Hi, it's West Casova. We're taking a break this week, so here's an episode you might have missed. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back on Monday with a new big take.
United States Space Force. Uh is it an arm of NASA or is it a private corporation?
A space force? Gosh, I don't know. Are they guardians or exploration?
I don't know.
Defend US against alleged space threats? I mean, I don't know that. I think it does much.
I'm missing, like a branch of the army that's fights crime and space.
Well, I think space Force they go in space with like weapons for some reason. And I don't know why you need weapons in space explore space to the moon or fly to the moon.
I don't know if it's public. I'm guessing it's some sort of military arm of NASA the space program that has to do with strategic defense or maybe settling Mars.
The almost nine hundred billion dollar defense spending bill that's working its way through the Congress includes a thirty billion dollar request for the newest and smallest branch of the US military, the US Space Force. You may remember when it was created in twenty nineteen, there were plenty of star Trek in Space Cadet jokes, and even a Netflix comedy starring Steve Carrell as a bumbling Space Force commander.
Air Force is Space Force Space Force, Sir, you don't like to use your full title.
Sorry, sir. Spaceman first class.
Nothing to be ashamed of. Air Forces airmen, Space Forces spacemen. Nothing embarrassing or comical about it.
But we haven't heard much about Space Force since then, which made us wonder, now that it's up and running, what the what does it actually do and how are they spending all those billions to find out? I paid a visit to the Pentagon to speak with General David Thompson.
Our job is to protect us interest in space.
He's the Vice Chief of Space Operations for all of Space Force.
It is now incumbent on us to do two things. First is to develop capabilities that will defend our satellites in a whole host of ways, and it will become our responsibility also to deny advisariusa space.
And later in the show, I talked to Bloomberg cyber security reporter Katrina Manson.
I think it's really fair to say the homes race is already on and certainly in terms of perception the amount that you're seeing from the commercial well. Putting up into space also creates huge dilemmas for the US military and what they need to defend.
I'm wes Kasova today on the big take. Space Force is no joke. General, I would imagine that some portion of your job is just explaining to people you meet what the Space Force is.
You're absolutely right, it really is. There are a whole host of things that we do that many people don't really understand. But I'll start with the things that people probably see every day and may not realize it. Right, people with smartphones, you know, billions all over the world follow the blue dot on their smartphone every day. That's Global Positioning System GPS. That constellation of thirty satellites is
brought to you by the United States Space Force. That constellation also provides a timing signal that synchronizes the cellular network they use, and financial networks and the Internet and things like that. That's provided as a service for the world. But the real reason it exists is US Air Force aircraft flying over the Arctic ice cap, Navy ships in the Middle Pacific Ocean, Army units in the middle of
the Arabian Desert. They follow the blue dot every day as well, and that's really why it's there, so they can navigate effectively all over the globe, all over the world. There's a whole host of missile and rocket activity. Rockets are launched all over the world every single day. We operate a constellation of spacecraft that detect every single launch, figure out where it is, where it's coming from, if it poses a threat to the nation or our friends
or allies and forces, and provide warning. Those are the kinds of things that we do every day. I'm done for decades, all the way up to including keeping track of objects in space. Forty thousand plus objects in space that we keep track of every single day. We figure out where they are, We figure out where they're going, and whether or not they op pose a hazard to themselves, to others, Do they pose a hazard just to astronauts
on the International Space Station. We have a global array of ground and space based sensors to keep track of all that.
So you're keeping track of this stuff. Let's say you find an object, an old satellite, something else that does pose a threat.
What do you do well, We provide warning to whomever it poses a threat to. You know, obviously and most directly, we have a very close tie with NASA so that we protect the International Space Station and the human beings in orbit. We do the same for satellites operated by companies, satellites operated by other nations. When the Chinese have astronauts on board their space station, we provide warning to the Chinese.
We provide warning to anybody and everybody who operates a spacecraft, and then it becomes their responsibility to decide what they want to do with that information. Move their satellite, assume the risk, and hope that it doesn't hit them. Those sorts of things.
