Original subtitles

(gentle music)

For space science, like nuclear science

and all technology, has no conscience of its own.

Whether it will become a force for good or ill

depends on man, and only if the United States

occupies a position of preeminence

can we help decide whether this new ocean

will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.

(satellite beeping)

(explosion booming)

China carried out its first anti-satellite weapons test

on an old weather satellite about 500 miles up.

According to US government officials,

after three misses, China succeeded in shooting down

one of its own aging weather satellites.

The test may be part of China's efforts

to establish a military presence in space.

Does this mean the spy satellites the United States

depends on could be shot down?

They left behind a trail of garbage,

circling in orbit now, after they blew up the satellite.

It could leave us vulnerable, it could cripple us.

Is that what they're up to?

(target beeping) (dramatic music)

There are nations out there who are hostile to us,

and they are in space.

The threat to our space security is real.

(speaking in foreign language)

Security in space is a vital national interest.

The loss of access to space would threaten

the very stability of our nation.

If aimed at commercial satellites,

such an attack could bring US business

and industry to a halt.

Today China warned that a shooting war in space

would affect everyone on Earth.

Space could get more crowded,

and we're gonna need to have control

and defensive measures.

A treaty banning space weapons has failed.

A space war is in the cards.

Space is the backbone of our national security.

There is no substitute and there is no alternative

to military dominance in space.

This conviction should drive our course

for the next 50 years.

(satellite beeping)

(static crackling)

(suspenseful music)

In the mid-20th century,

humanity spun its first satellite into orbit.

Staking this new frontier provided a new arena for war.

Still, space is unscarred by battle, a sanctuary.

But humanity's compulsion to dominate

may ravage the expanse embracing our world,

and the world itself.

Whom can we trust to regulate our heavens?

Cesar Augustus came to power 27 years

before Christ was born.

People in the Roman empire lived better under Cesar Augustus

than they had in any empire on Earth

during any previous time.

Roads improved, pirates no longer

threatened ships on the high seas.

Life was so good during this time

that the period acquired a name.

It was and is still referred to as the Pax Romana,

which means the Roman peace.

Another period of peace has acquired a name.

It is called the Pax Americana, or the American peace.

(footsteps thudding) (organ music)

It refers to the period in which American influence

throughout the world has caused

a relative peace to come about.

Nowadays it seems the Pax Americana is threatened.

Most of us only feel peace when we're not at war,

but peace means the presence of a risen and alive Lord

in your life.

You may walk out every morning into a war zone,

the Lord won't take you out of the valley

of the shadow of death,

but he will lead you right through it.

And so it says in Isiah 54,

though the mountains be shaken and the hills removed,

yet my unfailing love you for you

will not be shaken, nor my covenant of peace be removed.

(organ music)

(footsteps thudding)

My name's Cadet First Class Colton Tuttle.

I'm a cadet at the Air Force Academy.

I graduate in 44 days, and I'm just hoping to do my part

to make sure that everyone here can enjoy their freedoms.

(marching music)

Pax Americana is a political view which simply says

that because America is currently the sole superpower

that it has not only the ability, but the responsibility

into the far future, to maintain world peace.

Eyes right.

I think our country has always played

a key role in maintaining world peace.

And now that responsibility also extends into space.

And so when countries like the Chinese

start attacking space assets,

it could lead to a serious crisis.

Hopefully we can talk to them before they start

making a big mess.

(dramatic music) (satellite beeping)

The United States, and particularly

its intelligence services,

worry about an attack on the United States

that is not nuclear weapons, that is not chemicals,

that is not biological, but is technological.

Global communications are embedded

in our daily lives.

Miles above our heads, beyond our awareness,

satellites manage our hyper-connected society.

(mechanical beeping)

If you look at space, lots of times you think about

the Hubble Telescope, or Mars probes,

but most people don't realize that they use

space every day.

(tense pop music)

When you open your cell phone to make a call.

When you take money out of the bank

with your ATM card.

Satellites bring you your TV shows

and live news from around the world.

You use them each time you rely on a positioning system

for air, for sea, for land traffic control,

and even in your own car.

There would be no weather forecasting,

disaster monitoring, without satellites.

Our entire life depends on satellites.

They're essential, but we're not conscious of that

until we lose it.

Today, at least 1,000 active satellites

circle the Earth.

45 nations own these satellites,

and most of the world uses their signals.

But the United States dominates as the owner

and user of space systems,

both civilian and military.

Bombs on target real-time battle management.

That's what we're about,

and that's what we are able to deliver

through space, air, land, and sea

and the capability of all of those to come together.

We started that in Desert Storm.

We've done that in each conflict since.

And we get better and better and better.

(explosions booming)

Since the first Gulf War,

the use of space has become vital

to all US military operations.

In the second Gulf War, during the Shock and Awe

air attack on Baghdad, the United States

used satellites to guide 71% of all the missiles it fired.

Space is the backbone of American military power.

Or is it its Achilles heel?

A surprise attack in space,

this is the ultimate nightmare.

By knocking out 50 US military satellites,

the Chinese could literally cripple the US military.

They could prevent the military from being able

to communicate with its forces.

They could blind the US intelligence community,

which uses electro-optic satellites

to determine military force movements around the world.

And they could also cripple the guidance systems

that are used on precision-guided munitions

that are satellite guided.

In many sense it could be

kind of an electronic Pearl Harbor.

(rocket engine roaring)

Without space, the US would be unable

to conduct any type of military operation

in an effective way.

There's a tremendous premium on the United States

being able to prevent other people

from attacking out assets in space,

and to ensure that we can continue to exercise

full use of them and if necessary,

also to be able to deny others

use of similar assets for their own purposes.

(suspenseful music)

The world has changed, as more and more

countries develop a presence in outer space,

the possibility of a space battle

is no longer science fiction.

Our new world requires new solutions.

Meet US Air Force Space Command.

This elite force is America's eye in the sky,

keeping watch over our interests high above the ground.

(airplane roaring)

Denial implies the use of force.

It's weapons from space to the ground.

If China recognizes that the military dominance

of the United States is utterly reliant upon space.

The United States is going to become

the world's policeman.

Does that title resonate with you?

Do you have any reactions to that?

Do you think it's accurate?

If it were accurate, how would it play out?

If you look at what was one of the first roles

of the United States Navy when it was established

was combating piracy. Absolutely.

And it if you look at potential commerce in space,

law enforcement and things like that

are going to be an important mission.

As more and more countries start using space

for security purposes and military purposes,

sooner or later they're gonna collide,

and sooner or later space will become

another arena for warfare.

For good or bad, and the same kind of ethics

that we apply to military force in the other environments

will apply to space.

You can obviously stretch any analogy

to the breaking point, but the space/sea analogy

I think is one of the more useful.

(explosions booming) (people yelling)

As the Dutch controlled the seas in the 1700s,

as the British tended to police and control the seas

from the 1800s and 1900s,

and as the United States has done in the 20th century

and will do in the 21st century.

And that is to ensure that commerce is unfettered.

Pirates and others, should they be out there,

are taken out.

We can do the same thing for space.

We can do so in a way that is good for everyone

and is good for ourselves.

It is policing the heavens for the good of all.

May I have the spelling of your vessel's name, Captain?

Few object when the United States Navy deploys

hundreds of heavily armed warships

in every one of the world's oceans.

No one accuses us of contributing

to the weaponization of the sea

because they know that the presence of our weapons

ensures free transit for all who pursue

their peaceful interests.

US systems based in space could similarly

patrol the commons for the good of all.

The US Air Force has been charged with the mission

of ensuring space access

and denying space access in times of conflict.

Can the United States Air Force

do this mission without weapons?

(wind gusting)

What constitutes a space weapon?

How much do we know about the ability

of the United States to police the heavens

and deny access to others?

Starfire has been used primarily in the past

to do research on satellite tracking.

Also they've done a lot of work in astronomy

with range finding of stars.

You use the laser to be able to help tell you

where the star is and how far away it is.

In the budget documents from the Air Force

there has also been mention of the use of Starfire

for anti-satellite weapons activities.

The Air Force told Congress that it had no intentions

of using Starfire for anything related to

anti-satellite weapons.

However, they are doing a test

to make the laser beam very skinny,

and make it stay very stable as it goes up,

and they're gonna target that on a satellite.

(tense music)

If you're tracking a satellite,

you don't need a very skinny laser beam.

In fact you want kind of a wide one,

'cause you want to make sure you catch it in the view.

So, many of us here are concerned

that this kind of a test is actually

an anti-satellite weapons test in disguise.

(suspenseful music)

In April of 2005, the Air Force launched

an experimental satellite.

It's name was the XSS-11.

Theoretically, this experimental micro-satellite

has the ability to disrupt other nation's satellites.

Has it done so, no.

Could it do so, (speaking in foreign language), okay.

But in reality, we don't know.

(electronic buzzing)

One of the things that I think people need to know

is that most technology that's used in space

can be used either for weapons purposes

or it can be used for totally benign, good purposes.

Lasers for tracking, good idea, more precise tracking.

Small micro-satellites that can go around a big satellite

and take pictures, good idea,

'cause it helps you figure out what went wrong

with your satellite, and that's

hard to do right now, good idea.

That same little micro-satellite that's going around

the big satellite could be sent up

to go around another person's satellite

and run into it and kill it.

(explosions booming)

The technology doesn't know whether it's a weapon

or whether it's a benign use.

The question is gonna come down to the intent

of the people who are building these systems.

(tense music)

How can we discern peaceful

or hostile intentions for any system projected into space?

How can we know that the weaponization of space

hasn't already begun?

(static crackling)

(tense music)

I'm the permanent professor and head

of the Department of Astronautics

here at the Air Force Academy.

We've been continually teaching the fundamentals

of astronautics to our cadets,

and every cadet that has graduated

from the Air Force Academy, almost 40,000 now,

have taken at least one course in our department.

This area right here, what's that called?

Bow shock. Bow shock, right.

And superimposed on this, of course we have a HEO,

highly elliptic orbit.

In military strategy it shows that if you want

to control the battlefield, you need to be the first

in seizing the high ground,

the most advanced frontier.

Whether it be land, sea, air, and now space,

the person that controls that has the advantage.

So making sure that we can deny our enemies space

is a huge advantage.

Military forces have always relied

upon high ground technologies to gain advantages.

In our own Civil War in the United States,

troops in the army, especially the Union Army,

used hot air balloons to get above the trees

and see where the enemy was,

and of course the first airplanes to be used

in World War I were essentially reconnaissance craft.

They were designed to fly up,

look and see where the enemy was placed.

Space then, has been called the ultimate high ground.

And the advantage to the state that can seize

and maintain the high ground is the same

as holding the high ground throughout history,

whether that was a hill, a mountain,

or in the latter half of the 20th century, the air space.

September 6, 1944.

Armed with over a ton of high explosives,

Germany's first tactical rocket now called the V2,

the vengeance weapon, is fired at London.

Hitler's army pioneered the new high ground

with the V2 rocket.

Vengeance weapon two was the first man-made object

projected through space on route to targets in Europe.

(children chattering)

(explosion booming)

(siren wailing)

A young SS officer, Werner von Braun,

was chief engineer for the design and manufacture of the V2.

This first ballistic missile sparked the interest

of a rich patron beyond Germany.

(tense music)

The Pentagon commissioned von Braun,

and his team of German rocketeers,

to design an improved version of the V2.

Von Braun spearheaded production of the Redstone,

the first American ballistic missile.

It propelled him to the highest sphere

of military and scientific influence.

Werner von Braun ultimately became associate

director of NASA, and his former Nazi scientists

functioned as collaborators with the US military

in looking towards space as a new arena of war.

(dramatic music)

Gentlemen, will you please take your seats

so we can begin today's conference.

I take a great deal of pleasure in presenting

to you today as our guest speaker, Dr. Werner von Braun.

Gentlemen, the conquest of outer space

is the greatest technological challenge

of the age in which we live.

On the right side of this picture

you see a large wheel-shaped space station.

This, of course, offers tremendous possibilities

to reconnaissance, both in the civilian sense

as in the military sense.

These Nazi scientists, these Nazi space scientists

that came to this country under Project Paperclip

developed schemes to essentially control the Earth

from space with space-based weapons.

It seems even feasible to use such a platform in space

as a base for the bombing of objects on the ground.

And is my opinion that such bombing

could be carried out with an unprecedented accuracy

from such a station.

Then, October 4, 1957,

Russia shocks the free world.

The USSR hurls into orbit the world's first

Earth satellite, Sputnik 1.

The Soviets are now the unquestionable leaders

in the race for space.

We've been assigned the mission of launching

a scientific Earth satellite.

I promised the Secretary of the Army

that we would be ready in 90 days or less.

Let's go, Werner.

10, nine, eight, seven, six, five,

four, three.

Werner von Braun met the US military's

90 day deadline.

His modified V2 launched the first

American satellite into orbit.

The space race was on.

News has flashed of the long awaited event.

America has her satellite in orbit.

How would nations legislate this new realm?

Well I joined the American diplomatic service

in 1958, and I was assigned to the United Nations

political office, and I was 22 years old.

I was the youngest foreign service officer

in the State Department, and they said

why don't you handle the multilateral aspects

of our space program?

We just put our first satellites into space,

and they said you're in charge.

And I said you've got to be kidding,

I'm only 22, and they said that's your job.

Today outer space is free.

It is unscarred by conflict.

No nation holds a concession there.

It must remain this way.

Nothing was settled when we started.

For instance, who owns outer space?

Who owns the Moon, who owns Mars?

Was it the situation like Columbus

discovering the new world?

And he says I lay claim to America.

In the name of the King and Queen of Spain.

Could we do that, could the Russians do that?

So that was a big question.

And the other question is,

are we gonna use outer space for peaceful purposes,

or for military and aggressive purposes?

We must develop new concepts which enable us

let's say something like 10 years from now,

to land parties on the Moon,

to decide whether we want to have a face on the Moon,

for scientific or military purposes.

We thought to ourselves can't there be one part,

one sector that is free of weapons?

But when it got the peaceful uses question

I ran into the Department of Defense

and they said no we don't want to give up

the idea of putting weapons into outer space.

We'll go along with not having weapons

of mass destruction in outer space,

but we're not gonna sign on a treaty

where we can't put up weapons.

(dramatic music)

I lost, the State Department lost,

the Department of Defense won.

And we ended up with a treaty, the 1967 treaty,

which said you can't orbit weapons of mass destruction,

but it did not prohibit other weapons.

World leaders, compelled by the influence

of the Defense Department,

endorsed the militarization of space.

(frightening operatic music)

Nuclear weapons were now banned from space,

but on Earth they were proliferating.

With both sections of this divided world

in possession of unbelievably destructive weapons,

mankind approaches the state

where mutual annihilation becomes a possibility.

First, satellites in themselves, have no direct

present effect upon the nation's security.

However, there is real military significance

to these launchings.

(rocket engine roaring)

Dreading nuclear attack,

the US and USSR longed to know the position and power

of its enemy's stockpiles.

Each dispatched satellites to spy, day and night,

over the other's arsenal.

The military contest to occupy the ultimate

high ground had begun.

The United States plotted the next step

to weaponize space, covertly, in the early 80s.

June 12, 1982.

There was a huge demonstration in New York City that day.

Almost a million people were protesting

against nuclear weapons, at that time

the height of the Cold War between the United States

and the former Soviet Union.

I watched it on television.

And after it was over, they cut away

to a right-wing conference.

And the speaker that day was a man

by the name of Lieutenant General Daniel Graham.

And at that time he was Ronald Reagan's head of SDI,

Strategic Defense Initiative.

Someone said, General Graham, aren't you worried about

that demonstration in New York today?

They say there's almost a million people there

protesting against nuclear weapons.

He said, no I think it's fantastic.

They're out there protesting against

intercontinental ballistic missiles,

and we're moving into space.

They don't have a clue.

Let 'em keep doing what they're doing.

(rocket engine roaring)

(joints clanking and hissing)

(rocket engine booming and roaring)

What if we could intercept and destroy

strategic ballistic missiles before they reached

our own soil or that of our allies?

It will take years, probably decades,

of effort on many fronts.

There'll be failures and set backs,

just as there will be successes and breakthroughs.

But isn't it worth every investment necessary

to free the world from the threat of nuclear war?

My fellow Americans, tonight we're launching an effort

which holds the promise of changing the course

of human history.

I ask for your prayers and your support.

Thank you, good night.

When I joined the staff of the Committee

on Armed Services in the US House of Representatives

back in 1985, my first assignment was to investigate

and oversee the Strategic Defense Initiative.

This was President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program.

This new national strategy represents

a break from the dangerous policy

of mutual assured destruction.

In Ronald Reagan's version of Star Wars,

the new Space Shuttle would deploy the force.

When our reconnaissance systems verify

a Soviet launch, US interceptors are fired

as level one defense goes into action.

Batteries of orbiting weapons would be poised

to defeat a nuclear attack before it reached US air space.

At the time the prevailing view was

that this was going to work,

that the technology was almost in hand,

and that this was gonna change everything.

I remember the briefing I got from my staff director

who said not just anti-missile systems,

but all major weapons systems were gonna move to space.

That space was the new high ground,

even then we talked about it in that way,

where all major military operations

were gonna be by the end of that century.

It was a debate of stellar proportions.

The nation's number one star gazer

versus the Pentagon's chief of star wars.

It cannot protect the population of the United States.

It can be by the Soviets overwhelmed,

outfoxed, under flown.

I, for one, am not willing and able

to just accept the idea that it can't work.

Most Star Wars plans proved too fanciful,

and went no further than animations

devised for publicity.

But the US military stayed committed to Star Wars.

As the US became the sole superpower,

the Pentagon maintained its plan to use space weapons

against enemy attacks.

Star Wars resurfaced in the early 21st century,

under a new name, missile defense.

(terrifying music)

We need a new framework

that allows us to build missile defenses

to counter the different threats of today's world.

I hope we'll also move forward on ballistic

missile defense cooperation.

We must develop and we must deploy

effective missile defenses.

Back in 2000 when President Bush took office,

he and his cadre of people that surrounded him,

you think of Paul Wolfowitz,

you think of Donald Rumsfeld,

you think of Dick Cheney,

all of them really only had two priorities.

One was to get rid of Saddam Hussein,

the second was to build a missile defense system.

Good morning.

I've just concluded a meeting

of my national security council.

We reviewed what I discussed with my friend,

President Vladimir Putin,

over the course of many meetings and many months.

And that is the need for America

to move beyond the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile treaty.

When George W. Bush became president,

immediately he gave six month notice to Russia

that we were pulling out, the United States

is pulling out of the ABM treaty.

The Anti Ballistic Missile treaty,

that limited the United States' ability to test and deploy

anti-satellite weapons, so-called missile defense systems,

and other space technology.

At the Pentagon today, a warning

that space will become the next big battle ground.

To meet the challenge, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

is making space a top Pentagon priority,

putting a four star general at the head

of a new Air Force space command

to take charge of all military space activity.

Including any new anti-missile defense.

Pay careful attention to protecting,

promoting our interest in space.

Pentagon officials say it's the first step

toward eventually putting weapons into space.

Mr. Secretary the budget proposes

spending $8.3 billion on the full range

of ballistic missile defense programs.

This is an increase over last year of nearly 60%,

or three billion dollars.

It is a lot of the tax payer's money,

on the other hand, the President intends to have

ballistic missile defense to protect the population

centers of the United States as well as of our

friends and allies and deployed forces.

(suspenseful music)

I have a valid missile event.

I agree, that's a valid event.

You have two per track, zero zero zero one.

Today's Air Force fights missile defense

war games, in which so-called rogue nations

attack American cities.

Possible impact in San Francisco, sir.

In reality, who would launch such attacks

against the USA?

The interesting thing is that the threat

is actually shrinking, not increasing.

