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Speaker 1: This is in the City, a podcast from Bloomberg about
Speaker 1: the stories important to the City of London. I'm alegra Stratton.
Speaker 1: It's that time of year. Streets around the Square Mile
Speaker 1: are quieter as people are off on holiday breaks. Of course,
Speaker 1: essential packing for any holiday is a good book. So
Speaker 1: we're bringing you a summer reading list prepared by the
Speaker 1: Voteronomics team. That's me alongside Bloomberg Opinions Adrian Woodridge and
Speaker 1: Head of Government and Economics Stephanie Flanders. This week I
Speaker 1: sit down with Tim Marshall. He's author of Prisoners of Geography,
Speaker 1: The Power of Geography and the Future of Geography. Hello,
Speaker 1: Votonomics listeners, It's Alegristratton and it is time for another
Speaker 1: edition of our summer reading special. While Adrian, Stephanie and
Speaker 1: I are off for a portion of the next month,
Speaker 1: we thought it'd be good to offer up a useful
Speaker 1: summer reading list. We each selected an author whose nonfiction
Speaker 1: work we felt was relevant and informative on the state
Speaker 1: of politics and economics right now. Last week Adrian spoke
Speaker 1: with Freed Zakaria about his latest release, The Age of Revolutions.
Speaker 1: It is a great listen, of course, so please check
Speaker 1: it out if you haven't already. But this week I'm
Speaker 1: bringing you a conversation with Tim Marshall. He is the
Speaker 1: author of Prisoners of Geography The Power of Geography. You've
Speaker 1: probably read both of those on previous summer holidays, but
Speaker 1: now more recently The Future of Geography. Now this is
Speaker 1: the addition where votonomics goes astronomic. When I'm not at Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: I help run the UK's first spaceport, sax of Ord,
Speaker 1: which is based in the Shetland Islands. What has been
Speaker 1: striking to me week after week of recording Voteronomics with
Speaker 1: Stephanie and Adrian is that all the dynamics of diplomacy
Speaker 1: that we discuss can also be seen in the space domain.
Speaker 1: Space has the capacity to impact voters' lives and boardrooms too,
Speaker 1: But despite the best efforts of Elon Musk etal, it
Speaker 1: still remains a weirdly liminal area, very far away from
Speaker 1: mainstream discourse. So to help bring space into votonomics, I
Speaker 1: wanted to bring in author and geographer broadcaster Tim Marshall,
Speaker 1: who wrote the best selling Prisoners of Geography and a
Speaker 1: number of other best sellers, and has now applied or
Speaker 1: rather published a book last year applying his signature erudition
Speaker 1: and wit to space.
Speaker 2: Welcome Tim, very kind of you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan, always have been when you were
Speaker 1: Sky News diplomatic editor, when I was at Newsnight.
Speaker 2: That sort of thing. Yes, does it feel you did
Speaker 2: the big brain stuff they did?
Speaker 1: Cross though I was trying to remember there was a summit,
Speaker 1: wasn't there where I think we both raised eyebrows and
Speaker 1: had our head in our hands at some point. Look, Tim,
Speaker 1: in your book you are clear that we are now,
Speaker 1: to quote you, we're now in the era of astropolitics.
Speaker 1: Tell us what that means.
Speaker 2: Astropolitics is when geopolitics moves out into space. Geopolitics is
Speaker 2: where you look at resources, populations, people, well everything really
Speaker 2: and there is a geography to space which is not
Speaker 2: properly explained usually, and that geography does inform part of
Speaker 2: the decision making that the big countries and indeed companies
Speaker 2: make and so we're now deep, I would say, into
Speaker 2: the era of astropolitics and also what I would call
Speaker 2: space race two point zero, because there are many similarities
Speaker 2: with the sixties and seventies, but there are also major differences.
Speaker 2: They are well, in those days, there were no such
Speaker 2: things as lasers. There were no commercial companies in space.
Speaker 2: We weren't shooting basically things of the size of fridge
Speaker 2: freezers asteroids to see if we can deflect them. We
Speaker 2: never dreamt of mining the Moon, and the commercial aspects
Speaker 2: of it were I wouldn't say peripheral. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Of course they always had a
Speaker 2: relationship with NASA. But one of the biggest differences in
Speaker 2: space race two point now is just how front and
Speaker 2: center commercial companies are. And I don't just mean Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a raft of companies who are pumping
Speaker 2: billions of you know, it's a billion, more than billions
Speaker 2: of dollars industry, and it's growing rapidly. It's a very
Speaker 2: high risk industry in many ways. So you know, it
Speaker 2: is different to the first iteration.