What do you find when you talk to people about Space Force? What do Americans think it does?
Well?
Yeah, great question, I mean, and you know, when we were created three and a half years ago, there was this line of conversation that said, now that we've created a space Force, we have to find something for them to do. Well. As I just described, there were a whole host of things we were already doing. Most of us, not all of us, but most of us were in the United States Air Force doing those things. So the GPS, the communication satellites, the missile warning, tracking all those objects
in space. We were already doing all that, and when
we created the Space Force, we continued. The difference is and the reason we were created is other nations now, especially those that wish us ill, who would seek to do as harm, are looking to deny us use of those capabilities if in fact we're in conflict with them, And so one of the reasons we were created was to help protect those satellites as well and make sure those soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines get the things they need from GPS, have the communications they need,
get the information they need from space, because other countries have now said we're going to try and take that away from you if it comes to conflict.
Yea, And I want to talk a bit more about that a little bit later. First, this new branch of the military built up very quickly. Can you just talk about what happened been from twenty nineteen when it was first announced till now.
Sure, Actually we had a little bit of advanced notice. We started, as you said, when the legislation was signed into law in December of twenty nineteen, about eight months previously. We saw that this was very much a possibility so we had established a planning team to decide how we would establish the force, so that the day the law
was created, we sort of had a running start. So what we did was we took the foundational pieces that existed already in the Air Force, already in the Army, already in the Navy, and we began putting them together and filling in pieces that weren't there. As an example, you know, we had organizations that built satellites and deployed satellites and operated satellites. What we didn't have was an effective intelligence enterprise right adversaries, how do they operate in space?
What are their capabilities, what sort of hostile behaviors? We didn't have an effective enterprise network goinguard. So we had to build that very quickly.
And how large is space Force now?
The Space Force today consists of about eighty five hundred guardians in uniform and about five thousand more civilians, and so all told, we're now approaching fourteen thousand people. Now. One important point in that regard, though, is we also rely heavily on the United States Air Force for a lot of things that we need that we don't do ourselves. And there are about five thousand airmen who are out
there helping US operator installations. They're providing our medical care, They're giving us logistical and security and legal support, and so a lot of the things that we need to operate effectively we don't do for ourselves. It's a great partnership that we have with the US Air Force that allows us to execute all those functions as well.
So in a little over three years, really you built space force up pretty quickly.
How large will it be? Is there a final number that you're building towards?
There is not, but I will tell you we're continuing to grow. And the reason we're continuing goes. Missions that we used to do in other domains are moving to space. Right For example, something we call ground moving target indication tracking ships as they move across the ocean, tracking large vehicles on the ground and actually some of them in the air as well. So that mission is moving to space, and so we have to grow our number of people
in our systems to be able to do that. We're creating a whole lot more connectivity for forces at sea, on the ground, in the air, so that they can operate in a more integrated fashion. That requires a whole lot more connectivity to move data and to communicate through space,
So we have to build that out. There's not a final number, but I would say in the next five to ten years we will probably grow by about a third just because of those new missions, and who knows what will happen in the future after that.
You said earlier that a lot of the functions that the Space Force now does was previously done by the Air Force. Why did Space Force need to become its own branch. Couldn't the Air Force have expanded to meet the challenges of a changing time.
There's a couple reasons why. The first is really the fact that we moved from what I will call a relatively benign and domain into one where those space systems are under threat, starting as far back as two thousand and seven, starting with the Chinese, they specifically started developing and fielding weapons to take our satellites and the services they provide away from missing conflict. They did that with a test with a missile launched from the ground to
destroy a satellite space The Russians have followed suit. Both have put offensive weapons in orbit to threaten our satellites, and so now we're not talking about just providing that GPS signal or the communications or the warning. We're now talking about the need to defend and protect those assets as well, And so that requires a focused service who thinks every day about what it takes to operate in space and to do that effectively with soldier, sailors, airmen,
and marines. The second thing I'll say is the United States Air Force has a really full plate, and to ask one service and one service chief and one staff to do all that effectively in the air and then say, oh, by the way, focus effectively on space as well, was really too large of hispanic control. And so, just like in nineteen forty seven, the last time we did this, the United States Army built the world's greatest air forces
as part of the army. But in nineteen forty seven the nation decided we now need a separate service that focuses every day on the air and interfaces directly with the Army. In the Navy, we reached the same point in space to say, now, just like we need a service to understand how to operate on the ground at sea in the air, we need a comparable service to be able to do that in space as well.
