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Welcome to another episode of Fully Automated!



This is not only our 30th episode, but it is the first episode of our fifth year bringing you the most fully-automated space-aged communist podcast around! And, to mark the occasion, we are returning to an old theme for this show: the politics of technology and space exploration! Our guest for this discussion is Daniel Deudney, Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. In this episode we will be discussing Prof. Deudney's new book, Dark Skies, Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics & the Ends of Humanity (Oxford University Press).
For non-academic audiences, Prof. Deudney is not a fully-automated space communist like myself — but he is kind of a big deal when it comes to thinking about the politics of world order and space exploration. He has published extensively on world political theory and globalization, focusing especially on the environment, and nuclear weapons. His book, Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village (Princeton, 2007) received the Book of the Decade Award (2000-2009) from the International Studies Association, and the Jervis-Schroeder Prize from the American Political Science Association.





As you'll hear, Prof. Deudeny and I certainly don't agree about everything, but we one thing is for sure — we have a shared disdain for Silicon Valley boosterism! In this interview, you'll hear Prof. Deudney talk a bit about his intellectual background, and his earlier work on how nuclear weaponry creates the need for world government. Then we get into his current book, where you'll hear him talk about the disconnect between the optimism of our space imaginary and the thin record of accomplishments in actually existing space exploration. Part of the problem, says Deudney, is that we take our cues too much from the realms of science fiction and space futurism, and not enough from science.



For me, one of the real accomplishments of the book is that it brings together a genealogy of space imagination from an extraordinarily diverse range of sources. One particularly important important figure here is the nineteenth century space futurist, Konstantin Tsiolokovsky. But there are others. What they all seem to have in common is a tendency to predict a kind of organic destiny of man to expand out into the solar system and beyond, and to engineer and denaturalize everything he sees. They also pose a universe of plenitude where there will be no need for war, and an eventually suppression of the human species itself. For Deudney, there's a lot of hubris on display in this discursive record, not least in terms of its naive grasp of the limits of our planet's ecology (in the book, Deudney evokes the prosaic style of Kim Stanley Robinson, with clauses such as "the turbulent earth and its unruly life").



With his map of our space imaginary laid out, Deudney closes the book by suggesting a new set of coordinates by which we might imagine the use of space exploration. However, as we enter "the astrocene," he notes that we seem stuck with hopelessly archaic and impractical forms of political management. Our future survival, he contends, will demand the emergence of new kinds of world-governmental institutions — these will preferably be of a democratic nature, but he doesn't rule out something akin to what Marx termed "hydraulic despotism."



So what exactly is the choice on the table for us here? Staying within the realm of closure and archaic forms of interdependency, or something like the movie Elysium? Or is there another option? These and other questions preoccupy us as the discussion concludes. We hope you enjoy the program!



Special thanks to Phil Davis for the new theme music!