Speaker 1: So Tim, let's talk about low Earth orbit, which people
Speaker 1: call LEO for short. There's lots of definitions for it,
Speaker 1: aren't there, But essentially it's anything under a thousand kilometers up.
Speaker 2: This is another problem. You know I mentioned earlier about
Speaker 2: the differences between space race and space rates two point oh.
Speaker 2: Another problem is we don't have the legislation or even
Speaker 2: the guidelines for space rates two point zero because the
Speaker 2: space regulations and guidelines were written in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: Out of Space treat is nineteen sixty seven, and we
Speaker 2: can't even agree exactly where space starts. But you asked
Speaker 2: me about LEO. It's very worrying talking to someone who
Speaker 2: really knows more than you do about this. I had
Speaker 2: no idea in the Scottish the same time, the Scottish
Speaker 2: version of Cape Canaveral low Earth orbit is where a
Speaker 2: vast majority of the satellites are. There are about eight
Speaker 2: and a half thousand working satellites, about three thousand defunct satellites,
Speaker 2: which is a lot. And you know, my generation grown
Speaker 2: up in the sixties and seventies, there were only really
Speaker 2: two space powers at the two people who really had
Speaker 2: a presence in space that we're all aware of. There's
Speaker 2: eighty countries in space now, and I know there's a
Speaker 2: lot of space up there, but it is getting crowded.
Speaker 2: And the conservative estimates are that there will be at
Speaker 2: least thirty thousand satellites by the end of this decade.
Speaker 2: That's a conservative estimate. The Chinese will probably put up
Speaker 2: twenty thousand, musc will put up ten thousand, and that's
Speaker 2: just two examples. And although the satellites are getting smaller
Speaker 2: and smaller, some of them the size of a Rubik's
Speaker 2: cube CubeSats as they're known, it's getting crowded, it's getting competitive.
Speaker 2: He said in the introduction about how you know it's
Speaker 2: pretty sort of out there and not part of our lives,
Speaker 2: And it's true we don't think about them, but it's
Speaker 2: absolutely integral to all of our lives. Every time you
Speaker 2: put petrol in a car, every time you get on
Speaker 2: a plane, every time you do a bank transaction, and
Speaker 2: thousands of other examples, they are connected to space. And
Speaker 2: it's a growing industry.
Speaker 1: You've summarized the companies and the money to be made,
Speaker 1: the big business that is being made out of satellites
Speaker 1: up up in space right now. But you also alluded
Speaker 1: to if We've got thirty thousand satellites going up in
Speaker 1: the near future. Twenty thousand of those will be Chinese,
Speaker 1: and then some of those will be musk and American.
Speaker 1: Right there, in that sentence, you've given us the kind
Speaker 1: of great game of Earth transposed to space. Just talk
Speaker 1: us through and this is, I think probably what your astropolitics.
Speaker 2: Is all about. Us.
Speaker 1: Talk us through how geopolitics is playing out right now.
Speaker 2: Go back to the beginning of the last century when
Speaker 2: everyone realized that oil was going to replace coal in
Speaker 2: the military terms terms. You would not find a major
Speaker 2: company or country that when a massive oil discovery was made, said,
Speaker 2: you know what, we won't bother. We're not sure about
Speaker 2: this one. They had to go. They had to compete.
Speaker 2: And it's the same and so you cannot leave this
Speaker 2: newish domain to your rivals, whether it's the satellite industry,
Speaker 2: whether it's experiments, scientific experiments in space, or the big
Speaker 2: one and the most difficult at the moment, mining space
Speaker 2: for the very minerals that we need for renewable energy
Speaker 2: here on Earth, which of course is a very finite resource.
