[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible] [inaudible] >> welcome in any event, people are not here to listen to me. i would like to introduce our moderator for this afternoon's panel, cofounder of the silicon flat iron. there you have it. who has been laboring diligently over these months to bring today's events off. i will hand it off to you. thank you very much. >> thank you very much in thank you everybody for being here. became first god pace come you stayed for a the lunch and for

us. the conversation is to think a little bit in more detail about the issues that don't stay to death for us in to really explore how federal regulations, federal oversight can maintain u.s. leadership in space in the space to point out your. we will be talking about many things, but the key question really is what needs to be different going forward? we have an illustrious panel here. i will just introduce them, give you their names, identify them. i can't talk faster than you can read, so if i refer you to the bios of the program and there you can actually see exactly how striking they are. we have the comstock -- the director of the office of policy and strategic planning at the department of commerce.

in the middle we have dr. michael madero who is stuff to rector is senior counsel for the space committee of the house of representatives space and technology committee. and on my immediate right we have the honorable robert dowell, former fcc commissioner, thank you, gentlemen for being here. what we are going to do in this conversation as we will just start off with a conversation on stage. i'll ask a few questions and engage with each other and then we'll move to audience questions when the time is ready. so i wanted to start with you. you're actually a commerce. commerce is driving a lot of these things. you're in the engine room. i was the reform process going? >> thank you for that question. it's a pleasure to be here with

everybody. it's going very well. secretary ross is just incredibly at uzi aspic about this transition, the way the national state council has been reconstituted under the -- we have the full support of the president which is just fantastic. this has been quite an engaging process for him and what he's very excited about. that is trickled down leading to the department. we are moving full steam ahead. there's an administration process here in the process is continuing through the direction of the space council come of it at the moment we are actively as the secretary has said moving commerce in reconstituting a backup under his direction provision and that is ongoing in making good progress. we still have to go work with our colleagues in the congress who have to approve the reprogramming, but we anticipate that will happen in the near term and in the meantime the

full attention and focus on this matter. i think for everybody in the department to long been working on the space issues and they are excited about the attention they are receiving an input the secretary continuing to work with these things and they will be working more directly which i think would be a real benefit to moving the process along. we had an incident where the stock and have the launch people reviewed.and realized there was a remote-sensing issue connected with the second stage of god. if they went to launch another satellite in the space of four days, we were able to get a license move through which has essentially never been done. it had a restriction on it, which caused them to turn up the

feed. they get through the process and get the license issued and now they are actively working with them on a longer-term solution of this issue because obviously it is more focused on cameras that can actually see imaging very well to look and see if you had successful operation of the satellite. we are trying to make those adjustments as we go along. the kind of thing that can happen when you have this level of attention from the administration on the process. how do you envision that changing >> i do want to get too far out in front of the reprogramming. basically there is an office space commerce position that it hasn't been filled over the last 10 years, so we are actively in

the process of bringing somebody on board for that and we are going to move that stuff up in the main difference right now in the secretary's immediate staff on this process what we need to do to reform it and how can we work with the other agencies over it dod and transportation getting a heightened level of visibility as well. that whole process through the space council and the vice president have elevated the whole thing so that there is this tension. we literally got to the point where the u.s. loss to space launch business and now we are back in full force for the commercial side of the equation. the military launch of the government bonds, but now we are back sine will revitalize and

engage commercial sector and that is getting everybody's attention. >> one of the things you said was you are pushing ahead, but you also need to look to the hill for what has become mayor. mike, you ought to talk a little bit about what is happening. tell us what is passed recently in what is on the sleigh. >> i'm happy to. i do have to take a disclaimer. i speak as i understand the committee's position but i'm not speaking for the committee and for the reporters in the room but the important distinction. i'm not speaking for the members are the committee. this is my view as i understand it. >> he wants to keep it is john. got it. all in the same page. first, let me think the hudson institute for organizing this. this is a well-timed and important event. there's a lot going on at the real hope. with regards to the hill, i'm happy to report last week the house of representatives passed

a bill that chairman smith, the chairman of the committee with his signature legislation. what the bill does is called the americans-based commerce free enterprise that it accomplishes two policy goals. one is to reform the regulatory and statutory construct the government space space remote and the other is to provide a minimally burdensome but affect the mechanism for the government to authorize and supervise private u.s.-based activities be in compliance with the outer space treaty. that policy philosophy bill. so that is the great news is the house is taken action. it was a bipartisan voice vote essentially leading to unanimous consent in the senate terms. another legislative act committee that happened two weeks ago was that after 2018 authorization act, which was

marked up out of the house science committee. for those of you unfamiliar with the processes, it was introduced and referred to the science committee is the committee of jurisdiction and went the legislative hurry up and hearing to house floor for consideration. it left the committee in a bipartisan voice vote. and so we now have a bipartisan 2018 nasa authorization bill for the house in its entirety consideration. from a policy is it does many things. it reaffirms the exploration activity of nasa like sos o'ryan and ground systems development, but also some other things which are novel to the administration position to space. if you look at the budget request, he had a number of actions that do not request he was requesting which was designed to move the ball forward in the exploration agenda to empower nasa to find creative ways to work with the private sector for services for

example lunar services that could complement and also some discussion in the about what is the future of the human spaceflight program and requirements particularly as it relates to the iss. that's an important ongoing discussion that the hill in the administration are having. those are the two major pieces of legislative activity that happened in the last two weeks. a smaller bill worked on a bipartisan vote introduce the commercial space vehicle out that addresses a certain class of vehicles that can support a spaceflight like a shuttle launch or a galactic sort of airplane that can have other uses. the bill empowers the mechanism for the uses to be public for compensation that is happen on

the house side. >> my understanding is the action now moves to the senate. is that right? >> is a former senate staffer. >> that is ray. if we do cool -- [inaudible] i talked with both by republican and democratic staff leagues on a regular basis for open communication. i hope that their members with the legislation on both of those on the commercial space round and on the nasa authorization friend. >> one of the things i think we'll get into in more detail as

the conversation progresses, but i just wanted to get to speak authoritatively about the difference in the structure between the house side on the senate side. so when i think about the issues and space, traditionally one is stuff is going to bang into each other specifically in stuff is going to bang into each other and send radio signals, which is framed as space communications. on the senate side, overly structured from the house. could you say more about that? >> akamai before i address the institutional construct come as the relevant construction on the panel today, which is what is happening today that we are all talking about. why articulate the communities is the new private space actors come in the private sector doing something new and novel means the government is asking question.