On Jan. 20, 2024, Iran's Revolutionary Guards successfully launched a three-stage rocket that put the Sorayya satellite into orbit, at an unprecedented 460 miles above the Earth's surface. It is alleged that Iran's space program is a cover for testing a nuclear weapons delivery system. What is a scientific victory for Iran could also be a strategic projection of the Islamic Republic's geo-spatial power. While this space launch was planned days in advance, it occurred on the same day that Israeli forces allegedly killed five Revolutionary Guards of the expeditionary Quds Force in Damascus, followed by an Iraqi militia affiliated with Iran firing ballistic missiles at a base housing American forces in Iraq. Just five days earlier, Iran launched salvos of ballistic missiles towards Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan against alleged terrorist bases.The recent satellite launch into space is connected to these political tensions on the ground. It sent a message to the U.S. and Israel that, despite sanctions or the assassination of its scientists, Iran can still develop the technology to fire a long-distance missile, whether into space or over a continent. If the sanctions and assassinations were meant to curtail such activities, Iran demonstrated they are not working.This points to an unexamined aspect of the conflict in the Middle East since Oct. 7, 2023: Outer space has become a conflict zone. When Iraqi Shi'a militias or Yemeni Houthis launch a drone or ballistic missile, these weapons either enter space or depend on satellites.What the latest Iranian launch has also demonstrated is that the conflicts of Earth — the current fighting in the Middle East in this case — have been projected into space, reminiscent of a trend that began with the Cold War superpowers.Militarizing spaceA ballistic missile burns up the fuel that propels it into the atmosphere until it enters space. Once the fuel is consumed, the missile's trajectory cannot be altered, following a path determined by gravity pulling it back toward the Earth's surface — and its eventual target. The German V-2 was the first ballistic missile. Fired on September 8, 1944, it was the first human-made object hurtled into space. As they invaded Germany, both the U.S. and Soviets sought out the German rocket scientists to develop their respective missile/space programs. The V-2's technology allowed the U.S. and Soviets to send satellites into space, even allowing astronauts to reach the moon itself.In October 1957, the Soviets launched the first satellite, Sputnik, into space, where it orbited the earth and delivered a prestigious victory for communism during the Cold War. According to historian Douglas Brinkley, "For a world locked in a Cold War rivalry between the Americans and the Soviets, space quickly became the new arena of battle." Space launchers and launches were a means of refining military technology discreetly, in the name of space exploration, while simultaneously broadcasting these advances to adversaries and allies. From an American national security perspective, if the USSR could launch a satellite into space, it could do the same with a nuclear warhead, putting American territory in danger. Furthermore, a missile/ rocket might carry a physical payload, such as a satellite or a warhead, but it also carries a political message intended to communicate to adversaries short of violence. That dynamic is what made the Cold War cold.The same threat perceptions explain why the U.S. feared Iran's satellite program well before the regional war escalated last October, pitting American forces against the Islamic Republic's allies in Yemen and Iraq.The American and Soviet space programs were also about prestige, and the most recent launch has been a matter of national prestige for Iran in the aftermath of the deadly terrorist blasts that occurred in the nation on Jan. 3.Middle East geopolitics and astropoliticsAs for the Middle East, historically, outer space was an area used to penetrate the region. During the Cold War, the U.S. and USSR deployed spy satellites above the Middle East, and later satellites were essential for the global positioning system (GPS) to guide American cruise missiles and drones used against Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, and then against al-Qaida after 2001.In the 21st century, the Global South entered the space arena, led by China, India, and Iran. Space soon emerged as an arena for competition among Middle Eastern states. Among the Persian Gulf regimes, Qatar achieved asymmetric power in the 1990s against Saudi Arabia by broadcasting Al Jazeera to its much larger neighbor, as well as the entire region, via a news channel that depends on satellite technology. The United Arab Emirates is currently bolstering its credentials as a regional Sparta by embarking on a mission to Mars.Israel, however, had a monopoly on space technology and putting its own satellites into space. Iran's current space program serves as a means to challenge a regional rival as well as a superpower — the U.S. At the same time, Iran's allies in the "Axis of Resistance" have militarized space. Iran gave Houthis drone technology that can fly long distances to strike Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Houthi drone attacks are guided by satellite technology, as a drone flying at such a long range depends on a satellite data link for information to be sent back to the pilot in Yemen. As for Houthi drones, they are GPS-guided to their target before crashing into it to wreak havoc and damage. The Houthis have no known communications satellites and rely on commercially available satellite space. These attacks demonstrate a sophisticated level of coordination among the Houthis, who use 3D printing to build the drones and the components based on Iranian designs, while imagery analysts, uplink engineers, mechanics, and pilot crews work in unison to support the attacks. By 2022, Houthi strikes were one of the factors that pushed Saudi Arabia and the UAE to extricate themselves from the Yemen conflict, which also gave an advantage to Iran, the Gulf countries' regional adversary. The Houthis mastered both drone technology and ballistic missiles. The Soviets transformed the German V-2 into the Scud, the most widely proliferated ballistic missile in the Arab world. The Houthis inherited Scuds from the former government after the Arab Spring. In 2017, they fired them towards Saudi Arabia. In 2023, the Houthis launched both drones and ballistic missiles towards Israel's southern port of Eilat, in solidarity with Hamas. In 2017, the Houthis attacked King Salman air base in Saudi Arabia and as well as Riyadh with the Burkan 2-H, a ballistic Scud-type missile inherited from the old Yemeni arsenal, and engineered with a range of more than 500 miles to hit the Saudi capital. Unlike the Burkan, the missiles that were launched towards Eilat were most likely based on the Iranian Ghadr (or Qadr) a close relative of the North Korean Nodong, basically a larger missile based on the original Soviet Scud missile, with more than double the range at 1,200 miles. These Houthi ballistic missiles reached outer space, where Israel's Arrow defense system intercepted them in the stratosphere, marking the first instance of space combat in history.The Islamic Republic's most recent space launch has sent a message to Israel that Iran is catching up. The message to the U.S. is that Iran is in a stronger position after Trump's 2017 unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal. Afterwards, Iran had the excuse to advance its centrifuge nuclear technology, its nuclear stockpile, and now advance its space program.Meanwhile, the message to the Iranian people is that, while its economy is under sanctions and they endure terrorist attacks, at least they can take national pride in reaching space.