Speaker 2: And so the great powers and the big companies are
Speaker 2: competing against each other now Obviously the American companies are
Speaker 2: in bed with the American space companies, and ditto the
Speaker 2: other side of the Chinese and the Russians. But if
Speaker 2: you look in broadbrush terms, there is a block going
Speaker 2: up led by the Americans via the Artemis ac Cords,
Speaker 2: forty two countries have signed on. And then there is
Speaker 2: a block going up led by China which is the
Speaker 2: senior partner, with Russia as its junior partner, played Iran
Speaker 2: and North Korea clutching onto their coattails. And that is
Speaker 2: exactly the two blocks that we see dominating the global
Speaker 2: picture on Earth. It is absolutely mirrored with what's going
Speaker 2: on in space.
Speaker 1: And then there was great excitement because the Europeans put
Speaker 1: up Arian six listeners can't see, but has just smiled
Speaker 1: on the camera that I'm talking to him on. So
Speaker 1: what's the impact going to be of for the first
Speaker 1: time in a wild Europeans returning to be able to launch.
Speaker 2: It's positive if you believe that this a is our
Speaker 2: future and b on balance or adventures in space are
Speaker 2: a good thing. And I do fall down on that
Speaker 2: side of the argument. The Europeans in the shape of
Speaker 2: the ESA European Space Agency, but also in the individual countries.
Speaker 2: The UK is a major space player in the second tier,
Speaker 2: the EU in the second tier, which is folded into
Speaker 2: the ESA. Germany I think you could argue was the
Speaker 2: second tier of space power of France, definitely, Italy definitely,
Speaker 2: along with people like the UAE, Japan and Israel. So
Speaker 2: these second tier companies they can't do what the Americans
Speaker 2: and the Chinese do, mostly because of budget constraints. But
Speaker 2: the French, by launching out of French Guiana that rocket
Speaker 2: have sort of nailed their colors to the mass that
Speaker 2: you know, we're not going to get left behind. I mean,
Speaker 2: the Europeans accept they can't match the Big two or
Speaker 2: the Big three actually because Russia's in the top tier
Speaker 2: as well. But it is a statement of intent and
Speaker 2: the Europeans really are a player.
Speaker 1: But this matters, doesn't it. It's not just sort of
Speaker 1: the Europeans showing that they have the toys too. It
Speaker 1: is the Europeans showing that they have the axis, the
Speaker 1: ability to get to space, so that means that they
Speaker 1: can access their lucative, important vital infrastructure relying on satellite systems.
Speaker 1: So in the event that they cannot at some point
Speaker 1: ask the Americans to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's many historical echoes there. Because one
Speaker 2: of the reasons the French really ventured out on their own,
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a whole bunch, including the Foster Frapp.
Speaker 2: Then their independent nuclear capabilities is that. And this goes
Speaker 2: all the way back to the seventies when there was
Speaker 2: a coup in one of the North African countries that
Speaker 2: France takes a great interest in still and they were
Speaker 2: invited to intervene on the basis of some American satellite
Speaker 2: information and they just didn't trust it. And it is
Speaker 2: murky whether the Americans sort of fed them the best
Speaker 2: bits of the satellite information to try to drag them
Speaker 2: into taking some action in the African country. And this
Speaker 2: was one of the triggers. France thought, we need our
Speaker 2: own independent eyes on via the satellite. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is the military aspect of it, and off they went with,
Speaker 2: you know, as well as their independent nuclear force. They
Speaker 2: needed their independent satellites because they do not wish to
Speaker 2: be reliant upon the United States as so many Western
Speaker 2: countries are. So that's the sort of genesis of that
Speaker 2: and it continues to this day. And of course there's
Speaker 2: the commercial aspects to that. You don't want to be
Speaker 2: reliant upon American technology when your own industry, you know,
Speaker 2: will be harmed by that. I mean we're seeing a
Speaker 2: little bit of this at the moment in the defense industry.
Speaker 2: The new Labor government is very keen to forge links
Speaker 2: back with the EU countries and actually get a place
Speaker 2: around the table and talking about the European defense industry.
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about you know, how many soldiers you
Speaker 2: have armaments, And it's the French that is leading the
Speaker 2: fight back within the EU saying, hang on a minute,
Speaker 2: do we want to let Britain into the decision making
Speaker 2: process when it's not in the EU of the European
Speaker 2: defense arms industry. So I've gone off a bit of
Speaker 2: a tangent, but it is related back to why the
Speaker 2: French insist on that.
Speaker 1: But it's central to what we're looking at right here,
Speaker 1: which is that these are terrestrial geopolitical tussles and relationships
Speaker 1: that are sort of having an amplified or expression in
Speaker 1: the space domain.