this is a really good problem. if the government was the only one doing anything we wouldn't have any laws really. maybe would have a few. it's in the private sector goes out there that the public asked how do we balance the equity in the needs of national security and foreign policy. this is one of the reasons why there is an interest in real debate because people are doing real stuff. when you look at the structure of the house. i won't get into the nitty-gritty, but the houseplant committee under the house rules has jurisdiction over outer space and controls thereof. that would include oversight over nafta and space activities and oversight over the regulatory functions related to the operation of their most sensing for the launch and reentry. the spectrum falls primarily into the energy and commerce committee at the house. so you do have this interesting observation from a spectrum

perspective that you have two committees who develop different equities. the office of space transportation is in dod, but we have a committee to move the legislation forward that enacted the office. if you look at the 2015th space launch act became direct committee and they have another committee that hasn't equity. if you look at the intelligence service committee on their face they have equities. dod and intel committee. when you switch to the senate, what i think is interesting in these gentlemen can speak more stupidly than i can is that the senate commerce committee can capture the energy and commerce and transportation committee on the house side and allow their members to look at the issues that from a jurisdictional perspective and in some ways empower them to address issues in different ways as well.

that is the biggest difference between the two. >> will probably get into some of these questions about balance, but i would like to step back a little bit and talk about how you seen all the unintended consequences you seen in how unexpected things can derail processes. would you like to give sort of a reality check on how this thing might play out or might not play out? >> absolutely. first of all, many thanks for moderating this. many thanks to hudson institute board member for being a driving force behind this program and for ken weinstein for allowing us to do all this and also my fellow panelists. when you're talking about space, you're talking about the infinite and we don't have an infinite amount of time. i will try to be very concise. in your very kind to her has been unelected washington

bureaucrat, so i appreciate that. so if the fcc, kind of to your point i learned a lot about unintended consequences in things that are run for seen income over the horizon in this case quite literally. i adopted in my first term this orphan proceeding at the fcc that was going to try to get more satellites up there, make the orbital spot there were. there were thousands of miles between satellites, an object that might be the size of a bus or even smaller. we could see the technology that was coming, that they were getting smaller and couldn't we squeeze in just one more in per slot did this had been a priority for the sec chairman at the time for a variety of reasons. what are the odds of the satellites hitting each other when they're thousands of miles apart, so small relative to the

orbital spot spirit right as i was starting to get a little bit of traction, a russian satellite smacked in to a live satellite. and now is the end of that. that was the end of my initiative to try to get more satellites up there. so was essentially greater odds of being struck a light income which actually is not good. you can get struck by lightning much more easily. now when since then, we've seen all sorts of debris and that is going to be an ongoing issue that i think drives a lot of the policy here and that is a classic place for government, national government, but also intergovernmental bodies to focus on. one of the products, byproducts of this great leap in innovation and investment is things like how we are going to get the

satellites to launch pass that cloud in what is going to crash into other things among many other things. there are so many issues here at play. geopolitical issues come environmental issues, economic issues, privacy issues. when you talk about space policy generally, it's infinite in terms of the number of public policies here. >> are there ways to prioritize? >> some of that is political. some of it is a matter of engineering and logistics of what necessary in what is necessary to time horizon of five to 10 years but some of it's going to be at a meeting republican versus democrat, but just which committee will have jurisdiction, who's going to be driving at in congress or which office of the executive branch. so there's a lot of peace parts of government here that determine space policy and it

really needs to be much more comprehensive and streamlined as earl and mike were boards pointing out. the government has not kept up with trying to figure out how to deal with all this. it's going to have to. so you will have 194 nations. they will all have their own agendas. >> will come back to the conference. we had the subject of space safety. one of the actions you've taken is to have a plan to move some of the activities out of the dod into the office of space commerce. could you say a little bit more about the philosophies and what is achieved by doing that.

>> thank you for the question and obviously the sort of explosion of activity and potential for debris is part of the driver here. essentially dod has done a fantastic job of providing a sort of public service and tracking objects, but now as there is more and more actors, they would like to find a civilian agency that would undertake the mission. they will continue to be involved. they have the resources and capabilities to track all these things, but hopefully a two-way mechanism of getting feedback coming into the dod from various companies as to what is out there. as that expands, they look at this and say this is an part of my core mission. this is sort of ancillary service. there should be a civilian agency that the public face-to-face. that is one of the objectives

the space council identified as how we transition this process then continues to maintain and relieve them of the burden of interfacing with public and that will now take on a civilian agency and we are excited about that role. it's going to be a challenge. i believe it is the european space agency they got a test run in a there right now or they will deploy something and try to capture some space debris and bring it out. one of the things we'll be looking at either through the legislation or whatever capabilities the administration might have is to ensure more and more people going up that there is essentially i guess to borrow a philosophy friendly environmental side, pakistan, packet out. take whatever you take up there and bring it back. told me that floating around up

there. we are obviously looking at that issue right now and trying to figure out the mechanisms. the core object to the space council has is really how we keep the united states for companies that want to go into space. we would like to get these companies to come here and launch and i think there is an ideological reason for that is has been pointed out. there is an obligation to licensees and what we want to ensure it doesn't happen is that we see essentially flags pop up all over the world. people say give me a million dollars or whatever the price may be in may be and we'll put our flag on it and send you up without any oversight or assurance that there's going to be responsible space practices. that is the real objective the administration has. >> the thing that is interesting when you say conveniences for them shopping, off shoring, the

kinds of things we are trying to avoid. one of the things that is intriguing is where to strike the balance between making it easy for people to operate and creating environment globally where there are responsible at yours. one of the things for example, mike, that i notice in 2809, the approach is essentially self certification at a presumption that approval will happen, which is very good news for companies that want to innovate and get ahead. if i compare that to the way the fcc, for example, works. that is not the way the fcc works. to what extent will you see this creating a race to the bottom, where the u.s. is so committed that other countries will also create the environment.

countries that don't have a strong institutional says the u.s. does. >> so let me just touch on a few points to answer that. first, what is really interesting is the administration and the house position aligns the following principles, which is the united states should be the jurisdiction of choice for foreign investment and for people to come here and create and build business space. at the same time as the recognition that this national interest including compliance with national obligation moving forward. now you can debate the specific language in the free enterprise act, but that is the policy line and there is language and they are designed to the international routine. if you look at how the definition of who was captured under the regulatory schema, it's designed to prohibit convenience. if you look at how other states have interpreted authorizers

supervise come as some states will say if you go to another country and it's kind of not our problem. .. you are excited for this will be a challenge and one of the things that strikes me as perhaps a challenge is doing all the approvals of this business as it gets bigger. how much resource do you need in the office can do all the work that you see coming down the pipe? >> i don't know that we have an exact number but we are looking

ahead to both possibly modification in fy 19 and all the administration is preparing for fy 20 budget so certainly by then we expect to see an increase in resources. we have a reprogramming request that will go out shortly which will allow us to get more resources if the appropriations committee is approved. we are seeing this ramp-up. fortunately, we are trying to match the private sector as it expands and has more has developed. to your point about what will prevent the flags of communion i drawback -- don't forget, as novelists base maybe this is much like some of the conversation that goes on with the internet. it is not so novel. there is a lot you can draw from maritime experience and in the maritime world how the key driver was insurance.

i anticipate that is the industry gets bigger the insurance community will see a financial opportunity but we will look to things like insurance to try to drive some of this so that if you set up a regime where the united states has a clear oversight mechanism to mike's point that is not onerous but facilitates business and see that if you go to the united states and go through the process, we, the intrinsic community, will know that is not a fly-by-night information but someone is taking look at this. there are reasonable measures in place and we hope that the insurance committee will step up and put pressure on responsible companies to say that, if you want to do this and you go to this flag of convenience, no insurance but if you go to the united states, you will be insured. there are mechanisms other we intend to try to facilitate. like you said, there are examples you can look to an obviously as the united states

builds up what we consider the best practices we will take those rest of the world saying this is a way and responsible state should do this. we anticipate that the eu and japan will all follow suit and work with us to develop common goals and hopefully that will translate to the rest of the world as well. >> if i may follow-up -- i want to clarify you talk about race and what motto? what i mean by that? so, go back to the free enterprise act. it weren't for the committee we go back to that from it and talk bigger policies. in the free enterprise act there were two policies and one was to reform in the most regular system and that reform in and of itself had to do with restructuring how the system is balanced for or against assumptions of approval or denial on the basis of national security. when the regulatory was created under the tenure in 1992 when the law was enacted and put into

place by revelation in 93 there were literally none up there to anything and they were just starting. it made sense to say hey, this is cold war technology that we don't know what the indications are for the united states and will presume there is something wrong. fast-forward 25 years and it's become more of an information technology that puts into a broad ecosystem. it's one of many ways people get information so the question for the numbers i third was is the balance from 1992 still the right balance in their answer was no and they said we need to shift the balance allow it to be more like a true balance. the way they did that was they put the burden on the government to provide evidence basis on why the license should be conditioned or denied which on seems reasonable. if you believe that you want to empower people and move forward in innovate and at the same time

balance the public equity. in the remote there's no race for the bottom within the united states. however, i think countries that don't have any national security equity can immediately start at the bottom. if there's a country that doesn't operate in space or you don't care about national security then you have no expenses to provide condition at all. the united states and away take the high ground and it is self-interested but it is like him. we talked about the second provision of the bill there's a discrete thing and discrete issue. that has to do with creating an explicit authorization to meet article six of the outerspace treaty. you get in a time machine and go back three or four years ago there are two companies who want to do things operationally in space. they want to get permission to put a hotel of their. then you have the moon rubber company and at the time and it still today there is no clear explicit authority for any government agent to provide orbit regulatory authority to assure treaty compliance. they went to the faa because

they'll be on the american license want and there will structure is no other government agent has provided a license or permit to authorize the activities up there. they get an opportunity to look at them and look at that payload not only for public safety or the safety of people on the ground but also for foreign policy and national security. that is how in 2016 they got up into space but the press release from the faa was explicit. you go to the very last paragraph and it says we cannot promise in the future we will be able to authorize payload on an american launched vehicle because we are not sure we will be able to ensure our satisfying authorizations in the treaty. a number of ideas was brought it up and they all had a similar theme which is you create some way for the government to look at what will be proposed for the operated in space and allow the government to make a decision

whether it meets the treaty obligations of the united states. the idea behind it is one way to solve that problem and to solve that problem is to give it to the department of congress and consistent with the administration. it was the idea, given to commerce, elevate the office of space commerce and consolidate them under the secretary and allow for the additional mechanism which is minimally burdensome for people to get necessary authorization if they were compliant with their international obligation. reasonable people can disagree whether you need to add on top of that or you want to make it a more coercive regulatory structure that was the philosophy of it. to note about the race to the

bottom to my knowledge no one country has ever has announced that is not in compliance with the treaty operation. here is the united states trying to take a step forward even though no one has called them and said you're violating the treaty. to the credit and house credit they are trying to move the ball forward on behalf of the international community. >> that's a very good example of trying to establish best practices ahead of the game so that other countries can follow. we know there are many moving parts here in agencies you mentioned the faa got commerce and what about the fcc for a while. i like to go back to geopolitics. commissioner has spent many sleepless nights in the bowels of the hotel in geneva as well as radio conferences and you seen how difficult it is to negotiate with 192 other countries. how do you see that plane out particularly with the space and stuff like medications? what are the geopolitical context here?