'This is Just Practice' reads the sub-title of Marisa Holmes' book Organizing Occupy Wall Street, which is the latest addition to the Alternatives and Futures: Cultures, Practices, Activism and Utopias series. The book reverberates with revolutionary intent: a threat and a promise.
The post A Human Geography of the Space of The Square appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

Call for Papers for a Conference in Freiburg im Breisgau on November 28–30, 2024. Deadline: February 29, 2024

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation. Dedline: March 1, 2024

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"NASA admits space and planets are fake."

Says a video showing water inside a glass on a spaceflight proves space isn't real

According to a recent survey, the Australian public lacks awareness of global space activities and domestic space endeavours. So, what is Australia is up to in space?

This blog is based on an article in Social Policy and Society by Colin Clark. Click here to access the article. Setting the scene My recent article in Social Policy & Society considers a very specific example of environmental injustice in Scotland: the 'space and place' of Gypsy/Traveller communities and their accommodation on local authority, private, and… Continue reading Social Abjection and The ‘Space and Place’ of Gypsy/Traveller Communities →

People see a continuing role for the space agency, but mostly in national defense.

Back around 2000, oh so long ago, e-commerce was 0.8% of total retail sales. Now, it’s about 15%. One result is that the shopping space in bricks-and-mortar regional shopping malls has declined sharply. In the next decade or so, could the new work-from-home patterns lead to a similar decline for commercial office space? Tom Doolittle … Continue reading E-commerce and Regional Malls, Work-from-Home and Commercial Office Space
The post E-commerce and Regional Malls, Work-from-Home and Commercial Office Space first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Elon Musk's space company SpaceX recently secured a classified contract to build an extensive network of "spy satellites" for an undisclosed U.S. intelligence agency, with one source telling Reuters that "no one can hide" under the prospective network's reach.While the deal suggests the space company, which currently operates over half the active satellites orbiting Earth, has warmed to U.S. national security agencies, it's not the first Washington investment in conflict-forward space machinery. Rather, the U.S. is funding or otherwise supporting a range of defense contractors and startups working to create a new generation of space-bound weapons, surveillance systems, and adjacent technologies.In other words, America is hell-bent on a new arms race — in space.Space arms, then and nowAttempts to regulate weapons' presence and use in space span decades. Responding to an intense, Cold War-era arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty established that space, while free for all countries to explore and use, was limited to peaceful endeavors. Almost 60 years later, the Outer Space Treaty's vague language regarding military limitations in space, as space policy experts Michelle L.D. Hanlon and Greg Autry highlight, "leave more than enough room for interpretation to result in conflict."Stonewalling subsequent international efforts to limit the militarization of space (though the U.S. is participating in a new U.N. working group on the subject), Washington's interest in space exploration and adjacent weapons technologies also goes back decades. Many may recall President Ronald Reagan's 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was established to develop land-, air-, and space-based missile defense systems to deter missile or nuclear weapons attacks against the U.S. Cynically referred to by critics as the "Star Wars" program, many SDI initiatives were ultimately canned due to prohibitive costs and technological limitations.And while the Pentagon established Space Command in 1985, the Space Force, an entirely new branch of the military "focused solely on pursuing superiority in the space domain," was launched in 2019, signaling renewed emphasis on space militarization as U.S. policy.Weapons contractors cash in Long-term American interest in space war tech now manifests in ambitious projects, where defense companies and startups are lining up for military contracts to create a new generation of space weaponry and adjacent tech, including space vehicles, hypersonic rockets, and extensive surveillance and communications projects.For starters, Space Force's Space Development Agency recently granted defense contractors L3Harris and Lockheed Martin and space company Sierra Space contracts worth $2.5 billion to build satellites for the U.S. military's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a constellation of hundreds of satellites, built out on tranches, that provide various warfighting capabilities, including the collection and transmission of critical wartime communications, into low-Earth