Speaker 2: Of your sovereignty in a way, and that will go
Speaker 2: even further on the moon. About sovereignty on the moon,
Speaker 2: I mean, nobody's going to use that word and say
Speaker 2: we have sovereign rights. But they will certainly stake their claims,
Speaker 2: they just won't use the word sovereignty.
Speaker 1: Let's come on to the moon in a second, which
Speaker 1: is a sentence you don't often utter.
Speaker 2: Well, not for about about fifty years in fact, A.
Speaker 1: The suggestion we could saunter onto the moon, but b
Speaker 1: just the sentence, let's move on to the subject, that
Speaker 1: is the moon. That's not something I have said often
Speaker 1: in my journalistic career. But before we do, just switching
Speaker 1: focus slightly, which is Elon Musk. Starlink was critical in
Speaker 1: supporting Ukraine and giving it access to the Internet and
Speaker 1: the rest during Russia's invasion. Clearly that was benign and
Speaker 1: something to be celebrated. But is there any queasiness around
Speaker 1: the idea that it is a private company that has
Speaker 1: that kind of power and you know, at some point
Speaker 1: which is not yet on the horizon, but at some
Speaker 1: point they can turn it on and they can turn
Speaker 1: it off.
Speaker 2: I'll accept your use of the word benign. In the
Speaker 2: original effort by Musk, he sent the Starlink terminals into
Speaker 2: the Urpan region, thousands of thousands of them to link
Speaker 2: to his Starlight satellite system to deliver the Internet to them,
Speaker 2: and that was benign. Then it was good. But of
Speaker 2: course the Ukrainian military jumped on it and used it
Speaker 2: to target Russian soldiers and kill them. It was inevitable.
Speaker 2: So I put it to you, members of the jury,
Speaker 2: does that make starlink legitimate military target for Russians to
Speaker 2: fire upon? Discuss? Because I referred earlier to the treaties
Speaker 2: of the CIS sixties. They out of Space treat in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven doesn't cover this because you couldn't do
Speaker 2: anything in those days, whereas now you can fire a
Speaker 2: ballistic missile from the surface of the Earth and you
Speaker 2: can hit a satellite and knock it out. That has
Speaker 2: been done to test by four countries Russia, USA, India, China.
Speaker 2: They haven't done that this time. You can spoof the satellites,
Speaker 2: you send up packets of information which can fuse the chipboard,
Speaker 2: put them out of action perhaps, and you can dazzle them.
Speaker 2: You send up direct energy beam so much light floods
Speaker 2: into it it blinds the camera. And those last two
Speaker 2: the Russians have been doing. They have been taking military
Speaker 2: action against an American company in space because it has
Speaker 2: been used by their Ukrainian foes on the ground. This
Speaker 2: is new territory and we don't have the rules and
Speaker 2: regulations required because it's hardly going to stop there. We
Speaker 2: now have weapon direct energy weapons that can knock drones
Speaker 2: out at a range of about seven kilometers. The Americans
Speaker 2: have perfected them, the Brits have got them, so you
Speaker 2: can find it fired a laser beam at a drone
Speaker 2: several kilometers away, knocking out the sky. What happens if
Speaker 2: somebody sticks one of those on a satellite in order
Speaker 2: to target other satellites. The moment one country does, every
Speaker 2: country will have them. So we urgently need I hesitate
Speaker 2: to say laws because international law is an oxymoron sometimes,
Speaker 2: but we definitely need guidelines.
Speaker 1: Any prospects of those coming.
Speaker 2: No, everyone knows we need them. Everyone suspects they will
Speaker 2: eventually come. Go back to the early days of the
Speaker 2: nuclear race, when the Americans had the bomb, the Russians
Speaker 2: got the bomb, and the immediate response was both sides
Speaker 2: built more and more and more of them until they
Speaker 2: had tens of thousands of warheads. And then at that
Speaker 2: point they thought, we really need to talk to each
Speaker 2: other about this, and I think that will be the
Speaker 2: case in space. There is arms race going on in space.
Speaker 2: Many countries now have space commands. China got the first,
Speaker 2: Trump introduced to the second. UK has one, France, Germany, India,
Speaker 2: et cetera. These space forces and so it is inevitable.
