Annual Conference, June 1, 2005]

Westerners eager to promote democracy must be wary of African politicians who promise democratic reform without sincere commitment to the process. Offering money to corrupt leaders in exchange for their taking small steps away from autocracy may in fact be a way of pushing countries into anocracy. As such, world financial lenders and interventionists who wield leverage and influence must take responsibility in considering the ramifications of African nations who adopt democracy in order to maintain elite political privileges. The obvious reason for this,

aside from the potential costs in human life should conflict arise from hastily constructed democratic reforms, is the fact that Western donors, in the face of intrastate war would then be faced with channeling funds and resources away from

democratization efforts and toward conflict intervention based on issues of human security. This is a problem, as Western nations may be increasingly wary of intervening in Africa hotspots after experiencing firsthand

the unpredictable and unforgiving nature of societal warfare in both Somalia and Rwanda. On a costbenefit basis, the West continues to be somewhat reluctant to get to get involved in Africa’s dirty

wars , evidenced by its political hesitation when discussing ongoing sanguinary grassroots conflicts in Africa. Even as the world apologizes for bearing witness to the Rwandan genocide without having intervened, the United States, recently using the label ‘genocide’ in the context of the Sudanese conflict (in September of 2004), has only proclaimed sanctions against Sudan, while dismissing any suggestions at actual intervention (Giry, 2005). Part of the problem is that traditional military and diplomatic approaches at separating combatants and enforcing ceasefires have yielded little in Africa. No powerful nations want to get

embroiled in conflicts they cannot win – especially those conflicts in which the intervening nation

has very little interest. It would be a false statement for me to say that there has never been a better time to incorporate the holistic

insights of conflict analysis. The most opportune time has likely come and gone. Yet, Africa remains at a crossroads – set amidst the

greatest proliferation of democratic regimes in history. It still has a chance. Yet, it is not only up to the West, but also Africans themselves, to stand against corruption, to participate in civil society and to ultimately take the initiative in uncovering and

acknowledging the deep underlying issues perpetuating African conflict in order to open the door to democratic advancement and global interaction. Analysis will be the key that unlocks that door.

Aff/Neg – Innovation DA

Aff – AT: Innovation DA

1AR – Innovation DAFlags of convenience are unlikely to occur – states wont forum shop von der Dunk 12 [(Frans G., Othmer Professor of Space Law, University of NebraskaLincoln, College of Law, LL.M. Programme in Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law) "Towards 'Flags of Convenience' in Space?" Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program Faculty Publications. 76. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/spacelaw/76] TDI

The above analyses have demonstrated that the dozen or so existing national space laws handling private involvement in space activities, notably their liability- and insurancerelated consequences, have so far done so in varying fashion. To start with in theory, that might lead to certain (prospective) operators making a rather judicious choice regarding which regime they might wish to be licensed under, as presenting them with the leastcostly set of obligations, requirements and

standards – in other words, seeking a ‘flag of convenience’ to operate under.

This would assume of course, that such operators would not even prefer to operate from jurisdictions – including

in terms of registration and headquartering, read nationality, of the actually operating company – where as of yet no licensing

system has been developed specifically for private space activities, and hence no dedicated

reimbursement or insurance obligations exist.

Whilst, however, prima facie that might seem to be an attractive option, any operator following such route should realise that, if causing damage covered by the Liability Convention and their government being consequently responsible and/or liable at the international level, such a government would in view of the specifics of the space sector and the likely enormous damages involved try to use every legal tool (such as general tort law, due diligence or wrongful act concepts) at its disposal to have international claims reimbursed after all – without any of the legal transparency and clarity that a license would have provided.

Of course, from the mere fact that national laws and licensing regimes are different it can not automatically be concluded that there is a risk in practice for ‘flags of convenience’ in outer space to become a real problem, so as to require or justify substantial efforts to deal with it for example at the UN level.

DIB decline inevitable – most recent studies – demand side does not offsetHallman 20 [(Wesley Hallman, regulatory policy associate at NDIA, 1/21/2020 “Vital Signs 2020: Defense Industrial Base’s Report Card Reveals ‘C’ Grade,” National Defense. https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2020/1/21/vital-signs-2020-defense-industrial-bases-report-card-reveals-c-grade] TDI

This year’s mediocre “C” grade reflects a business environment characterized by highly contrasting areas of concern and confidence.