orbit. The PWSA will serve as the backbone of the Pentagon's Joint All-Domain Command and Control project, an effort to bolster warfighting capacities and decision-making processes by facilitating "information advantage at the speed of relevance."Other efforts are just as sci-fi-esque. Zoning in on hypersonic weapons systems and parts, for example, RTX (formerly Raytheon) and Northrop Grumman have collaborated to secure a DARPA contract for a Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapons Concept, where scramjet-powered missiles can travel at hypersonic speeds (Mach 5 or faster) for offensive purposes.And Aerospace startup True Anomaly, which was founded by military officers and has received funding from the U.S. Space Force to the tune of over $17 million, is developing space weapons and adjacent conflict-forward tools. An example is True Anomaly's Jackal Autonomous Orbital Vehicle, an imaging satellite able to take on, according to True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers, "rendezvous and proximity operations missions" with "uncooperative" targets.As True Anomaly finds fiscal success, accruing over $100 million in a December 2023 series B fundraising round from venture capitalists including Eclipse Ventures and ACME Capital, other aerospace start-ups are flooding the market with the assistance of the U.S. government, both in funding and other critical partnerships.Take how Firehawk Aerospace — which wants to "create the rocket system of the future" to "enab[le] the next generation of aerospace and defense systems" — partnered with NASA in 2021 to test rocket engines at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. It recently secured Army Applications Laboratory and U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research Awards to advance developments in its rocket motors and engines.And data and satellite-focused American space tech company Capella Space, a contractor for federal agencies including the Air and Space Forces, specializes in reconnaissance and powerful surveillance tools, including geospatial intelligence and Synthetic Aperture Radar monitoring that help national security officials identify myriad security risks. In early 2023, Capella Space even formed a subsidiary, Capella Federal, to provide federal clients with additional access to Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery services.We need diplomacy, not space superiorityThe funding of expensive, futuristic space surveillance and weapons projects indicates the U.S.'s eagerness to maintain superiority, where military personnel posit such advancements are critical within the context of both a "space race" and an increasingly tumultuous geopolitical climate, if not the possibility of war in space outright.As Space Force General Chance Saltzman declared at the recent Mitchell Institute Spacepower Security Forum: "if we do not have space, we lose." Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in late February, U.S. Space Force General Stephen N. Whiting explained that the U.S. Space Command must bolster its military capacities through increased personnel training and investments in relevant technologies so that the U.S. is "ready if deterrence fails."While upping its own military capacities, however, Washington is simultaneously pushing against other countries' anti-satellite weapons testing, a capability the U.S. already has.What's more, the U.S. recently accused Russia of developing possibly nuclear anti-satellite weaponry in violation of the Outer Space Treaty. But the accusations, which Russia denies, are vague. And, as Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and Clayton Swope of the Center for Strategic and International Studies posit, Russia's use of such a weapon seems unlikely as it is "effectively [a] kamikaze attack," and would likely take out many of Russia's own satellites while prompting major retaliation from adversaries.In any case, such pointing fingers, when coupled with ongoing space deterrence and weapons proliferation efforts, does little to advance genuine diplomacy, where states could instead discuss, on equal terms, how space should be used and shared amongst nations. Ultimately, weapons and aerospace companies' efforts have launched a new generation of weaponry and adjacent tech — buoyed by consistent support from a "deterrence"-focused U.S. As a result, the military industrial complex has further expanded into the domain of space, where defense companies have new opportunities to score lucrative weapons contracts and theoretically even push for more conflict.

Alien invasions, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Trek versus Star Wars. Or the Space Race, rocket launches and astronauts exploring the moon. These might be the things that come to mind when you think of outer space. How about the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)? You might wonder why a UN organisation […]
The post Lift off from Vienna: working with the UN to protect outer space first appeared on Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs.