For anyone active in academic two-person debate, I’ve generated a new version of the popular backfile dump of all arguments and evidence on the site. With over 160 arguments in this update, the backfile checks in at a ridiculous 510 pages so printing it out isn’t an option. I’m working on a new print option for individual argument pages but will keep updating this file more regularly.

Just discovered this new volume, published January this year, that brings together fifty-five scholars and researchers from the “emerging discipline of collective intelligence”. The book’s contributors, including digerati like Yochai Benkler, Howard Bloom, Jaron Lanier, and Howard Rheingold, explore models for “digital deliberative democracy, self-governance, legislative transparency, true-cost accounting, and the ethical use of open sources and methods”. Of special interest to this project, Mark Klein’s chapter on “Achieving Collective Intelligence via Large-Scale Argumentation” (on which I will be blogging more about shortly).

You can find the whole book online at the Open Source Intelligence Institute or available in dead-tree format at Amazon.com.

A few months back, the Space Review did a helpful survey of the platforms of the leading presidential contenders to see what they had to say about the U.S. role in space. Not surprisingly, their space platforms were underdeveloped compared to the more salient issues in the race and none of them had anything specific to say about space weaponization.

However, in a new press release, Barack Obama laid out his space policy plan which includes the plank:

To my knowledge, Senator Obama is the first 2008 candidate to specifically address the U.S. military role in space in their space policy though the other candidates would likely break down along party lines if pressed. However, this is unlikely to become a significant election issue unless China resumes testing during the campaign, forcing the candidates to address how they would handle the threat from China.

Updated, February 25, 2008: Just saw this on Global Security Newswire: the Council for a Livable World sent a questionnaire to all of the candidates at the time and received these responses from the Democratic candidates:

Or something like that..

It has been a year since China tested its direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon against one of its own satellites and pundits are mining the anniversary for any significance they can find. Geoffrey Forden has a detailed three-part essay on Wired.com where he argues that with their current capabilities, China is incapable of delivering a knock-out, “Pearl Harbor”-esque blow to U.S. space assets:

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Bill Gertz headlines the Washington Times with news that U.S. satellites are having to change course because of space debris caused by last year’s test.

While not wanting to downplay the unprecedented level of space debris following China’s test, Gertz ignores that such satellite maneuvers are a common occurrence anymore, partly due to the accumulated space debris from similar Russian and U.S. ASAT tests during the 70s and 80s.

James Clay Moltz has an optimistic new article in the latest Space Policy (sadly, not currently available online without subscription):

His argument is that a careful review of the past three ‘high risk’ periods in space security show that governments have consistently pursued the goal of preserving “safe access to space”, despite their rhetoric to the contrary:

This article first analyzes in greater detail the histories of the three “high risk” periods in space security mentioned above: 1962, 1983, and 2001. It examines the stated intentions and expectations of key actors, what factors led them to change their plans, and what actual results followed. Next, it draws on these cases to develop a series of lessons from the first 50 years of space security. Overall, it makes the argument that while national leaders may have talked tough, they have actually behaved more or less consistently with the aim of protecting “safe access to space” as their highest priority, rather than pursuing unilateralist aims of “space dominance.” This is not to say that some highly influential thinkers and politicians did not entertain such views. But other national and international factors prevented such courses of action from being followed. This suggests that outcomes in the arena of space security–whether contemporary decision makers pursued this objective consciously or not–might best be understood as stemming primarily from calculations of “environmental security,” rather than mainly from traditional military-strategic factors.

The four common elements that he identifies are:

• Risks of collective bads that would threaten the use of outer space for all parties (i.e. space debris, HAND);
• Fear of igniting a space arms race;
• High monetary cost and low survivability of space weapons compared to conventional means;
• Transparent nature of outer space increases risks of getting caught developing covert space weapon programs.

His argument is very encouraging, especially as it predicts a peaceful future for outer space, governed by collective security agreements and emerging international organizations. However, I am still cautious about his conclusions as his article is imprecise on the definition of space weapon programs. For example, he is right to point out that the space-based missile defense programs and kinetic anti-satellite weapons have ran into political difficulties recently, due to several of the common elements he identified. However, other counterspace programs like the Counter Communications System are thriving because they can avoid these same environmental factors.