Speaker 2: But I think we're going to go through this period
Speaker 2: of X years before we realize how dangerous it's got
Speaker 2: because and then we realize, hang on a minute, all
Speaker 2: these satellites are integral to the world economy. You know.
Speaker 2: The last thing we need is people knocking into them
Speaker 2: or firing at them. And then we will have treaties.
Speaker 2: And the people are working on the texts already, but
Speaker 2: hasn't percolated to the senior levels of industry and politics.
Speaker 2: The urgency of it.
Speaker 1: You just mentioned Donald Trump yourself. What does President Trump
Speaker 1: two point zero mean for the space race.
Speaker 2: It's difficult, isn't it, Because it all comes down to budgets.
Speaker 2: The budgets are actually smaller than they used to be.
Speaker 2: People think you might spend spending, countries are spending more
Speaker 2: in real terms. They're not the USA for the space
Speaker 2: which was part of a war, the Cold War. You know,
Speaker 2: they had to win that as part of winning the
Speaker 2: Cold War. I think it was zero point five percent
Speaker 2: of GDP well, and I think the budget now at
Speaker 2: state level is zero point three percent roughly of GDP.
Speaker 2: So it was Trump that introduced space force amid much mirth,
Speaker 2: which you know, for me, I'm not a supporter of him,
Speaker 2: but when when you use something like that to make
Speaker 2: fun of him, it betrays that you're not understanding him.
Speaker 2: He too, is he trying to laugh at him? And
Speaker 2: it's an issue that has been gone on for years now.
Speaker 2: So he realized space force good idea in the context
Speaker 2: of China's got one. Everyone's going to have them. We
Speaker 2: need to up the game. Trump is aware of how
Speaker 2: much the Chinese are spending on space and doesn't want
Speaker 2: to get left behind.
Speaker 1: But Musk helps him. I mean, Musk has helped him
Speaker 1: in a number of ways in the In the last
Speaker 1: he'll make the case, yeah, indeed, but Musk helps him
Speaker 1: in that his company space x is doing a lot
Speaker 1: of the heavy lifting, and they've got billions and billions
Speaker 1: of pounds of US funding. So it's a kind of
Speaker 1: you know, an ecosystem where the one is scratching the
Speaker 1: back of the other and assisting the space effort.
Speaker 2: It is and just as you'll know the I think
Speaker 2: it's something like ninety percent of the US budget that
Speaker 2: goes on armaments for Ukraine is spent in the United
Speaker 2: States first building them. You know, it is very beneficial
Speaker 2: to American industry. But it's a similar argument when it
Speaker 2: comes to space. And yes, Musk has his ear because
Speaker 2: he's such a big player in the space industry. But
Speaker 2: also a lot of the things we've been talking about
Speaker 2: come together here space MAS two point zero and the
Speaker 2: centrality of private enterprise because, as I said, Boeing, Lockheed Martin,
Speaker 2: many other companies, yet NASA went to them and said
Speaker 2: can you build me that widget or that, But it
Speaker 2: was very much a government driven It's now a rough
Speaker 2: percentage fifty percent is private enterprise. And that's the same
Speaker 2: in China, although all companies are essentially controlled by the CCP,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of startups there. So private enterprise
Speaker 2: in America is a major, major part of this. Private
Speaker 2: enterprise across the world is a major part of this.
Speaker 1: I just wonder whether governments have had the conversation with
Speaker 1: the electorate about everything we've just been discussing. The role
Speaker 1: that it plays in people's lives. The centrality the you
Speaker 1: know it is, if any of these satellites were taken down,
Speaker 1: it's many billions of pounds of economic damage per day, right,
Speaker 1: and so in order to make sure that they are
Speaker 1: safe and protected and so on, they probably will in
Speaker 1: these years ahead need to be greater money spent on them.
Speaker 1: So I wonder, given we'd never have that conversation whether
Speaker 1: it's a sort of going to be a shock to
Speaker 1: prime ministers and their you know chances and so on,
Speaker 1: when the economic impact of them being vulnerable is fully
Speaker 1: on stood. It's very striking in your book that passage
Speaker 1: where you talk about how once America had put a
Speaker 1: man on the moon, not long after they can the
Speaker 1: funding for it. Because once you've done the kind of
Speaker 1: TV gold and the historic moment, you know, we're in
Speaker 1: a different ear now, and so there is there is
Speaker 1: plenty more to do. But at the time they made
Speaker 1: a different decision. They made a decision that there were
Speaker 1: you know, terrestrial policy programs they wanted to put that
Speaker 1: money into.