>> just like we talked space policy and glamorous and earl pointed out the practical application of insurance law and how that becomes mundane and you're like, really? this will be an insurance policy conference but it doesn't boil down to the variety of interests and the member states in the told location union and the conference coming up next year and the work 19 is coming up. for those who don't know or those who play at home you can't just launch a satellite anytime you want your there are orbital flocks that are related and radio frequencies they use for the operation of the spaceship as well as whatever the core function is, as well those are governed by harmonization and also national government. so trying to find consensus takes years and as soon as one conference or negotiations are resolved humanely start the next one essentially through working groups and it's an ongoing

process. as already has been pointed out if we look back in the 1960s and i was born in 63 and i was the space age and that is arcane now. like the old videogame pong. [laughter] state-of-the-art computer gaming. obviously, become very far since then. other countries and back then it was just the russia and the soviet union and united states. now it is far more countries involved in this game. both with their own launch businesses and operations as well as gaming the system maybe for other purposes. they all have a stake in this or they want broadband in their developing country and they want to proliferate more satellites that will help deliver that more cheaply to their population or

they don't want broadband because it's an authoritarian regime and therefore they will try to support that. you have all these countermeasures going on all the time and then you have satellite operators and mobile broadband providers and unlicensed communities some of which can be all the same but you have a lot of different constituencies within the radiofrequency neighborhood as to who wants what for what frequency is. as we have seen the higher frequencies for the past ten or 15 years especially that have traditionally been used for satellite now is a big push for those to be used for terrestrial mobile broadband. that drives tension, as well. it becomes much more complex. as far as i know we are still looking for a working ambassador. i don't know if he has been appointed yet but any volunteers from the audience?

the free to let us know. >> you mention going to higher frequencies i think that's one of the things that struck me for the conversation about space. i thought that the big issue really in space and the things i'm interested in which is secondary and it turns out that the satellite industry is very, very [inaudible] about what is happening and in fact in the us preparations for what will be happening in geneva next year and that goes to the balance between terrestrial and 5g and satellite and how should one think about making a trade-off? >> it's very difficult. first of all there's a degree of thousands of piece parts of their in the cloud and to be able to launch a satellite through that you get it gets more treacherous every day. how you resolve that? as a commissioner i like to defer to engineers that i don't

care about the various business interests but i want to know what works and what not. i don't know how much of that still goes on. i know these gentlemen they look at it for the merits but it is very intricate and not easy by any means. >> one of the things that is striking is the business model is different for the satellite industry the cause they gets its license by auction and the satellite doesn't. >> i think and i'll jump in here for -- again, from a policy perspective i think there's a couple of things that everyone needs to keep in mind. obviously this is something within the department of commerce that they're taking a close look at. the challenge for satellite is obviously typically a global operation and even on things like 5g and terrestrial there is

effort to harmonize for the convenience of people moving around but you can put in different ships and operate in different bands globally. for satellite your challenge and your typically send a weaker signal from space and particularly as it smaller and smaller devices in smaller and smaller power levels if you will utilize that you do have to have this global coordination. it's just not possible and frankly it would be a huge impediment if they had to go country by country by country to get authorization. in the terrestrial medications world at least to this day things are still done much more on a country by country basis. the company is typically operating more in that footprint. i think there is a distinction and that's recognized in us law and that we don't auction the satellite spectrum and we do

authorize the terrestrial spectrum. different models, different approaches. from the secretary's point of view and certainly from the fact that it's recognized in the recent space kernel document there is the concern within the administration that we need to make sure that as we go forward and want to facilitate 5g and facilitate broadband but we also want to keep in an eye on the future of if we will have this expanding space market we don't want to discover that we basically stunted the growth of that market by denying that spectrum might be needed for those transactions. it will be a balance act and something that people have to take a hard look at but we are cognizant of the fact that when you look at the space regime we are looking to the future and an

expansion and it's a significant expansion and so we want to move carefully in terms of any changes that he might end up shortchanging that ability to move forward in space. >> to pick up on your point about denying access because of interference issues, circling back to the denying physical access we were talking earlier about [inaudible] and as i understand it the terms of space situational awareness which to me really is the difference between what is up there and what to do about it. my understanding that so far the administration and the legislation, too, i think, has given some pointers on space situational awareness and moving the public facing function to the department of commerce. how should we think about the traffic management though? there are a number of different ways and agencies in the game and can you say anything about

the outlook? >> again, that's an area that's be looked at heavily by the space council and we are looking to develop that. i think the approach in the house bill and the initial approach will be to try to basically set up best practices and not look at extensively regulatory regime but as we learn from the situation that could change. the goal of the government and certainly with the dod has been doing in the past as as we see potential collisions and potentially arising they been good about notifying operators and saying hello, you may want to take a look at this and the challenge as i understand it and i'm not an engineer is, you know, they can project out if this goes this way or that way and it looks like might they might collide you're talking about something we don't have super precise measurements in space.