Deteriorating conditions in 2020 for industrial security and for the availability and cost of skilled labor and materials emerge from this analysis as areas of clear concern. Favorable conditions for competition in the defense contracting market, and rising demand for defense goods and services reflect recent year-over-year growth in the defense budget. This first of an expected annual study contributes to the debate about national defense acquisition strategy by offering a common set of indicators — vital signs — of what some have called America’s “sixth service,” the industrial partners providing our warfighters their capability

advantages. To do this assessment, we conducted a months-long study of data from eight different dimensions shaping the performance capabilities of defense contractors including: market competition; demand for defense goods and services; cost and availability of skilled labor and critical materials; investment and productivity in the U.S. national innovation system;

threats to industrial security; supply chain performance; industrial surge capacity; and political and regulatory activity. We analyzed over 40 longitudinal statistical indicators, converting each into an index score on a scale of 0 (bad) to 100 (excellent). We did this over a three-year running average to control for data spikes such as last year’s government shutdown. Last, we aggregated the individual indicatorscores into scores for each dimension, and into an overall

composite score for the defense industrial base with 2020 scoring at 77, a passing C grade but with a worrying downward trend .

The analysis reveals a stressed defense industrial base, trending negative. Composite scores for four of eight dimensions eroded in 2019. And, six dimensions earned composite scores lower than 80, C or worse, and two dimensions earned scores below 70, failing grades. For a sector facing “unprecedented” challenges, these scores suggest a defense industrial base increasingly struggling to meet them. Industrial

security scored 64 for 2019, the lowest among the eight dimensions. Industrial security has gained prominence as massive data breaches and brazen acts of economic espionage by state and non-state actors plagued defense contractors in recent years. To assess industrial security conditions, we analyzed indicators of threats to information security and threats to intellectual property rights. The indicators of global information security threats were already failing in 2017 and went even lower in 2019. This score incorporates the rising annual average number of new cyber vulnerabilities documented by MITRE Corp., which almost doubled between 2016 and 2018 when compared to 2014-2016. The score also incorporates MITRE’s annual average of the threat severity of new cyber vulnerabilities, which improved slightly for 2016-2018, but remains high. In contrast, intellectual property rights threats scored 100 out of 100 for 2019, the result of new FBI investigations into IP rights violations, which have been steadily declining since peaking in 2011.

Defense industry production inputs also scored poorly in 2019, down from a barely passing 70 in 2017. Major production inputs include skilled labor, intermediate goods and services, and raw materials used to manufacture or develop end-products and services for Defense Department consumption. Relatively low

2019 index scores for defense industry workforce size helped drive the low score for this dimension. The estimate of the size of the defense industry workforce, currently about 1.1 million, falls substantially below its mid-1980s peak size of 3.2 million. Security clearance process indicators also contributed to the low overall composite score for

production inputs as backlogs shrink but persist. Onboarding new personnel in the defense industry often requires navigating the security clearance process. Contractors face a security clearance management process that worsened between 2017 and 2019. The index scores for the annual average number of pending security clearance investigations declined for 2019 with much of that decrease due to issues with initial top-secret clearances.

COVID thumpsGould and Insinna 20 [(Joe Gould, Valerie Insinna, writers for Defense News, 3-9-2020, “Coronavirus shaking up America’s defense industry,” Defense News, https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/03/09/coronavirus-shaking-up-americas-defense-industry] TDI

WASHINGTON ― The U.S. aerospace and defense sector is feeling the impact of the coronavirus, with companies limiting travel, defense trade events scuttled and contingency planning underway. As stocks fell sharply Monday on a combination of coronavirus fears and plunging oil prices, defense firms were girding for the worst and looking

to the White House for guidance. The comments came days after spread of the coronavirus forced the weeklong closure of two F-35 related facilities in Italy and Japan―a sign the outbreak had begun to impact operations within the American defense industrial base. “The normal ways of doing business are definitely going to change,” said

Aerospace Industries Association CEO Eric Fanning. “We’re trying to get to the place where we’re not reacting on a day-to-day basis to what’s happening and getting in front of some of these things and maybe making some proactive decisions. But everyone is kind of looking to

everyone else to take the lead on how to address this.” Lockheed, Raytheon and Honeywell were among dozens of companies that pulled out of last month’s Singapore Air Show, which is typically the largest defense trade show in Asia―and SXSW, a show AIA participates in, was cancelled. The two offer a glimpse into how fears of corona virus could impact other defense trade shows and conferences. “It felt like a ghost town. It definitely was a strange experience,” Fanning said about the Singapore conference. While it’s easy to overstate the importance of trade shows in cementing major deals, the deals announced at the shows are often worked out in advance, Fanning said. Still, the shows are still valuable for face-to-face networking between international defense officials and industry. As of Monday, the National Defense Industrial Association still planned to hold its Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Tampa, Fla., this May. Its 2020 Pacific Operational Science and Technology Conference in