I imagine since the military is very keen on drying boundaries and lines. And what's the difference between air and space?
Well, there's a lot of difference. In fact, it's actually pretty easy because it's a very thick and large boundary. You know, there's really you get up to about one hundred thousand feet maybe one hundred and fifty thousand feet. You can't really operate effectively in the air anymore above that, and then it's really about down to about one hundred miles where you can operate effectively in space. And so
there's a there's a boundary there. We can draw one specific line, but there's really a large area in between air and space where you don't operate effectively. And the principles under which you operate are vastly different, and therefore you need to understand it, act and think about them differently to operate effectively in each kind of the same way. The difference between operating and see and operated on the ground. Same thing.
And what does training look like to become a member of space for US, I imagine it's a lot different than it is for other branches in the un Up there, it.
Is the initial training is very similar. First of all. You know, if you think about basic training, we just first of all, I want you to teach you the fun fundamentals of military service. But the second phase of training, what we call technical training, immediately becomes different. We do that technical training out at VanderBurg Space Force Base in California, and that's when we start talking about how is operating in space different than operating in the air or land
or would see. What do we need to train you and how do we need to train you to either operate those satellites effectively or provide intelligence support or build and fly them.
What sort of training is needed when you're really pushing up against the limits of technology to try to keep up with both civilian technology and military adversaries.
We're now moving into an era where we have to move faster. You know, those potential adversaries out there like China are moving very quickly. Technology lets us build satellites faster. Technology allows us to build them a little more cheaply, and the way people are operating. Rather than building a handful of very large, very capable, very expensive satellites, we're now talking about building hundreds and perhaps thousands of smaller, cheaper satellites that can do the same thing. We saw
that in the commercial space sector. We're now moving that direction as well.
And access to space, as you're saying, is really easy. It used to be pretty hard. Now you can pay you Long Musk to put a satellite up there for an amount of money that a mid sized company can afford.
Yeah, that's it. I would say it's getting easier. It's still very complicated, but you're right compared to the past when it took superpowers to gain access to space and then countries, but you're right. Now the ability to do it, do it quickly, do it easily, and do it at
reasonable cost is absolutely there. And so you know, a university, a small company, folks that don't really have tremendous expertise or a huge infrastructure could build and design and fly their own spacecraft or pay somebody to do it for them. And you're right, it's really unleashing. I think a new way of thinking about space.
After the break have space force to diff ns us interests in orbit. One of the things you talked about earlier, which is very important, is the militarization of space and those concerns who are the adversaries. The US is most concerned about in this realm.
Yeah, today the most concerning adversaries are to Russia and China. China for two reasons. One is they have very clearly demonstrated by their actions and by what they're developing, fielding and testing, their desire to attack our spacecraft, our satellites and deny our use of them in conflict.
When you say attack, what do you mean by it?
So attack in any number of ways. In two thousand and seven, as I had said earlier, they launched a missile from the ground to destroy one of their satellites, physically attack it and destroyed. They also now have spacecraft in orbit that can maneuver right up next to one of our satellites and block it, collide with it. Either. They've actually demonstrated the ability to throw a net over one of their satellites and drag it to another orbit,
so to physically attack in orbit. They have the capability to interfere with the communications links of our satellites jam those links. They've demonstrated the ability to use lasers to either dazzle our sensors so that the sensors don't work, or to cause physical damage on them. So basically, whether it's direct attack, kinetic attack, reversible jamming attack. In addition
to attack through cyberspace, physical attack of ground infrastructure. They have developed means to attack our satellites directly, indirectly, kinetically and non kinetically pretty much in any orbit we operate in. So they have a vast array of offensive forces.
Does the US have the same capabilities? The US does not, And what is the reason for that. Well, for a couple of reasons. One is we have been very loath to pursue capabilities like that in the past because we believe in preserving the domain and using it effectively for a broad range of purposes. I will say, however, that we are We have been developing capabilities for electronic interference for several years and been using those, but at this point in time, it is now incumbent on us to
do two things. First is to develop capabilities that will defend our satellites in a whole host of ways. And it will become our responsibility also to deny adversary use of space. And so what I'll say today is, as a result of the activities of others, we are looking at and preparing for a whole host of ways to both defend and protect our capabilities, but also potentially deny adversary's use of space and conflict.
If you think back to the nuclear age, the concept of deterrence is maybe you didn't want to use it, but just the adversary knowing that you could deterred them. Is that the idea.
So that is absolutely our approach, especially our approach to new contentstallations what we call proliferated.
Constellations A constellations.
Sorry, a whole bunch of satellites, right, constellation of satellites. Right. Most of the satellites we've developed in the past, relatively small in number GPS satellites about thirty provide all that global coverage communication satellites depends on specifically what they're for, but usually from about six to a dozen satellites to provide those communications, our mister warning constellations about the same size.
What we're moving to now is as opposed to tens, maybe tens of satellites to conduct missions, we're now talking about one hundreds and thousands. And so the first thing you say is, Okay, if my goal is to attack ten satellites, that's a manageable problem. If now the goal is I got to take out one hundred or a thousand satellites. That's much harder, and so there's a detern effect there because it is very hard to do something
like that. And so that's the first part. The second part is if an adversary looks into space and either sees through desire to deny US use of space, or US knowing that we can take their space capabilities away, if they look into space and say, I will not be able to do what I intend to do. I'm not going to go to conflict today, That's exactly what
the intent is. We do not want to see, especially members of the US Space Force, but the United States America and our leaders don't want to see conflict in space. And so our first goal is to deter any adversary action in space, but make it clear to everybody and anybody if it comes to that, we are preparing to win in space. So the second piece of China is not just offensive capabilities. The second piece of China is they've watched how effective we are in space with GPS,
with communication satellites, with monitoring and detecting activities. They're building out a similar constellation to do the same thing that we've been doing for decades. On the Russia side, they are not as focused on that second piece, but they are very much focused on offensive capabilities, just like the Chinese. And while they're not moving as aggressively and as broddly to develop offensive weapons for space, they're doing the same things.
Just recently, they conducted a kinetic attack, launched a missile from the ground, destroyed one of their satellites in space. The fall of twenty twenty, they launched objects into space maneuved them very close to some of our most capable satellites, demonstrating that they're prepared to attack them in space. Same thing with attacks through cyberspace, interference, jamming, on the ground,
laser dazzling. They are as aggressively pursuing offensive capabilities, deny or use of space as the Chinese.
And satellites have played a really important role in the war in Ukraine, especially on the side of Ukraine the USSEU in helping support the war.
They absolutely have and in fact, in many cases those are commercial companies doing that, which has opened up a whole new area of interest and exploration and work required from a policy standpoint is what's the relationship between commercial companies and commercial services from space as it applies to conflict. A lot of companies monitor see sense collect information from space,
and they've been able to provide that to Ukrainians. Companies have provided the ability to communicate where both through the physical attacks on the ground and some of the Russian cyberspace attacks, and the Russians have been working hard to deny them those that use and it has proven to be quite a challenge.
Do you worry that an arms race in space is ultimately inevitable?
