Star Wars in real life may sound rather cool right? But what if it turns out to be serious?
It wouldn’t surprise many that knowledge of outer space has always had an impact on how we live our life on Earth. For centuries astronomy’s inputs shaped the way society conceived agriculture, commerce, war, and sovereignty. New outer space discoveries have for long maintained power and as you might guess served the powerful.
Space is both the ultimate frontier and a powerful vantage point shared by scientists and the military. It can be both a laboratory and a battlefield. Scientists wants to understand it, the military wants to dominate it. But without technology, nobody has access to it. Yet, the technology both sides are trying to access has a potentially dual-use. Remember J.F. Kennedy, the U.S president who called for a trip to the Moon? Well, back in 1962 he made an engaging comment about our use of technology in space:
“ Space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war”.
If the world’s history was a play, power would be the lead. How does a nation become a leader on the world’s stage? To cut a long story short, it seems to be through technological superiority.
Are we stuck in short-term thinking?
Considering the use of technology for power-driven actions throughout history, would it be desirable to send new technologies we don’t know much about on a trip around Earth orbit?
Lewis Mumford, American historian, sociologist, and philosopher of technology says maybe not, calling out the “elite” defenders of space settlement for scientifically inapropriate views on a peaceful future in space. The drive for power may still exist in our future in space. When you think about it, many of our current technology (rockets, computers, nuclear bombs) started as tools for power. Why would things be different in space?
It’s not all bad though, many of us do benefit from scientific and technological advances that started as military projects, communication, and weather satellites, GPS, medical technologies, and mobile phones to name only a few. But we should remember that military power is never irrelevant. It is a means of policy. And as the military has shown us before, space power — especially through the different kinds of satellites around Earth orbit — is now a crucial component of military power. As with any other form of power, Earth orbit power can be used both for protection and oppression. The utter variety of space surveillance technology asks the question of legitimacy. We can look at the Satellite Surveillance of North Korea missile launch and the satellite tracking of cars in Xinjian Province as examples. Satellite surveillance in North Korea is a great forewarning tool for North Korea’s neighbours. Whereas the satellite tracking of cars in Xinjian, where the authorities introduced a tracking system in all citizens' cars as part of an anti-terror movement, shows the possibility of a government overlap and invasion of privacy.
What about the future?
The influence of space-capabilities on society and especially in leading military forces is beyond argument. Satellite communication, navigation, time synchronization, and space-based intelligence all help the military work on Earth. But what would they be capable of in the future? The future might be closer than we think with private sector investment in the U.S space sector. Recently, SpaceX has joined the US military in the creation of a common project to deliver weapons and heavy cargo to different countries, using a rocket system that will fly within Earth’s atmosphere.
Imagine what upgraded space technology would mean for warfare. Including new space capital, lesser ground troops, more smart satellites, and drones, more cyber sabotage, and less physical destruction. These same technologies might later direct space-based attacks, themselves leading to prejudiced attitudes towards conflict and space-based surveillance to turn into an invasive means of defense.
Cyber sabotage would be one of the worst-case scenarios. It wouldn’t need to involve physical weapons, only a targeted disturbance. With the hundreds of satellites moving around Earth, it wouldn’t be too hard to find an appropriate target. As a broad picture, half those satellites are American, some of which are supporting military technologies. What are the remaining satellites? This is where a cyber-attack would show its damaging capabilities. The additional satellites house the daily lives of nearly each and everyone on Earth. Disrupt enough satellites and people can’t use their credit cards anymore.
It is not surprising to see that the opposition to space technologies is growing, claiming that this technology is only a means of spreading conflicts. If we think about it, these technologies may participate in unfair military endeavours, disrupting the lives of many and possibly threatening the lives of unaware civilians. These technologies could change our notions of what “fair” war is to the point that it is advised to limit their use until further analysis of their effects can be understood.
Further analysis is crucial. A machine can’t decide what’s right or wrong right? Robert Sparrow, Professor of Philosophy and Applied Ethics at Monash University, tells us that giving responsibility to a machine is immoral. Then we should consider what would be done in the case of a machine deciding by itself to commit a war crime. Humans would be brought to court, but what about a machine? In any future war, controlling space would be a critical military target and it would seem ambitious to think that any power nation with leading space possibilities would not use it.
Added to these concerns is the problem of regulation. The existing laws will not be sufficient to control these technologies. We should recognise that space technologies are pushing us beyond the borders of our current legislation, the testing process of new technologies should be regulated by legal responsibility for moral values to be instilled into the technologies. Outer space has some sort of regulation collected in the outdated “Space Treaty”. It seems that the treaty is not referred to in current talk around outer space regulation. Donald Trump recently announced that he hoped to achieve“dominance” in space, ignoring the fact that the U.S is one of the endorsers of the 1967 “Outer Space Treaty,” which forbids nuclear weapons deployment in space. However, the US has in the past, withdrawn from major international agreements. For example, George W Bush canceled the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and Russia has menaced to “strongly retaliate” in case of American violation of the outer space treaty, by sending mass destruction weapons into orbit. The treaty also bans nations from building military spaces on the moon. The recent creation of the American “Space Force” might push the limits of the current regulation of outer space even further.
Star Wars may not be happening in real life yet, but given the latest developments in space technologies, the need for the establishment and maintenance of space as a shared common is critical to global peace and security. Although, it is necessary to distinguish between using space for military purposes and the physical placing of weapons in space to target locations or objects on Earth in space. The problem with this is that there is no global definition of what space weapons are. Most space technologies have multiple purposes, making it harder to monitor, and complicating the issue of space weaponisation and defining the technologies under space law. For now, though, conflicts seem to remain more space-implemented than fully based in space, we might have to wait a lot longer to see the full space-based attacks beginning to occur but it is important to think about it before the technology enables this conflict to arise. To be continued.