Honolulu was ongoing this week, with more than 700 attendees, a spokeswoman said. At least one major defense firm, Boeing, has limited its employees to “business-essential” travel, and it has been rescheduling some events, reducing face-to-face meetings in favor of virtual meetings, enabling telecommuting when possible. “These measures are temporary and aimed to prevent the spread of the virus, shorten its impact and ensure the health and safety of our employees as well as the general public,” a Boeing spokesman said. Vice President Mike Pence, right, along with Florida Sen. Rick Scott, left, and Gov. Ron DeSantis, center, speaks to the media after a meeting with cruise line company leaders to discuss the efforts to fight the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, at Port Everglades, Saturday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (Gaston De Cardenas/AP) The virus has infected more than 110,000 people worldwide, and Italy on Sunday followed China’s

lead in quarantining a big swath of its country in hopes of corralling the spread. That sparked more fears in the financial markets that quarantines would snarl supply chains for companies even more than they already have. While COVID-19’s long term impacts on the defense aerospace industry may take time to manifest, they could be complicated by the uncertainty of the financial market and ongoing trade wars with China, according to Fanning and

others. “Supply chains are global, they’re inter-related, they’re incredibly complex. Having real good situational awareness into them is difficult to begin with, then you add any instability on top of it, it gets harder. And this definitely is added to that,” Fanning said. The new coronavirus is now spreading on every continent except Antarctica and hurting consumer spending, industrial

production, and travel. As COVID-19 spreads around the world, many investors feel helpless in trying to estimate how much it will hurt the economy and corporate profits, and the easiest response to such uncertainty may be to get out. After initially taking an optimistic view on the virus — hoping that it would remain mostly in China and cause just a short-

term disruption — investors are realizing they likely woefully underestimated it. On Monday, the Dow Jones U.S. Aerospace & Defense Index was down 26 percent over the last month, lagging the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was down 18 percent.

DIB can’t prevent great power conflictGreenwalt 19 [(William, Senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Brent Scowcroft Center for International Security, former staff member on the Senate Arms Services Committee) LEVERAGING THE NATIONAL TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRIAL BASE TO ADDRESS GREAT-POWER COMPETITION: The Imperative to Integrate Industrial Capabilities of Close Allies, 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/Leveraging_the_National_Technology_Industrial_Base_to_Address_Great-Power_Competition.pdf] TDI

The difficulty with this problem set is that the current, dedicated US defense-industrial base and the US acquisition system are not prepared for a great-power war, nor the innovation necessary to compete in all five things the United States must do to meet its national security needs. Nor has it geared up to deliver the significant innovation in capability and doctrinal development to deliver a sufficient deterrent effect to prevent that war in the first place For the last seventeen years, the United States has been equipped to conduct current operations against insurgencies and terrorism in the arc of instability

running through Central Asia to Northern Africa. Because of the constant threat of budget sequestration, wars have been fought on the cheap and readiness levels have fallen. Modernization is being conducted at non-economic order-of-production levels. Disruptive innovation has been practically nonexistent, as research funding has historically stopped at the 6.3, or advanced-technology, development level, leaving most innovations stuck in the so-called “valley of death.” Prototyping, or 6.4, funding has been difficult, if not impossible, to

obtain. Science and technology (S&T) communities are addicted to the existing peacetime way of doing research by doling out funds in single million-dollar increments, and the budget reflects that. Business

reform is further constrained by the inability to address the costs of socioeconomic requirements placed on the Pentagon by Congress and past administrations. Large-scale technological and business-process disruption will be needed to meet the great-power threat. While Congress took the first step in passing new-acquisition reforms in 2015 and 2016, much more needs to be done to implement these reforms and reform other

business practices. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, since the end of the Cold War the United States and its allies seem to have subconsciously forgotten the requirements of deterrence, as there was no great-power rival to deter.

With the resurrection of great-power challenges, the atrophy of US and allied capabilities during that period now appears to be a huge vulnerability.

Neg – Innovation DA

1NC – DIB The US commercial space industry is booming – private space companies are driving innovation Lindzon 2/23 [(Jared Lindzon, A FREELANCE JOURNALIST AND PUBLIC SPEAKER BORN, RAISED AND BASED IN TORONTO, CANADA. LINDZON'S WRITING FOCUSES ON THE FUTURE OF WORK AND TALENT AS IT RELATES TO TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION) "How Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are ushering in a new era of space startups," Fast Company, 2/23/21, https://www.fastcompany.com/90606811/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-elon-musk-spaces-space] TDI

In early February, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the planet’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, dropped the bombshell announcement that he would be stepping down as CEO to free up more time for his other passions. Though Bezos listed a few targets for his creativity and energy—The Washington Post and philanthropy through the Bezos Earth Fund and Bezos Day One Fund—one of the highest-potential areas is his renewed commitment and focus on his suborbital spaceflight project, Blue Origin.