they can basically alert people and you might want to take a closer look at this and you're the operator so your call is whether you follow the instructions but they definitely give you a yellow flag that you ought to take a look and we intend to try to continue the practice. >> if i may. to follow up on that -- neither the house or the senate, to my knowledge, has introduced legislation in this congress specific to space traffic management or situational awareness. the only cause i exception is -- correct me if i'm wrong but i think the nda a has marked up a committee on the outside last week and a provision specific to this telling the dod -- national defense authorization act of 2018 had a provision in the mark and the subcommittee mark directing dod to get out of this business of being the public service provider with an x number of years. i don't want to misquote the

bill but it's essentially what i think is what happened last week. the reason i want to highlight is that for the members and there's a lot of treat space about everything from roles and responsibilities to what are we doing and why. from a cognitive framing perspective on how we will work their problems are three issues with three policy issues. science and technology, space situational awareness, and behavior. you can call it management or behavior but i call it behavior. we look at those three buckets you begin to look at the problem set differently in solutions at tivoli. for example, earl referred to the [inaudible] side that we have a fundamental challenge of having sufficient knowledge to know whether or not to move. that has to do with everything from measurements of debris to working with our growth and development to working with big

data problems and improvement for radar and all sorts of things you can do to solve these science and technology issues. that is one policy area you need to focus on. the next one which is dod currently does under authority commonly known as the public ssa services, space situational awareness, is the dod free of charge will help people if they ask for it to be warned if there is a possibility their satellite is going to hit a piece of debris or another satellite. from an ssa perspective there's a number of questions and if the dod isn't going to keep doing this which government agent or has any government agent and we need a government agent and if it is what and how should it off with the private sector how do these relate to the function and

to the behavior function. that comes to last bucket which is within the question of behavior this is where people get interesting because what you talk about ultimately is what you want people to do up there? do you want them to turn left or right to avoid each other? do need to force them or incentivize them to do it or do you want people to develop ways to minimize debris falling off anyone force their satellites to go back in the atmosphere? it's about behavior and remake the saying and how large it and how you get rid of it. in the behavior spectrum you have these tools and your prospective critic of non- course of bottom-up behavior like a developers contract or bottom down behavior which everything from an international regime flowing into a regulatory scheme. when i look at all this the one model that seems to make sense on its face is how we did the orbital degrees in the 80s and

90s but we did there is we got technical people together at nasa and the agency level and said what our technical standards we should follow. they socialize those with their like-minded space agencies and in the '90s they came up with common technical standards which were then adopted in domestic regular tree schema and float into an international consensusbuilding process to the un. it took about 25 years to get to the point where people felt was i comfortable with the consensus on basic space debris rules. will it go that way? i don't know. the policy issues -- >> so what i'm hearing if i misunderstood is that there are these different levels of dealing with this problem between the other problems and bottom-up there's a top-down and right now we have not really made our mind up. my sense is the administration is minded to do a bottoms up guidelines process. i wonder if we have it 25 years or if we have 25 more years of

satellite constellation launches. >> to that end and again, i would because sherry is not speaking to the imagination on this but it's my earl comstock of direct -- we don't have 25 years to solve this problem. i think the philosophical approach is to say are there collaborative methods we can use within the industry to solve these problems or other things we can set out and model behavior or whatever you want to call it. if we need to we can always look to regulation and that is where things like having congress passed legislation and provide greater clarity on that but i do think what you are seeing is a recognition that before we had this luxury and there were small number of players and select

club and there were huge barriers to getting this and you needed a massive government effort to get there. that is no longer the case. we are seeing faster and faster iterations by the commercial sector how to get up there. if you fast-forward five years from now it will be a vastly different picture than it is today. if you talk to the companies that do are saying we need to get our tempo up to where we do a lunch a week and some might even say a launch a day. at that kind of speed there is a need and that is what the space counsel is trying to fill is that we, the us government, working with industry need to get out there and figure out what other mechanisms because we have the space treaty obligation but more importantly if we don't it will be a chaotic wild west scenario and that will not and will for somebody. rather than wait till there's a real problem we like to try to get in front of it and set this

up. that is why think you're seeing a whole of government efforts to put those structures in place and see what is needed. were not sitting here saying we have the answers but we need to see that there's a definite problem and getting bigger not smaller. how do we organize ourselves to get in front of it and hopefully provide a stable regime to encourage folks to come here and make the united states private toys. >> we have two sides of government to make this work which is admirable but i want to turn to you because you're no longer in government but if you were advising a client who is looking at the space within the space what will happen customer what should i expect. will he get more category less chaotic? what do you advise them? >> personal, to earl's excellent point which underscores maybe this whole conference is

barriers to entry is much lower and will continue to do so. we can't even imagine it i think even five or ten years out and i know people are trying hard to imagine it but even more energetic to get into this business that was. i remember years ago commissioner in the satellite industry was bankruptcy and it was hard to get the bill the launch vehicle and by the time he got up there and if it didn't blow up in the launchpad or somewhere in between that was obsolete within day one because that technology is now three or four years old. that is quickly passing. i would let them know the economic barriers tend to be lower but there are a tremendous amount of logistical challenges here. i think it gets more complex and

more competitive in that will drive innovation and cost and and that is all good for the consumers of the services but at the same time because of the issues we discussed debris and harmful interference in radio piquancy and all the rest that is going to force a lot of difficult questions and will government or governments be able to respond as quickly both in the lateral government and well as national governments. that is what we don't know and that's the big expect her but when i advise clients generally about any area that it is regulated that regulatory risk is a big part of almost any calculation. we have seen a great illustration here of how many decades these discussions and

ideas have gone on. mike was just talking about an idea from the 80s about 30 years hence is being revised and that is terrific but this will continue to be iterative so my biggest world of and caution is there is regular risk here and we just don't know where it all leads. >> we are going to hand to the audience for question so please think if you want to ask a question what your question is what i want to follow up with what you just said that one of the things that investment companies crave most is certainty and we all do. as you say it there is regulatory risk but what is your sense of about the trend? is there more or less certainty now that the administration sees into this problem and is the risks going up or down? >> to mystically i think we have

seen the tremendous leadership and tough issues are being met head-on and has the attention of the west wing of the white house throughout the executive branch and the leadership of congress. i think domestic policy advisers and policymakers understand that the us is resurgent in this area and that is a good thing for our economy and future on so many different levels. domestically i think we are in a good trajectory and if we keep coming up of the puns -- they were totally unintentional. internationally i don't know and because back to what i said at the very beginning they primarily have the government

and so sputnik was not a private sector -- >> we will break away from this discussion for a moment and take you live now to the us senate gaveling in for a brief pro forma k: washington, d.c., session. no legislative business expected today to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable johnny isakson, a senator from the state of georgia, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: orrin g. hatch, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until 10:30 a.m. on thursday, until 10:30 a.m. on thursday,