Speaker 2: That I think would be relatively easy if you came
Speaker 2: to the military side of it. People kind of understand
Speaker 2: that protecting satellites from debris by cleaning up space, which
Speaker 2: is a huge, huge issue. I thought war was going
Speaker 2: to be the biggest issue, and then the experts explained
Speaker 2: to me that what keeps them awake at night is
Speaker 2: debris because in case the systems go down and as
Speaker 2: you said, cost economy is billion.
Speaker 1: And this is just to explain, this is just all
Speaker 1: bits of old satellite and junk from stations and so
Speaker 1: on flying through space and knocking out satellite.
Speaker 2: Which they're knocks out to satellite, which then knocks out
Speaker 2: of satellite, etc. Yeah, it's in the film gravity, which
Speaker 2: they nicked off the Kessler syndrome, which was the sort
Speaker 2: of worst case scenario where they all crash into each
Speaker 2: other in the world economy collapses and goes dark. So
Speaker 2: I think you can make those cases. It gets harder
Speaker 2: when you just talk about exploration. You know, why are
Speaker 2: you cutting budgets here so we can go and explore there.
Speaker 2: That's much harder. But I think as we gradually become
Speaker 2: more and more aware of how important space is to
Speaker 2: our economic livelihoods, and also if you can make the
Speaker 2: very contentious case that it is worth burning all that
Speaker 2: fuel and taking all those risks to go and mine
Speaker 2: for and despoil the moon. Yes, for the metals we
Speaker 2: need for renewable energy, that's a hard sell as well.
Speaker 2: But no, we're not really having these arguments. But I
Speaker 2: think we'd be having more of them if it wasn't
Speaker 2: enterprise making so much of the running.
Speaker 1: Just to explain to the listeners, I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of the scientific exploration on the Moon that is
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think it's pointless? I don't think
Speaker 1: you do think it's pointless trying to use the Moon
Speaker 1: as a stop ahead to Mars and so on.
Speaker 2: I go back to what we said at the beginning,
Speaker 2: and the race for oil. You can't afford not to
Speaker 2: be there. The background to this is the Indians proved
Speaker 2: there was water at the south pole of the Moon,
Speaker 2: and they're the ones, the only ones who landed a
Speaker 2: craft there. It's very hard to land at the south pole.
Speaker 2: It's very rugged terrain, caves, mountains, boulders, and they've done it.
Speaker 2: And that's because it is also very very likely that
Speaker 2: there are large amounts of many of the metals. There's
Speaker 2: a small amount of lithium, quite liganite, all sorts of
Speaker 2: stuff and there's water. Therefore there's oxygen and hydrogen, and
Speaker 2: therefore there's fuel and things to drink. So you've proved
Speaker 2: that it's theoretically possible to go there. Now get in there,
Speaker 2: which everybody's trying to do, is also doable. It's weather.
Speaker 2: Is there enough of the stuff down there? And can
Speaker 2: you make it profitable to dig it up? Stick it
Speaker 2: in some sort of space shuttle, because there are now
Speaker 2: space planes, the Americans and the Chinese have got them
Speaker 2: robotic they look like the shuttle. They can go up
Speaker 2: for more than two years in orbit. And further, is
Speaker 2: it viable at the moment The economics don't add up.
Speaker 2: But lithium, as you know, is destined. It is thought
Speaker 2: to go up or think something like forty times its
Speaker 2: current value over the next decade. And so as those
Speaker 2: prices of these precious metals go up and the finite
Speaker 2: resource here goes down, so the economic modeling of the
Speaker 2: moon becomes potentially more viable. But even though you're really
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say you bet in the farm, but you
Speaker 2: know it's high, high risk. But as a country or
Speaker 2: a company, you cannot afford not to be part of this.
Speaker 2: Give you one I know we're going to run out
Speaker 2: of time. One last example, and this is even more theoretical,
Speaker 2: but it goes back to what I said about oil,
Speaker 2: and you're not gonna.
Speaker 1: It's a beauty podcast, and we've got as long as
Speaker 1: you want past.
Speaker 2: Try and be brief. There's helium three on the Moon.