The U.S. military is well aware of the political and environmental risks from kinetic-kill ASATs and is researching counterspace methods that would allow them to temporarily jam, dazzle, or disable an adversary’s satellite to avoid these. I’m not convinced that there is an inevitable trend towards greater international cooperation in Outer Space, especially with the current administration’s aversion to any kind of international agreement including the environmental regimes he cites. Clay Moltz’s article appears to be a preview of his forthcoming book The Politics of Space Security, 1957-2007, and I’m looking forward to exploring his full argument.

Two other articles from the same issue of Space Policy that are worth checking out:

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Updated: March 22, 2008: I’ve created a new argument for this as a supporting argument to the the argument that “Space Weapons are not Inevitable”:

There is an Inherent Norm against the Use of Space Weapons

Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis and Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists gave a talk at the Carnegie Endowment on China’s ASAT test in January. They argued, in a preview of a forthcoming paper, that the test was not meant as a show of force and could possibly have been averted if the U.S. had demarched the Chinese government for previous attempts (a point that was hinted at in an earlier New York Times article). From a summary on the Carnegie site:

There is also a writeup in Global Security Newswire, and an apparently less than accurate writeup forthcoming in Space News.

A new report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments looks at the cost-effectiveness of deploying space-based weapons for each of the proposed goals:

The Register has a snarky writeup on the report online (”U.S. Doesn’t Need Orbital Battlefleet“). I’m still working on processing new quotes into the system but they will be available here:

Updated March 18, 2008
I’ve created an argument based on this report here:

“A Pentagon-chartered report urges the United States to take the lead in developing space platforms capable of capturing sunlight and beaming electrical power to Earth.”

[ Link to Full Report ] from the excellent “Space Solar Power” blog.

There are a few obvious connections to the space security debate (ex. increasing dependence on space assets, or increasing the potential for resource conflicts) but there’s also the potential for the system to be used as a sky-sweeping, death ray which definitely takes the debate in a new direction.

Well, O.K., not really but the report does touch on the force-application potential and its clearly a military system so I’m adding it to my regular keyword watch: Space-Based Solar Power.

High Frontier is a quarterly military service journal (published in association with the U.S. Air Force Space Command) that seeks to “provide a scholarly forum for professionals to exchange knowledge and ideas on space-related issues throughout the space community.” I’ve been hooked ever since the Winter 2005 issue which had a dozen excellent articles from leading strategists on the space weapons debate.

However, sometime over the last few months, there was a redesign of the AFSPC website and most of my links to these articles started breaking. I discovered that not only had the ‘homepage’ for the journal changed, but the initial volume (including my fan-favorite Winter 2005, Vol. 1, No.3) was no longer listed. I doubt there was any intent to conceal the information because its a futile exercise with resources like archive.org around. This massive database functions like Google’s cached pages, capturing and storing pages even when no one is paying attention to them.

After some searching in the archive, I found the missing issues from Volume 1. The dates and naming conventions are inconsistent and it took some work to reconstruct the correct order. For example, there are two issues labeled “Volume 2, No. 2″ on the cover and title page but no issue “Volume 1, No. 2″. I’m assuming that the issue from Fall 2004 is the missing issue in this local archive:

Updated: June 10, 2008, with new issue, Volume 4, No. 3.

Vol 1, No. 1 - Summer 2004	Vol 1, No. 2 - Fall 2004	Vol 1, No. 3 - Winter 2005
Vol 1, No. 4	Vol 2, No. 1	Vol 2. No. 2
Vol 2. No. 3	Vol 2. No. 4	Vol 3. No. 1
Vol 3. No. 2	Vol 3. No. 3	Vol 3. No. 4
Vol 4. No. 1	Vol 4. No. 2	Vol 4. No. 3

I’ve also recently added ‘Sort by Source‘ functionality into the citation system to allow users to view all citations, collected by source. There are several excellent journals where the bulk of this debate is occurring (ex. High Frontier Journal, Astropolitics) and this tool can help identify these sources.