Before space became a frontier for innovation and development for privately held companies, opportunities were limited to nation states and the private defense contractors who supported them. In recent years, however, billionaires such as Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson have lowered the barrier to entry. Since the launch of its first rocket, Falcon 1, in September of 2008, Musk’s commercial space transportation company SpaceX has gradually but significantly reduced the cost and complexity of innovation beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. With Bezos’s announcement, many in the space sector are excited by the prospect of those barriers being lowered even further, creating a new wave of

innovation in its wake.

“What I want to achieve with Blue Origin is to build the heavy-lifting infrastructure that allows for the kind of dynamic, entrepreneurial explosion of thousands of companies in space that I have witnessed over the last 21 years on the internet,” Bezos said during the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in 2016.

During the event, Bezos explained how the creation of Amazon was only possible thanks to the billions of dollars spent on critical infrastructure—such as the postal service, electronic payment systems, and the internet itself—in the decades prior.

“On the internet today, two kids in their dorm room can reinvent an industry, because the heavy-lifting infrastructure is in place for that,” he continued. “Two kids in their dorm room can’t do anything interesting in space. . . . I’m using my Amazon winnings to do a new piece of heavy-lifting infrastructure, which is low-cost access to space.”

In the less than 20 years since the launch of SpaceX’s first rocket, space has gone from a domain reserved for nation states and the world’s wealthiest individuals to everyday innovators and entrepreneurs. Today, building a space startup isn’t rocket science.

THE NEXT FRONTIER FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP

According to the latest Space Investment Quarterly report published by Space Capital, the fourth quarter of 2020 saw a record $5.7 billion invested into 80 space-related companies, bringing the year’s total capital investments in space innovation to more than $25 billion. Overall, more than $177 billion of equity investments have been made in 1,343 individual companies in the space economy over the past 10 years.

“It’s kind of crazy how quickly things have picked up; 10 years ago when SpaceX launched their first customer they removed the barriers to entry, and we’ve seen all this innovation and capital flood in,” says Chad Anderson,

the managing partner of Space Capital. “We’re on an exponential curve here. Every week that goes by we’re picking up the pace.”

The plan creates a restriction that encourages companies to move their operations to states with lower standards Albert 14 [(Caley Albert, J.D. Loyola Marymount University) “Liability in International Law and the Ramifications on Commercial Space Launches and Space Tourism,” Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review, 11/1/14, https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1708&context=ilr] TDI

A parallel can be drawn here between the commercial space industry and the maritime law concept of the Flag of Convenience. The

term has evolved over time, but in this day and age, it is commonly used to mean the owner of a vessel does not want to create an obligation with a country with stricter standards for registry; hence, the owner will register strictly for economic reasons with a country that has a more convenient registry.133 By flying a Flag of Convenience, ship owners are able to avoid taxation on earnings of ships registered under these flags, and in some cases, they can also receive relief from stricter crew standards and corresponding operating costs.134 A Flag of Convenience is flown by a vessel that is registered in one state, which the vessel has little if any connection to, when in reality the vessel is owned and operated from another state.135 This way the

vessel avoids any unfavorable economic requirements from its true home state.136 In this sense, “flag shopping” is similar to “launch forum shopping,” similar in that Flags of Convenience are utilized for economic reasons, such as to avoid high taxes and compliance with certain restrictive international conventions , commercial space companies will forum shop when choosing which country to launch from. As of today, there has yet to be a catastrophic commercial launch incident, so for now commercial space companies do not have an incentive to forum shop, but if there is, the indemnification policies described above may lead companies to seek out countries that provide more coverage so they pay less in the event

something goes wrong. This comparison to Flags of Convenience brings up two separate yet equally important issues. First, launch companies may try to follow the Flags of Convenience model and soon catch on to the wisdom of their maritime predecessors by “registering” in countries with more favorable conditions. Of course, in this

case the concern is not with registration so much as launching. If launch companies follow the Flags of Convenience model, they will seek out the most convenient state for launch, most likely the state that provides the most liability coverage and has the least safety precautions. Launching from states with low safety standards increases the potential for catastrophic launch events. This, in turn, will place states that are potentially incapable of paying for damages from launch disasters in a position they would not normally assume if these commercial companies had not been drawn to their shores with the promise of more favorable regulations. Second, launch customers may also seek out companies located in states with lower cost liability regimes (lower insurance policy limits) since those companies will presumably charge less to launch their payloads. In this scenario, instead of the launch companies seeking out states with lower liability caps and softer regulations, the launch customers themselves will seek companies located in states with lowcost liability regimes. Here, the effect will be the same as above. Under the Liability Convention, the launching state will be liable for any damage caused by a vehicle launched from within its borders; hence, if customers start engaging in “launch forum shopping,” states will be incentivized to put in place low-cost liability regimes, which in turn will increase the states’ potential payout in the event of a catastrophic launch incident. Looking at the indemnification program the United States has in place in

comparison to other countries, it is possible to see how either launch companies or launch customers could engage in “launch forum shopping” when a catastrophic launch incident ever occur. It is also important to keep in mind that various factors go into where a company or customer decides to launch from. A state’s indemnification program is just one factor in this decision. With this in mind, it is clear that if a launch incident did occur in the United States, the commercial launch company would be liable for much more than it

would in another country. For instance, why would a commercial space company launch in the United States, where it would be liable up to $500 million and the additional costs that the government would not cover? The argument can be made that a catastrophic space incident has yet to occur, and even if it did, it is unlikely to cost above the $2.7 billion covered by the United States government. Other states like Russia or France, which has the two-tier liability system, would simply cover all claims above the initial insurance, which is much lower than the $500 million mark required by the United States. In that case, the commercial company

would never have to pay more than the initial liability insurance. If there ever is a catastrophic commercial space incident in the future, it is easy to see why commercial companies or launch customers might be drawn to “launch forum shop” outside the United States .

Maintaining US space dominance requires a homegrown commercial space industry – private companies offshoring gives China the advantage they needCahan and Sadat 1/6 [(Bruce Cahan, J.D) (Dr. Mir Sadat, ) "US Space Policies for the New Space Age: Competing on the Final Economic Frontier," based on Proceedings from State of the Space Industrial Base 2020 Sponsored by United States Space Force, Defense Innovation Unit, United States Air Force Research Laboratory, 1/6/21, https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000177-9349-d713-a777-d7cfce4b0000] TDI

Today, China’s commercial space sector is in its infancy but is set to grow with continued national and provincial support, which have been rapidly increasing over the past three years.64 Since 2004, the United

States and China accounted for 74% of the $135.2 billion venture capital (VC) invested in commercial space. 65 The early 2020s are pivotal, as it would be far cheaper for China and Chinese commercial space firms to acquire space

technologies from the United States or allied nation companies seeking revenues or facing cashflow

constraints , than to build the companies and their teams and technologies from scratch in China. The tight coupling of Chinese military goals and an economy organized to achieve those goals magnifies the economic threats and market disruptions that the United States must immediately address, in order for DoD and national security operations to rely on US commercial space capabilities.

3. ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

Peaceful Uses of Space and Space Exploration Space has been primarily a shared, not a warfighting, domain.67 With each passing second of Planck time,68 space enables a modern way of life, provides instantaneous global imagery, assures telecommunications, and captures

humanity’s imagination for civil space exploration. As a result, space is a burgeoning marketplace and territory for commercial ventures and investors. Strengthening the US commercial space industrial base is vital to

and beyond US national security . Civil space activities are a source of US “soft power” in global

commerce, cooperation, and investment. 69 The civil space sector, led by NASA, is fundamental to

America’s national security . 70 NASA is on an ambitious critical path to return to the Moon by 2024,71 along with developing the capabilities and infrastructure for a sustained lunar presence. NASA’s lunar plans provide a lunar staging area for missions to Mars and beyond. They offer a strategic and economic presence for the United States on the Moon. Congress, the White House, DoD, and NASA must recognize that economic and strategic dominance in service of national security requires catalyzing and accelerating growth of a vibrant, private US industrial and cultural expansion

into the Solar System. Human visitation and eventual settlement beyond the Earth require sustaining

visionary leaders, aided by, and aiding, US national security. A recurring theme in US policy is

“maintaining and advancing United States dominance and strategic leadership in space” because US

global competitors and adversaries are competent and capable of outpacing American space

capabilities. 72 The stakes are high: At this historic moment, there is a real race for dominance over

cislunar access and resources.

Regulations Should Foster US Commercial Space as a National Asset Leveraging the reimagination and disruption of terrestrial industries, the US commercial space industry is pushing the frontiers of the United States and global space economics and capabilities. A pre-COVID19 assessment by the US Chamber of Commerce projected that the US space market will increase from approximately $385 billion in 2020, to at least $1.5 trillion by 2040. 73 This projection represents a seven percent (7%) annual compound average growth rate (CAGR), driven largely by expanded business opportunities in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Total addressable market (TAM) for US commercial space companies could

be far larger were they to have federal and financial support for initiating cislunar space operations and opportunities. Recent advancements in commercial space technologies and business models have driven down costs and unlocked new areas of economic growth and space capabilities that outpace and de-risk acquiring capabilities through traditional US government economic development, research and

development (R&D), procurement and regulatory policies and processes. US regulations must ensure that US companies

lead in commercial space. In specific, technological advances that lower access costs and expand space mission capabilities,

content, continuity, and redundancies must be fully supported by or incorporated into US government programs, budgets, requirements, and acquisition processes. Until commercial space offerings are fully incorporated, and federal acquisition policies and personnel commit to innovation, US government fiscal buying power, intelligence and program support will lag and remain inadequate in comparison to US private sector companies and the nation’s global competitors and adversaries in space.

Addressing COVID-19’s Impact on US Commercial Space The COVID-19 pandemic damaged and still challenges the US space industrial base. US domestic investors’ funding of space R&D remains inconsistent across the lifecycle of New Space companies and the spectrum of technologies necessary to grow the space economy. To date, public R&D, government procurements and visionary space entrepreneurs have played a major role in establishing and funding the New Space industrial base. In the last five years, $11 billion of private capital has been invested.74 Traditional private investors may become reluctant to fund space technologies due to perceptions of higher risk over longer time horizons before receiving profitable returns on their capital. Institutional and long-horizon investors who manage patient capital have an appetite for illiquid, but higher yielding, terrestrial alternative asset investments such as commodities, private equity limited partnerships and real estate.75 The COVID-19 pandemic has created economic uncertainties making the New Space’s funding model unreliable. COVID-19 significantly impacted venture capital (VC)-backed companies: the pace of VC space investments fell 85% between April - June, as compared to January – March, in 2020. 76 Pre-COVID-19, the New Space industrial base confronted multiple challenges in raising later stages of venture capital such as (1) the lag between having an early-stage startup with an idea and commercializing a viable revenue-generating product, (2) the lack of market liquidity for founder and private equity space investments to attract and retain talented teams, and (3) the lack of a market to re-sell contracts for space goods and services when customers buy more capacity than needed. Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, federal financing of US R&D was at a historically minor level, as compared to businesses and universities.77 US government support for basic research has steadily declined as a percent of GDP. The federal government will experience near- to medium-term budget constraints.78 The vibrant venture community in the United States has taken up a portion of this slack by increasing R&D investment in later-stage and applied research. However, founding teams and VC financing rely on government to fund earlier R&D for basic science and engineering. Therefore, government must resume the sustainable and impactful past levels of support for basic research, an essential role in the space economy’s public-private partnership that ensures US leadership in space.

Space as Existential Terrain for National Security

In this Digital Era, space integrates and drives all elements of US national security . The Cold War may be

over, but since the early 2010s , a renewed era of great power competition has emerged across

terrestrial land, air, sea, and cyber domains. This competition extends into space, where a great game

ensues.79 Space is no longer an uncontested or sanctuary domain. Competent and capable global

competitors and peer adversaries are challenging US military , commercial, and civil space interests.

The United States, along with its allies and partners, has had to accept and anticipate that space may

be a warfighting domain , as suggested primarily by Russian and Chinese counter-space capabilities, military operations, and declarative statements. On December 20, 2019, the bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 202080 authorized the creation of the US Space Force, under the Department of the Air Force, to secure US national interests in an increasingly contested domain.81 Back in October 1775, the Continental Congress established the US Navy to ensure that commercial and government fleets could freely navigate the Atlantic coastline - today, that includes the South China Sea. Likewise, the USSF’s

mission is to ensure unfettered access to and the freedom to operate in space. The 2017 National Security Strategy considers space to be a “priority domain.”82 Freedom of navigation is a sovereign right that nations have fought to achieve and defend. 83 The USSF’s main role is to organize, train and equip, as well as to protecting US space interests and supporting terrestrial and joint warfighters (e.g., US Space Command). Thus, USSF must secure US national interests in space, whether military, commercial, scientific, civil, or enhancing US competitiveness for cislunar leadership.

US space dominance prevents global warZubrin 15 [(Robert Zubrin, president of Pioneer Energy, a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy) “US Space Supremacy is Now Critical,” Space News, 1/22/15, https://spacenews.com/op-ed-u-s-space-supremacy-now-critical/] TDI

The United States needs a new national security policy. For the first time in more than 60 years, we face the real possibility of a large-scale conventional war, and we are woefully unprepared. Eastern and Central Europe is now so weakly defended as to virtually invite invasion. The United States is not about to go to nuclear war to defend any foreign country. So deterrence is dead, and, with the German army cut from 12

divisions to three, the British gone from the continent, and American forces down to a 30,000-troop tankless remnant, the only serious and committed ground force that stands between Russia and the Rhine is the Polish army. It’s not enough.

Meanwhile, in Asia, the powerful growth of the Chinese economy promises that nation eventual overwhelming numerical force superiority in the region. How can we restore the balance, creating a sufficiently powerful conventional force to deter aggression? It won’t be by matching potential adversaries tank for tank, division for division, replacement for replacement. Rather, the United States must seek to

totally outgun them by obtaining a radical technological advantage. This can be done by achieving

space supremacy. To grasp the importance of space power, some historical perspective is required. Wars are fought for control of territory. Yet for thousands of years, victory on land has frequently been determined by dominance at sea. In the 20th century, victory on both land and sea almost invariably went to the power that controlled the air. In the 21st century, victory on land, sea or in the air will go to the power that controls space. The critical military importance of space has been obscured by the fact that in the period since the United States has had space assets, all of our wars have been fought against minor powers that we could have defeated without them. Desert Storm has been called the first space war, because the allied forces made extensive use of GPS navigation satellites. However, if they had no such technology at their disposal, the end result would have been just the

same. This has given some the impression that space forces are just a frill to real military power — a useful

and convenient frill perhaps, but a frill nevertheless. But consider how history might have changed had the Axis of World War II possessed reconnaissance satellites — merely one of many of today’s space-based assets — without the Allies

having a matching capability. In that case, the Battle of the Atlantic would have gone to the U-boats, as they would have

had infallible intelligence on the location of every convoy. Cut off from oil and other supplies, Britain would have fallen.

On the Eastern front, every Soviet tank concentration would have been spotted in advance and wiped out by German air power, as would any surviving British ships or tanks in the Mediterranean and North Africa. In the Pacific, the battle of Midway would have gone very much the other way , as the Japanese would not have wasted their first deadly airstrike on the unsinkable island, but sunk the American carriers instead. With these gone, the remaining cruisers and destroyers in Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher’s fleet would have lacked air cover, and every one of them would have been hunted down and sunk by unopposed and omniscient Japanese air power. With the same certain fate awaiting any American ships that dared venture forth from the West Coast, Hawaii, Australia

and New Zealand would then have fallen, and eventually China and India as well. With a monopoly of just one element of space power, the Axis would have won the war. But modern space power involves far more than just reconnaissance satellites. The use of space-based GPS can endow munitions with 100 times greater accuracy, while space-based communications provide an unmatched capability of command and control of forces. Knock out the enemy’s reconnaissance satellites and he is effectively blind. Knock out his comsats and he is

deaf. Knock out his navsats and he loses his aim. In any serious future conventional conflict, even between opponents as mismatched as Japan was against the United States — or Poland (with 1,000 tanks) is currently against

Russia (with 12,000) — it is space power that will prove decisive. Not only Europe, but the defense of the

entire free world hangs upon this matter. For the past 70 years, U.S. Navy carrier task forces have controlled the world’s oceans, first making and then keeping the Pax Americana, which has done so much to

secure and advance the human condition over the postwar period. But should there ever be another major conflict, an adversary possessing the ability to locate and target those carriers from space would be able to wipe

them out with the push of a button. For this reason, it is imperative that the United States possess space capabilities that are so robust as to not only assure our own ability to operate in and through space, but also be able to comprehensively deny it to others. Space superiority means having better space

assets than an opponent. Space supremacy means being able to assert a complete monopoly of such

capabilities. The latter is what we must have . If the United States can gain space supremacy, then the capability of any American ally can be multiplied by orders of magnitude, and with the support of the similarly multiplied striking power of our own land- and sea-based air and missile forces be made so formidable as to render any conventional attack unthinkable. On the other hand, should we fail to do so, we will remain so vulnerable as to increasingly invite aggression by ever-more-emboldened revanchist powers. This battle for space supremacy is one we can win. Neither Russia nor China, nor any other potential adversary, can match us in this area if we put our minds to it. We can and must develop ever-more-advanced satellite systems, anti-satellite systems and truly robust space launch and logistics capabilities. Then the next time an aggressor commits an act of war against the United States or a country we are pledged to defend, instead of impotently threatening to limit his tourist

visas, we can respond by taking out his satellites, effectively informing him in advance the certainty of defeat should he persist. If we

desire peace on Earth, we need to prepare for war in space.

2NR – Ext – Innovation KeyWe’ll remain in power as long as we keep innovatingCooley 19 [(Dr. Thomas, Air Force Research Laboratory Colonel Eric Felt, Air Force Research Laboratory and Colonel Steven J Butow, Defense Innovation Unit, 5/30/19, “State of the Space Industrial Base: Threats, Challenges and Actions” https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4653168/AFRL_DIU_Report_State_of_Space_Ind_Base_30May2019_Final.pdf] TDI

Internally, the challenge is developing an industrial base that outpaces our international adversaries and competitors in speed and innovation in developing new space capabilities and in continually upgrading existing ones. This requires

• upgrade of our own methodologies such as shared, trusted supply chains and interoperable technology standards that accelerate viable commercialization of the space economy;

• the development of more flexible, U.S.-led markets for space capabilities that spread the risk, increase the pool of investors and establishes our Nation’s leadership role in setting the international rules for space products and services;

• changes in U.S. government procurement and licensing processes and other regulations to eliminate unnecessary delays and micromanagement of the space industrial base’s ability to deliver next generation space capabilities and to enable early U.S. investment in emerging capabilities.