I guess I am concerned. I'm concerned about that just like any other domain. And I would say a couple of things. One is, from my perspective, our job is to ensure that both our forces and our national leaders have the capabilities that they need and the options that they need to operate effectively in the diplomatic space, in the military space, and count on those folks to help us work through the issues of how do we do that responsibly, how do we do that as a community
of nations. And so while I'm concerned about how we're growing in space, I would say, to some extent it is sort of inevitable. Unfortunately, that's a nature of the human race. Our job is provide those capabilities, help to ensure that we use them effectively but also responsibly, and then work hard on the deterrens piece so that hopefully it never comes to actual conflict.
And again, if you think back to the Cold War, there were all of these deconfliction lines that if something looked bad you could quickly call and say, hey, it's okay. Are there those kinds of lines of communication with China, with Russia specifically with regards to space.
No, not really today, and that's not different than a lot of our communications these days. However, there is a body in the UN that's focused on developing responsible behaviors in space and trying to get the community of nations to agree to them. That effort is led for the US by the State Department. But just a couple of years ago, the Secretary of Defense Secretary of Austin put out what we believe are tenants for responsible behavior in
space that we the Department of Defense will follow. Things like communicating our tension with respect to what we're doing in space, not conducting activities that create large amounts of debris like Connecticut SAT tests. Those are the sorts of things that we believe are foundational to responsible behavior in space and hope that that spurs additional negotiations and agreements in the United Nations and with others to really operate responsibly in space.
So you said in the next five ten years, maybe space for US grows about thirty percent. That means you're recruiting. What's the recruitment pitch for space for us, Like we know what it is for Army and Navy. You know what's your pitch today?
Well, and I will say, I know that the other services are facing some recruiting chain lengers right now. We are not, but ours is. I mean, it feels like back to the future. Right when I was young, space was cool. There was this grand vision and idea of moving out into the galaxy and things are going on. Well, that's not exactly our pitch, but we are certainly leveraging
that desire and that interest. If you want to do something that matters, if you want to serve the nation, if you want to work with advanced technology and really operate in and deal with activities and what is still my opinion, the final frontier, not just today focused on what we do on Earth, but in the future, as we move out towards the Moon in Mars. You can go to commercial industry, you can go to NASA, but absolutely there's a role for you in the Space force as well.
And what are the top three positions say that you would be recruiting for it of yours, like, this is what we need?
Yeah, Well, we only really do four things, so they are all important. The first is we build and then launch those space systems in thework, but that's one thing you can do. You can be an engineer, a program manager. The second thing we do is we opt them, so you're no kidding sitting there in the operations center managing the activities and fly and the things you need to do every single day. If you want to be an intelligence specialist like you might be in the air, on
the ground, at sea. We need folks who deeply understand what's going on in the domain, what other capabilities exist out there, how people operate, so we need those. And then lastly, space capabilities today don't really produce except through cyberspace. That information it's collectors from those satellites has to get to the ground. It has to be disseminated. We have to operate networks and IT systems to operate them, to connect them and get that data that people need them.
So we need cyberspace operators and cyberspace defenders. And because we're small our numbers, we only need several hundred people a year. And so right now we don't really have a recruiting challenge. We have the opportunity to accept applicants and from those applicants choose the absolute best to come into the space for So it's a pretty easy sell.
Do you ever get to premise and they're going to get to go to space?
So I would say I hope someday that can guardians go to space? Yes, today we have two guardians who go to space. They are astronauts in NASA's Astronaut Core. Most of our works on the ground as the human race, as the nation and the human race goes back to the Moon, goes to Mars, goes beyond that. Will there
be a place for guardians in space? Absolutely in the future, and we are you know, Ana as NASA returns to the Moon, we talk about how do you navigate near the moon, how do you communicate near the moon, how do you understand what's happening in the lunar space, and whether it's a hazard or a threat. Guardians are doing all of that today, side by side with NASA. We're just doing it from the ground. We're not doing it in space yet, but one day somewhere out there in the future.
Absolutely, do you have to suffer through a lot of guardians at the galaxy jokes?
Ah, we do. But you know what, humor is part of the American psyche and culture. And if you can't take a joke, you know what you really have to do is just embrace it. Like I said, you know, my people are nerds, and today nerd is cool.
General Thompson, thanks so much for speaking with me.
Absolutely, it's been a real pleasure.
When we come back. What the US is doing to prepare for an escalation of tensions in space. If the kind of conflict in space that General Thompson talked about did happen, that's when the US Space Command would take charge, with Space Force and other branches of the US military pitching in personnel and resources. Bloomberg's Katrina Manson covers cyber
and emerging tech. I asked her about Space Command and what exactly the US is doing to prepare for a potential military confrontation high above the Earth, Katrina, you've been out to Space Command in Colorado, I think twice now, right, Yeah.
That's right.
I went in twenty eighteen and then again in twenty twenty, so a while ago.
What really struck me.
Is it's kind of a low slung building and obviously one's looking for one's fill of Star Trek analogies and a bit of Battlestar Galactica. I think you get it more and more now from Space Force, but Space Command looked to me a little bit like a sort of rudimentary rocket combined with a crossed with a sardine can. And inside it's a little bit like visiting a smaller version of the National Air and Space Museum.
There are lots of wrapped boxes.
In the sky hanging down from the ceilings, and their satellites, their models of satellites. And the thing that really struck me is the early satellites are big and the newer satellites are small, and it's just a really clear demonstration of the way the whole entire approach to space is is changing.
And of course that's what we're talking about today. And you visited Space Command, and there's that distinction between Space Command and Space Force.
The simplest way to think about it is Space Force provides the people, and Space Command does the fighting, and in this case in peace, does the operations. Space Command existed a long time ago, it got disestablished and then got set up again in full in twenty nineteen, and the whole point of that really is about saying spaces in the US jargon of the thing, a war fighting domain, and the whole effort of creating, re establishing Space Command,
and then establishing Space Force for the first time. As much as it was sort of accompanied by mirth, and there are lots of detractors, I think the fact that it has stuck it out is so much about this US focus on what it sees as the threat from China, and the fact that they've noticed China really develop its own space architecture really propel what it's trying to do.
I think China itself has said it wants to overtake globally in space by twenty forty five, and the US has said they think China really will be a world class player by twenty thirty. But of course China already in the US estimation, has many different types of weapons in space and focused on space that has concerned the US, and I think when you speak to senior US military officials they talk a lot about developing to terrans in space.
That's already an admission that the US is not quite clear what level of space superiority it has, and of course to terrance means being able to win and then letting. In this case, the Chinese know that.
What is the current capability of the US in defending those satellites.
I think they're really clear not enough. When I visited in twenty twenty, I spoke to a general Space Command who said the US really needed to start thinking about offensive weapons in space, and of course that triggers all sorts of questions in Congress, in the American public, and indeed the A. Biden administration, which has not set out this aim. But I think Space Command, Space Force, and its supporters are really leaning into this idea that the
US needs much more capability. The US says that it has communications jamming equipment that could jam a satellite, but that it doesn't have any space based weaponry, and several other of the different types of weapons that you could use from ground to space, from space to space, and from space back.
Down to the ground. There's a whole array.
I think the thing that really triggered US concerns was back in two thousand and seven when the Chinese launched an anti satellite test that did explode a decaying Chinese satellite, and that's really when the US started saying, oh, China is serious about this. That test was criticized as irresponsible. It put I think more than twenty thousand pieces of debris into circulation, and a couple of thousands of those prices are still circulating today.
But of course the US has done the same. It did it before.
China, and it's done it since China in two thousand and eight.
India's also done it.
Russia did it in twenty twenty one, just on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine. And this kind of mounting concern has seen the US really want to develop things. And what the US is worried about is when they do these wargames that involve global scenarios over Taiwan, it
tends to very quickly escalate to space. The US is worried that China will fire the first shots of any war in Taiwan in space, degrading US space capabilities that enable the US to communicate with its own military forces and to move its own weapons around the world.
You talked about these shootdowns of satellites that China did and Russia did. Is some of the thinking that those were in part just to show the US the capability that they had. That the shooting down of the satellite wasn't really the main point.
In China's case.
