Is Outer Space the New Wild West? (Robert Wright & Douglas Ligor)

Robert Wright's Nonzero

Nonzero

News & Politics, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.7 • 618 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2022

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

1:49 How worried should we be about the “Kessler Syndrome”? 7:46 The nightmare scenario for anti-satellite weapons anarchy13:34 How an attack in space could trigger WWIII25:13 International law is way behind the curve in outer space40:45 Why isn’t the grave threat of space anarchy getting attention?54:10 How the new Cold War makes conflict in space more likely

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Douglas Ligor (Rand Corporation). Recorded October 12, 2022.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero Podcast.
0:09.0	Hi, Doug.
0:10.6	Hi, Bob.
0:11.6	Nice to be with you.
0:13.3	Good to have you here.
0:14.4	Thanks for taking the time.
0:15.4	Let me introduce us.
0:16.2	I am Robert Wright, publisher of the Non-Zero Newsletter.
0:19.5	This is a Non-Zero podcast.
0:20.7	You are Doug Lagore of the Rand Corporation.
0:24.9	Correct.
0:25.3	Now, you have studied a lot of areas of public policy and actually worked in them.
0:29.6	Formerly, you were in the government.
0:31.8	But the part of your expertise I want to tap into has to do with what I think, and I think you may agree,
0:39.4	is an underappreciated problem facing humankind, which is that we have in outer space
0:46.5	an infrastructure of growing importance, thousands of thousands of satellites on which
0:52.4	more than we realize depends in terms of the everyday functioning of corporations of governance, of the military, and so on.
1:01.8	And it's more fragile, I think, than most people realize, more vulnerable to ultimately catastrophic accidents even and ultimately catastrophic, you know,
1:14.3	malicious behavior, possibly of a military kind, possibly of a terrorist kind, who knows.
1:21.0	But it's really, it's really, you know, it's something I've thought about for a long time,
1:26.9	but I don't know enough to know how worried I should be.
1:29.6	And so you're going to, you're going to help illuminate that question.
	...

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