Speaker 2: We don't have very much of it here, there's lots
Speaker 2: and lots of it in the soil and the rocks
Speaker 2: up there. If AI could possibly crack nuclear fusion, not fission,
Speaker 2: not breaking it apart the way we do now, not
Speaker 2: smashing atoms apart, but fusion, if AI can do that,
Speaker 2: because we've been told for years and years it's we're
Speaker 2: in the custom of it. The helium three that's on
Speaker 2: the Moon can be used as fuel, but radiation free fuel.
Speaker 2: And the head of the Chinese Space Agency, an eminent scientist,
Speaker 2: believes there is enough helium three on the Moon in
Speaker 2: those circumstances to fuel all of humanities, and that needs
Speaker 2: energy on Earth for the next ten thousand years. Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know if we're going to crack fusion. I
Speaker 2: don't know if the economic modeling can go and get
Speaker 2: the helium three. But the point I'm making is with
Speaker 2: those sorts of stakes there which major player is just
Speaker 2: going to say, nah, I'm not going to bother. And
Speaker 2: that is one of the reasons why we're going to go.
Speaker 2: Another reason is much more romantic. There is something in
Speaker 2: the human spirit, which is why we've always climbed to
Speaker 2: the top of a mountain to see what was then
Speaker 2: gone across an ocean, because we wondered what was on
Speaker 2: the other side, and that is our restless spirit. So
Speaker 2: I've spent forty five minutes talking economics and politics to you,
Speaker 2: but you know there is also that side of us,
Speaker 2: and that is another reason why we are going to
Speaker 2: keep going.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think forward to the moment when our
Speaker 1: country and which country will it be, says do you
Speaker 1: know what we're going to start digging? You know that
Speaker 1: moment when they start digging in any kind of industrial
Speaker 1: way on the moon. There's all sorts of legal and
Speaker 1: ethical issues, not least that for many many people around
Speaker 1: the world, the moon is spiritual. Sorry to go all
Speaker 1: spiritual on.
Speaker 2: You, but you know, no, there are legal and ethical issues,
Speaker 2: and I don't you know, I don't want to sound
Speaker 2: too cold saying that it's more cynical than cold, all right.
Speaker 2: I mean this brings us back to the Artemist Accords
Speaker 2: America series of bilateral agreements with more than forty countries
Speaker 2: now and in the Artemist Accords, it's clearly states that
Speaker 2: if you've invested all that money in going to the moon,
Speaker 2: and then you've invested digging, and then you strike gold,
Speaker 2: the new gold, you can then declare a safety zone.
Speaker 2: Well how big, well you choose for how long you choose?
Speaker 2: Now that sounds to me like sovereignty under another name.
Speaker 2: And you can quote to me as much as you
Speaker 2: like the nineteen sixty seven Out of Space Treaty, which
Speaker 2: was not ratified by everybody and it's completely out of date.
Speaker 2: But I'm going to keep digging, so you know, I
Speaker 2: accept these ethical and legal challenges. The ethical challenges to
Speaker 2: mining lithium in the DRC may be correct, but they
Speaker 2: haven't won the argument and the legal aspects of X,
Speaker 2: Y and Z. Well you and who's an army where
Speaker 2: you're gonna fly me at the moon and stop me?
Speaker 2: So I'm sorry to sounds so cynical, but you know
Speaker 2: this is big industry, big government, and big stakes for winning,
Speaker 2: potentially winning but certainly being involved in one of the
Speaker 2: big energy questions of the twenty first century. So I
Speaker 2: suspect that has more weight than the objections that are
Speaker 2: already being sounded.
Speaker 1: How many years away is it?
Speaker 2: I think in the twenty thirties we will have moon bases.
Speaker 2: I think in the twenty thirties we will have started
Speaker 2: mining at what scale I don't know, but everything I
Speaker 2: see at the moment points that that is going ahead.
Speaker 2: Another legal point, at a space treaty, you cannot own
Speaker 2: any part of space or a planet or the moon. Fine,
Speaker 2: who owns those rocks that were brought back? And NASA
Speaker 2: is currently tendering for a company, and I think a
Speaker 2: Japanese company may have won it. I want you to
Speaker 2: go at the moon, dig up a rock, bring it back,
Speaker 2: and sell it to me for a dollar. Now, what's
Speaker 2: in it for the company, what's in it for NASA?
Speaker 2: The company's going to get a lot more tenders and
Speaker 2: a dollar. But NASA are going to prove norms. They're
Speaker 2: going to establish norms because once you've bought that, you
Speaker 2: have established that yes, you owned it, you sold it
Speaker 2: to me. I own it, and I know it's only
Speaker 2: a dollar and a rock. But the point is you're
Speaker 2: establishing norms. Another one United Nations convey of the Law
Speaker 2: of the Sea, which I'm sure you read most evenings.
Speaker 2: Only a few countries signed up when it started. Now
Speaker 2: it is the norm. The Artemis Accords were signed by
Speaker 2: only twelve countries when it launched, and now it's more
Speaker 2: than forty. It is establishing the norms, and the Artimistic
Speaker 2: cause allows for drilling and bringing back and selling. So
Speaker 2: you know, we're in a new era. I just think
Speaker 2: we still think about space there where we thought about
Speaker 2: it in the sixties and seventies, we've moved on.
Speaker 1: It was very striking, wasn't it a few months back
Speaker 1: to have the Americans let it be known that they
Speaker 1: believe that Russians will target satellites, so that to the
Speaker 1: expression the public admission that now satellites are part of warfare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, something has happened there which is obviously so classified.
Speaker 2: We don't have the details because before they did that,
Speaker 2: several months prior to that, they said that the Russians
Speaker 2: were working on a new weapon in space. And I
Speaker 2: was trying to figure out what. And there's two obvious scenarios,
Speaker 2: One genuinely is a nuclear bomb in space, which yes,
Speaker 2: I know it's forbidden, but you know, so is invading Ukraine.
Speaker 2: You can explode a very small yield nuclear bomb in space,
Speaker 2: probably without setting the atmosphere on fire. And the reason
Speaker 2: you would want to do that is that at the
Speaker 2: moment you can fire a ballistic missile big satellite and
Speaker 2: knock it out, hitting a bullet with a bullet. It's
Speaker 2: incredibly hard and incredibly expensive, but if you were just
Speaker 2: to the second problem is that because the satellites are
Speaker 2: now so small, and you have an array of satellites,
Speaker 2: it's very small ones, maybe twenty of them in a constellation,
Speaker 2: and if you hit one of them, well, they still work,
Speaker 2: and then you go and you just put another one
Speaker 2: up there. So to wipe out the whole twenty or fifty,
Speaker 2: a very very small nuclear bomb or some other form
Speaker 2: of explosion will do it. So that's one scenario, and
Speaker 2: the other one is this idea of a direct energy weapon,
Speaker 2: which now exis on Earth. They hit the drones, these
Speaker 2: are these lasers, laser beams burn them out. Again, it
Speaker 2: could be sticking one of those on. So the Americans
Speaker 2: have done two things. They've warned they're looking at a
Speaker 2: weapon in space, and now they're saying, and it's to
Speaker 2: hit the satellites. It's not inevitable that it's going to happen.
Speaker 2: It's inevitable that space will be weaponized because if you
Speaker 2: if you disbelieve me, you have to just ignore the
Speaker 2: last twelve thousand years of recorded history. So why would
Speaker 2: given that we've weaponized pretty much every other are we've
Speaker 2: gone into, why we're not going to weaponize this one.
Speaker 2: It's why the French are already working on bodyguard satellites,
Speaker 2: putting a satellite between one that's really important and has
Speaker 2: perhaps their nuclear codes early warning system in it and
Speaker 2: the potential aggressive satellite that might be approaching it. These
Speaker 2: things are in.
Speaker 1: Train, Tim Marshall, that was fantastic. Now Voteromics for its
Speaker 1: next episode will have to come firmly back to Earth.
Speaker 1: But for this one, thank you very much. Thank you
Speaker 1: good stuff. Tim.
Speaker 2: That was fun, wasn't it?
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this week's voter Nomics from Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This episode was hosted by me alegra Stratton. It was
Speaker 1: produced by Summersadi, with booking support from Chris Martlu, Production
Speaker 1: support and sound designed by Moses and Am Brendan Francis
Speaker 1: Newnham is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Head of
Speaker 1: Podcasts and special thanks to Tim Marshall. Please subscribe, rate,
Speaker 1: and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to this week's In the City, featuring an interview from
Speaker 1: our sister show, voter Nomics.