For the United States to be a dominant force in the future space economy during peacetime and to monitor and engage decisively in space

when national security is threatened, we require a unified and comprehensive national strategy that builds and continually refreshes a strong space industrial base. The group recommends urgent attention to the development of this strategy as detailed in the Conclusions and Recommendations section of this white paper.

2NR – Ext – Space Industrial Base Key Offshoring risks supply chain logistics failures that devastate space superiority. Cooley 19 [(Dr. Thomas, Air Force Research Laboratory Colonel Eric Felt, Air Force Research Laboratory and Colonel Steven J Butow, Defense Innovation Unit) “State of the Space Industrial Base: Threats, Challenges and Actions,” 5/30/19, https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4653168/AFRL_DIU_Report_State_of_Space_Ind_Base_30May2019_Final.pdf] TDI

The Growing Role of Space to National Power

Commercial, civil and military uses of space are rapidly expanding to deliver capabilities and advantages uniquely available from and in space. In the near term, these space capabilities center on information gathering; precision position, navigation and timing (PNT); and broadband communications to include the internet.

For information gathering, no other domain provides equivalent global access. National, commercial, civil and military information

dominance is increasingly dependent on space systems’ capabilities to observe globally from above, using a rapidly expanding range of sensors refreshed at an ever-increasing time rate, pixel resolution and sensitivity. In an ever more interconnected world, there will be a commensurate or even greater expansion

of information flows across the terrestrial, maritime, air and cyber domains. However, in these domains the sources will be localized

and prone to greater and easier control, interdiction and corruption by adversaries. Space-based sensors will continue to provide platforms for global observation that are more difficult to disrupt, degrade, and deny than similar sensors in other domains.

Space will remain the dominant medium for providing precision PNT driven by its global coverage and simplicity of source and applications. The criticality of precision PNT to national infrastructure is evidenced by the continuing proliferation of such space-based systems sponsored by Europe, China, Russia, India, US, Japan, South Korea, and others for civilian, commercial, military and intelligence purposes.

Space communication systems provide global and local capabilities that minimizes supporting ground infrastructure and the need to transmit information on the ground or through the air across the territories of rivals or potential adversaries or areas where the rivals or adversaries could interdict or break the communication path. The recent concern regarding Chinese control of the limited number of fiber cable connections is a case in point. In addition, space communication systems can achieve higher latency than ground-based, global, fiber systems and equivalent bandwidth to existing ground communication networks through laser cross-, up- and down-links.

The unique advantages of space-based capabilities will continue to create a growing commercial, civil and military, space-ecosystem from low Earth orbit (LEO) to geosynchronous orbit (GEO). The satellite architectures within this ecosystem will depart radically from the historic large-satellite-can-do-it-all approach. This ecosystem will be populated with a vastly increased number of assets supporting commercial, civil and military applications across a wide range of satellite sizes, constellations sizes and orbits. The capabilities of these space system architectures will be tailored around power, aperture, bandwidth, interoperability and other functional specifications to maximize network redundancy, efficiency, and value creation. Within this ecosystem, space broadband communications and internet capabilities will move from a small number of large GEO satellites to a mixed architecture of large GEO satellites and proliferated constellations of large numbers of small satellites at lower orbits. We can also expect first sub-orbital, and orbital space tourism to become a part of this ecosystem.

As in other domains, the commercial space industrial base will need to provide end-toend delivery of a significant portion of critical civil and military capabilities, such as communication bandwidth, imagery, launch, debris

removal and other commoditized services. There will be an increasingly symbiotic relationship between the economic development of LEO and GEO space and increased military, civil, commercial and intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance of actors and their activities in LEO and GEO space with commercial systems both being assets to be monitored and sources for monitoring information, when appropriate.

In the mid- to long-term (5 years and beyond), the development and deployment of systems and capabilities beyond the LEO and GEO ecosystem, will have two drivers: first, by the military’s need to expand the locations and operations of critical assets into cislunar space to limit adversaries’ abilities to detect and attack these assets and to enhance ours and our adversaries’ ability to apply force through, from and in space; and second, it will be driven by the need to establish the required infrastructure and capabilities to return and then establish a permanent U.S. presence on the Moon and beyond.

The resulting technology, infrastructure and capabilities will establish the foundations (including supply chain logistics) for the extension throughout the cislunar domain of military power and for the economic exploitation through space manufacturing, space power and resource extraction. The foundation

for a sustainable space economy, such as cislunar infrastructure, strategically depends on close collaboration

with national commercial capabilities and the maintenance of a strong space industrial base . Such an

approach maximizes the U.S. position to lead in the economic exploitation of space.