They said they just needed to get an old weather satellite out of the way, and that's not really how you need to remove an old weather satellite. So I think the US certainly really saw that as their wake up call and used it as their wake up call. They did their own anti satellite test the next year. India did theirs in twenty nineteen. I think there is so much signaling going on in space and no one's
really figured out their doctrine yet. So in the same way that you hear about a cyber pearl harbor, the original pearl harbor, there is a scenario that some US thinkers on this talk about as a space pearl harbor where China might destroy US capabilities in space to say that's it, we really mean business, leave us alone.
Where the US would see that.
As the first shot of all out war, and so that kind of messaging, that kind of escalatory tension is so carefully done. It's meant to be modulated very carefully, but no one quite knows the rules of the discussion. And what you see from Space Command and Space Force is saying no, no, no. China is putting so much much military hardware now into space. It did more military launches in space last year than the US, and that
trajectory really scares the US. And whether you sort of look away and say we won't compete, or you say we will match you, that's the very difficult balancing it that the US is facing, because it's clear that the US isn't prepared to let China have that capability. The US wants to be able to have superiority, because that's what it sees as the deterrent effect.
When you're talking to your sources, how concerned are they that we could have an arms race in space?
I think it's really fair to say the arms race is already on, And certainly in terms of perception, the amount that you're seeing from the commercial world putting up into space also creates huge dilemmas for the US military and what they need to defend, and a lot of that hasn't been ironed out yet. The US at the moment is trying to work out if they should make space critical infrastructure, should they specifically designate things in space's
critical infrastructure. There are a number of different elements that are label critical infrastructure, which means that any attack on them is seen as an attack on national security and the US needs to defend. And in fact, when President Biden went to meet Vladimir Putin some time ago, he said, hey, don't touch.
Our critical infrastructure. This is what it is now.
A lot of that critical infrastructure depends on space, and there's a discussion right now in the US about whether that is sufficient. Does the fact that these things depend on space mean that space is indirectly preserved and clearly off limits, or does the US need to take a step extra and say, actually, anything in space counts as critical infrastructure, which would then require all sorts of different
defensive means. And of course, a lot of US food supply now depends on space, our mobile phones depend more and more on space. Every single element of US national economy, which is increasingly tied to national security, relies on space in part and will only rely more on space in future. Looking at exactly how you defend that and putting more things up in space to defend that, of course, begins
to create huge anxiety on both sides. I think you could speak to a number of people today who would say the space race is already.
On, Katrina. One of the reasons we're doing this episode is because all the things we're talking about here, I think most people just don't even know is something that Space Force does. What do you think people get wrong about Space Force?
Well, of course there's this TV show all about Space Force with Steve Carell, and that became a kind of very clear parody of Space Force, and they've been a little health hostage to some of that themselves. They've spent a lot of time on uniforms. All of this always happens in the military services, and they're only getting going.
So I think they defend that quite clearly. But obviously, the entire corpus of sci fi and our popular understanding of space is sort of fun and quirky, and so they have to with that fun and quirky feeling at the same time as thinking, hold on, can we just put our hands up. Everything we have depends on space. This is far more vulnerable than people realize, and I think the popular conception is that it's a bit of
a joke. And when I did speak to a general at Space Command, I asked him if you'd watched the TV show and he binge watched it in a night. And they're very good natured about it. They say anything that brings attention to space force and anything to do with space is good by us. I think they took a sort of sanguine view that they couldn't start fighting
it before they'd even established their own reputation. But this is a reputation that is developing in the public consciousness now, so it really depends and I think the language around it matters so much for trying to get public support on board.
Katrina, thanks so much for speaking with me today, Thanks for having me, Thanks for listening to us here at the Big Day. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you. Email questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot Net. The supervising producer of the Big Take and the producer of this episode is Vicky Virgalina. Our senior producer is
Katherine Fink. Raphae alm Sei is our engineer, with additional production support from Nielli, Haramio Plata and Abrea Ruffin. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin. I'm west Kosova. We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take.