>> no legislative work today. they return for legislative business in a week and they will be resuming consideration of the nomination to the fifth circuit court of appeals. you can watch live coverage of the senate when the gavel back in here on c-span2. we return now to the institute discussion on us space policy and satellite technology. >> is that ray glittering spaces so when we talk about ray glittering spectrum it has to do with the conviction and giving out or allocating a resource. we talk about space traffic management and most people thank you think about national security versus private equities and this is an important observation because it's easy in the discourse for all of us to say were talking about ray glittering space but when you begin to classify what you talk

about not only do you identify the stove pipe thinking we all carry in that subdomain where you can then say how can i approach this diagonally and how can i bring something that this domain had not considered before. >> so -- >> different angle. it might enlighten us as we go forward [inaudible] >> find different solutions us. i don't want to presume what the answers are for the conviction physically but the right be a way to approach this that don't necessarily have to resolve the same way we do spectrum or there might be a broader palette for us to consider about economic incentives or self-interest. this is an imprint part of the conversation. the other thing i've noticed is that we are all operating in an operational regular jury domain. we fail to identify that when you look at the national

interest and i will do that and i'll look at our natural interest and you look at what we choose to regulate a citizen or entity behavior there is also reasons they might do that the don't need to be implicated a regular tory schema. we have trade compliance controls and export controls and we have the signals wiretap act and there's all sorts of tools in the toolkit as a nation that might be more effective as opposed to regulating typical operations of satellites. >> hold on, on that one point it's an important one. the bottom line is in this is certainly an experience i bring this from looking at things like the internet but bottom line is most of the activities and space our activities we've seen before. they may be new technology and we don't have to create a whole regime to regulate space. business arrangements of space are no different than

arrangements on earth. same thing with spectrum and there may be different policy considerations a ring to it but i think that is one thing that allows the administration when we look at this to say this is not were not having to make this and there will be people who will advocate that and say this is unique and never been seen before but the bottom line is a contract is a contract whether here or up in space. same thing with a lot of the spectrum and activities and are you listening in on communication and doesn't matter that you're in space versus next-door so we have a lot of rules and regulations that apply to activities you don't have to change the law. they are there. i think the real thing we will focus on is there anything unique that we have to deal with and was come back to the insurance regime don't forget there is a treaty that basically says countries are liable for things that happen in space for people they have authorized and that is another element the

states can use to help encourage proper behavior. we have courts and we have things and they are allowed and if you're allowed to bring suit against the guy that allowed his satellite to slide into you and you can effectively cover here in the united states and that's another thing for their own protection and to avail themselves of our courts and recover from damages from other countries. these are the things we need to sit down and look at and how we can use what is already there. not reinvent the wheel and come up with irrational regime. for those few things that are truly unique to space into the operation do we need new

regulation and we need new law or can we simply promote best practices that get us to the same place. i think that is how we approach this. the goal is to do a minimally invasive approach to the extent we can while addressing the significant problems and protect the national security interest if we do that. >> wrote quickly, i know we want to get questions but to the common thread between what we've been saying is there are market forces here. you never know how market forces are going to yield a positive result. space policy has been very government oriented so in a non- private sector from the launches and vehicles going up were government owned to the treaties the government them and et cetera and now we're seeing this space two .-dot zero where there's a turning point. what mike was saying a minute ago reminded me about spectrum policy generally and 55 years ago now coming up with the paper on the fcc saying how spectrum

should be auctioned and not saying it should be but by the way i'm not speaking on behalf of any client at my laufer. is it too late for anyone to be on mad at me. i'm speaking not on behalf of anyone but myself. that was considered not to auction spectrum and the government should hit out the license and comparative hearing and actually it is adopted under a very bipartisan basis and the authors of that legislation and it has worked quite well. i'm not saying satellite spectrum should be auctioned. anyway, nonetheless the point is there are new ways of thinking that would have seemed unthinkable or impossible just a short time ago which may result in some of these thornier issues. i think that is a part of what they're saying. >> good, let's turn to questions. before we start i want to get a sense of how many people have

questions. anyone who is a question let's see by show of hands. we have quite a few people and what i think we will do is take them to at a time. to make sure that everybody gets a chance. please introduce yourself with your name and affiliation will start on the side and work our way back. >> s, carey barnhard with extraordinary innovative space partnerships. i found it interesting that each of the panels in their own particular vernacular approached the session of an orthogonal perspective. arguably, what we have done from a technology standpoint is a basically work problems on a reactive note effectively after the fact. arguably we need an orthogonal perspective that will offer a way to get in front of the problems. i would argue from my perspective that thought of the functions that are to be performed what the customer requirements for the selections

are that might offer an orthogonal perspective. as up the on this our company is doing is trying to look for how you create a lunar electrical power and that will be fundamentally transformative and how can we do that? what is the way and the perspective that will enable that sort of innovation and transformation of the market? >> very good. next question. judgment right at the back. >> my name is roger and i'm an author with wiley publishers doing a series on history of satellite industry. the panels conversation about situational awareness and space debris i thought was very useful but it highlighted two alternatives use of this or alternative perspectives. one is domestic and the other is global and the panel made clear that most of the satellite

issues quincy and debris are global and you can't think of one country and another country and then at the panel also said that on this question of space situational awareness we have to decide is that the united air force or the united states department of defense or is it the united states department of transportation or department of commerce and should manage this? there's a clear contrast between the global and domestic and the domestic saying the conflict is between the private sector and government and they have to work that out and if there's india and china and japan and dozens of countries that are putting to be up there. the question i have is does anyone on the panel that the issue or the problems of space situational awareness and going to bury campus optimistically by unifying billy america's approach and secondly if anyone says no it can't be dealt with

domestically and i assume we don't have years to come up with a global solution is there any aspect of international organization that manages space surveillance or i don't even know what the answer is but maybe it's in nato or un or some multi national undertaking that will do with it. thank you. >> comment on that and i think to build off the first question, too. there are a lot of new activities coming and i think from my perspective the united states could take a leadership role in this. it is a global problem but on the other hand there is if you try to wait for an international organization some people may steal be around but a number of us won't. [laughter] i think the space counsel thinking is let's take a leadership role and get

leadership. we will have activities and allow the system or space word and i had to think about it about what that meant but -- >> what does it mean? >> [inaudible] >> their ego. >> it's an activity outside of orbit out to the moon. >> so, we will see those activities happening in the near future and in the next five years, i would say. so, we can model this and set out a regime where we do this and as i said we'll have to look at a number of different tools related to insurance and possibly litigation and we have at the national security matter and interest in modernizing what is going on and frankly kudos to the united government into the department of defense and they've done a great job of

providing a wonderful public service to the world. as this gets more active it gets logical to say we need to create a civilian agency to be the interface. the reality is the department of commerce or any other department we might pick doesn't have the resources to do that space situational awareness and that will be dod. thankfully, they have a great interest in doing that for their own reasons. one of the goals we have is to continue to provide the public service to the globe again as a means of attracting people to the united states and saying this is where you want to come and do business and the place to launch your space activities. i think we can do that it will make it very appealing for folks in other countries do not only come here but set a standard for the rest of the world. hopefully we can unite the responsible actors which every governments those may be in say

it's in our larger interest to have these global things. so that it doesn't take 30 years or of international organization to put that into place. >> sir, i appreciate your question but i want to address a common misperception that you articulate it. alluded to this earlier but i will reiterate it. having data about what is up in space is distinct from being able to use the data to make a decision which is distinct from having to make a decision either on a voluntary or course of basis. to translate that okay -- in 2007 congress decided they would tell dod to provide data in a small amount of service analyzing the data for both their self-interest and the public good. now, that is why we have that debate because there's no one else in the world with that much data right now. they've got really good data. if you start think about what we

do to make more data available and how can we allow the data to be more useful you can look at the component and the question of is there a market for us to generate incentives for the private sector to create data and analyze data. doesn't have to be a market forced into for regular tree requirement and then you can end up -- once you have better fidelity of what is up there you can then be able to ask question now we have a better idea of what is up there and can we talk about coercive or non- course of theater forces. i read it reiterate that because i'm not a scientist i don't completely understand it but there's a high degree of uncertainty about where something is so one of the things we need to do is increase our scientific fidelity of what the space environment is like. >> thank you. let's have another round of questions. let's do will start in the back and then this gentleman.

>> thank you. i'm with vector launch, tucson -based and i've a question directed toward earl and mike specifically. earl, back in the 80s i was one of the folks that helped charter the office commercial space and went over to dot as an early director and i've seen both the promotional effectiveness of commerce and the regulatory culture and they are distinct. from your vantage point and again mike, i like to have your allegedly revealed that but what the secretary is doing with all this enthusiasm is bringing those critical cultures together, if you will, and again, i'm curious from your standpoint what does that entail what are the challenges? >> let's get to more questions. running out of time and we want to get as many people to speak as possible. >> jeff from spaces. what coordination is there between commerce department in the hill in terms of which is later proposals for commercial reform that was a recognition of the last national space council

meeting and legislation like hr 28 oh nine and what comes in the senate to create that change law to enable that reform? >> one more question over there. >> university of colorado and i wear a lot of hats. in this case going to be speaking as a research group that launches satellites and were talking about here people launching thousands of satellites. in this instance you may want to launch one satellite and it will be in orbit only for a few months and that can lead to an awful lot of good research that's applicable more broadly. a lot of this sounds like it may be challenging or difficult for people who have interest and can produce lots of good research but this is an awful lot of regulatory hoops to get through if you're going to want a single

satellite with a limited duration. >> we will start with you. >> yeah, let me try to jump through starting with the other first. i think what you'll see and again is there are people today who package launches. the tough part is getting your satellite up in the air first so there are companies out there that are practicing. one of the services they provide in the process is essentially a little bit of a buffer in interface with the regular tree regimes. they are the ones who go to dot and get that worked out. they put up a load together and that may have 30 or 40 satellites so, you know, to your point about it may only be up a couple of months again it depends on what is doing. taking pictures of the earth that will be one of the things

we look at is to try to get this policy put together. basically the authorization of the activity in space. our goal is to have that streamlined as possible and it is something that will not image the earth it will say collect atmospheric data hopefully that is something that doesn't evolve with anything more than the launch and reentry licensing. to the point about regulation and the culture i think that's one of the reasons congress looks at this. the challenge of any nation city is not that novel a new but this idea of commercial space is and if you place it in something where a subsidiary and right now in dot honestly their main focus is on the aircraft side of things. there's a bit of a challenge for

them getting out from underneath the umbrella of the larger aviation industry. as you look at commerce that is not there. we will be looking at the regulatory side but we also look at the promotion side and hopefully we will find a nice plan between those two. in terms of the question of coordination obviously it's not a coordination between department of congress in the hill but the administration has position and that is led by the national space council. obvious, we go through the usual sc or review process so the position because advanced by the administration which is so underdevelopment will be a government whole approach. i think mike could speak directly to who he talks to down here but we do are very careful and it's not an individualized idea or agencies by themselves. it's coordinated across government. >> i'm happy to report that the constitution grants every us citizen the right to petition the government. [laughter] >> and they do. >> any other comments?

good. this will be the last round of questions. we will get everyone who has not had a chance yet. >> reed smith, an observation. the problem is we don't and no longer have a club of responsible actors. you have rogue states which i have not heard mentioned in any part of this discussion earlier this morning or this afternoon. >> i absolutely mentioned them. it's authoritarian regime is another another name for rogue states. please, god. [inaudible conversations] >> you did not mention wrote states and you did not mention also deal with effective international dispute resolution. it will not come from the international telecommunications union. it will not come from the work because they can't do it. when you talk about the united

states as the primary flag i put to you why not luxembourg as the primary flag. perhaps they are in a bit of answer but you have to consider the players that you have and not simply figure out that it is business as usual. it says the new space era and that is what you are in and the parties have changed and the stakes have changed and the timeframe is rapidly running out. >> this is a continuation. joe from international space university. anyway, roger and del smith is the fact that we talked largely in terms of us reform and there's a lot of good things happening here but i have just returned from south africa where my host was peter martinez who chairs the un committee on the

peaceful use of outerspace working group on the long-term sustainability of space. he is going crazy with the fact he is trying to get consensus among more than 80 members of the committee on the peaceful uses of outerspace and particularly he does have problems with russia, china, cuba and other states becoming and agreeing to proposals that the us and other people would like to see. there is this problem that is largely international that how do you with all of these actors get consensus and move forward faster. you also have the issue of space traffic management and we now have committees meeting with copious and the international aviation organization to coordinate activity in that regard and there have been some

interesting papers in a book i did on what we could do moving in that direction. the key issue is how do we get international consensus and move ahead in a timely way because of the speed of everything that is going faster and faster in the international institutions don't have police and there is no enforcement. only the world trade organization has the capabilities to have and i'm just saying the international domain is unafraid the real problem and we don't have any significant ways to get things moving faster and consensus the way we used to. when it basically was the us and the ussr. >> thank you. any other questions? let's wrap up. we'll start with what i would like you to do is obviously we've been hearing some

questions about geopolitics and address those as you wish but bring these back to) these will be her last words. how things be different in the new policy regime in the regime been set up? how things be different or better in five years? >> to the gentlemen's point on the international side this is what president trump has really focused on american leadership in the bottom line is yes, the international process is long and can be tedious but the best way to set that stage especially in a fast-moving thing like this is to take what we can control which is american activity and set a model up to the rest of the world. we will make it, as i said, we are focused on making it so that

people want to come here and as an entrepreneur and see the activity succeed this is the place to come. we will provide that because you have to do things like insurance and you have to ensure investors and certainty to your scene. ultimately the road is run into problems with these rogue states and others there is the legal mechanism of bringing action in the us courts and still a tremendous amount of financial activity that goes through us banks and ultimately at the end of the day congress see the need they can authorize assets that would give us the teeth that you will never get the international organization. i think that is why the president has focused on directing the space council to take a lead on this and get out there and in front of the how to solve problems here in the united states and set up a regime that will be attractive to everyone. >> about a tactical observation and big picture observation tactically you can see the

mistreated through their actions and elected leaders in this country have realized that we need to do more and to advise people to operate here but if you look at the 2015 commercial space launched competitive act it established a right under us court for people to maintain right over resources they got from outerspace. it allowed them to avail themselves of the court system. if you look at the hr 289 which is the free enterprise act there's a provision that directs the president to use the national power to protect and promote us flag equity interest and similar to we had a flagship on the high c and there are benefits of having [inaudible] we want people to realize that is important and there's reasons why you want to be under our jurisdiction. it comes with privileges and the rights and obligations, too. there are some things you need to do if you are a us corporation. at another level one of the

reasons people are starting to have the debate and tension internationally is because what happened in the cold war was an anomaly. you had a prescriptive regime essentially a bipolar or tri- polar space paradigm. over 50 years ago and what happened today is a normalization of the typical process and how the high seas develops. yet people building ships and going out learning how to do things and coming up with rules of the road and ways to operate. there are a few big differences. number one at the time frames have to be compressed now. we don't have a thousand years for legal scholars to come up with their sins. number two, because it was a government domain and has broader equities outside of the civil sector you have an automatic interest of major world powers in the discussion and the third thing is the proliferation of technology in excess and the fusion of capital

and the knowledge to use the capital which is a good thing is driving the debate at the domestic level. traditionally we see is a different state taking different laws and experiencing about how they want to concede and try their interest with obligations which, by the way, the treaty is a good umbrella and people are in the process now. there will be different of opinion and ultimately that difference of opinion helps resolve that in a peaceful way over time but that is the tension that you are observing. what is prescriptive is now more of a rational evolution of the problem. >> you get the last word. >> i can do any better than those responses. i think to add to that the only thing that is for sure is that we will see surprises. we will see pleasant surprises and unpleasant surprises that

could be said about a lot of things in life. i think it's terrific that the huddleston institute has launched them in this particular program and i hope it becomes a series. they do good thoughtful work here because it's relevant in these difficult questions need to be studied in a passionate and thorough way. i want to thank again everyone involved here and who has been working on this issue i look forward to more of this. think of a much. >> thank you. [applause] i like to think the panelists for a wonderful conversation. i think we could've gone on for another half hour or an hour. i like to thank you in particular for spending so much time with us today. ...

[inaudible conversations] >> later today on c-span2 a live discussion with former fbi director james comey about his biography, his experiences with precedent trump and his book "a higher loyalty." join us live at 7 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> for nearly 20 years "in depth" on booktv is featured the nation's best-known nonfiction writers are live conversations about their books. this year it is a special project. where featuring best-selling for monthly program "in depth" fiction edition. join us live sunday at noon eastern with thriller fiction author david baldacci. his most recent book is the fallen which is number one on

the "washington post" best-selling this. >> from time to time on "the communicators" we like to bring craig moffett to the table. he's a telecom analyst and we want to discuss state of the telecom industry in united states. if we could start there, how would you describe the state of the state of the telecom world today? >> guest: first of all thank you for having me back. i think the state of the state