The ballistic missile threat is declining.

There are far fewer ballistic missiles in the world now

than there were 15 years ago.

There are fewer countries with ballistic missile programs.

There are fewer hostile countries to the United States

with ballistic missile programs.

When you look at it, it really comes down

to a handful of states whose programs we worry about,

North Korea and Iran basically,

and they only have medium-range missiles.

That is, they can't reach the United States.

(unsettling music)

From Ronald Reagan onwards,

every President has secured funding for missile defense

under various guises.

Using various funds, for a total of at least $200 billion.

Are US taxpayers getting what they pay for?

It's a con, it's a con.

Missile defense is the greatest fraud

in the Department of Defense,

and believe me it's had a lot of competitors.

I really believe this.

Missile defense is the longest running fraud

in the history of the US Department of Defense.

If a ballistic strike is implausible,

why repel it at such cost from space?

What if missile defense disguised ambitions broader

than destroying only missiles?

There's gonna be an inherent anti-satellite capability

with any ballistic missile defense system,

regardless of whether it's located in space or elsewhere.

And I think that that's effectively unavoidable.

Targeting a ballistic missile is some sense

is more different than targeting a satellite,

and therefor targeting a satellite

is almost always a capability that's associated

with missile defense system.

In February 2008, the United States destroyed

a disabled satellite of its own

with missile defense interceptors.

The US demonstrated that these interceptors,

also called kill vehicles,

can obliterate any satellite in low-Earth orbit.

Missile defense is a Trojan horse.

It has nothing to do with defense whatsoever.

It's all about projecting power.

It's about offense.

I've been to the bases in Colorado Springs

and I've personally seen over the door where it says

Master of Space.

And I've read the documents Vision for 2020,

and a whole array of other military

space command documents that have said for years

that the US will control space,

that we will dominate space.

That we will deny other countries access to space.

We, 5% of the world's population,

in the United States, are gonna deny other countries

access to space.

I mean absolutely provocative.

I would tell you that we are so dominant in space

that I pity a country that would come up against us.

The synergy with air, land, and sea forces

and our ability to control the battle space

and seize the high ground is devastating.

(mumbles) 38 Addison.

Section eight, AFTEC one's open.

Com is good.

We have no open jobs, vis until 1727.

America now has the chance to establish

and American empire, Pax Americana.

That will last for many, many decades.

And one of the ways to do this is to establish

strong American control of space.

(unsettling music)

By advancing space weaponry,

the United States nurtures its economy,

and its fear of control.

It guard interests at home, and to the outermost frontiers,

in the tradition of empires.

If you look at history, countries,

including the United States,

had to first develop armies to defend themselves.

So the United States needed an army to defend itself

against the indigenous population,

who we were exterminating as we expanded

across the national territory.

And to defend ourselves against Mexico

when we stole half of Mexico and so on and so forth.

For that you needed armies, and so intervention, and so on.

And then countries also build navies

like the British had to develop a navy

to defend themselves against people in India

and Africa and so on.

And as they described it, they're pretty frank about it,

they say they had to develop navies to protect

commercial interests and investment.

And the same with us.

And now there's a new frontier, space,

and we have to move on to control space

in order to protect commercial interests and investments.

(upbeat music)

Welcome to the future.

The place you go when you say here's too bigger profits,

better business, brighter prospects,

and a bottom line that just won't quit.

Think big.

Big tax advantages, big business opportunities,

big profits, and the hottest Fortune 500 industries

in the world are taking advantage of them.

Which means, whether you're looking to relocate,

expand, or conquer the known universe

with your own special vision of the capitalist's dream,

they can help make it happen.

Please welcome the creator of Air Force Space,

General Kevin Chilton.

It's nice to be here in Colorado Springs

for this great gathering.

I think it's fitting that we're here in Colorado,

because I think it was, I know it was,

25 years ago when the first commander

of Air Force Space Command stood up the flag here,

General James Hardinger.

He said that Colorado Springs would become the nation's

military space capital, and indeed it has.

(soft rock music)

In Colorado Springs you will find

a different kind of base of both direct military

and military contractors approaching one third

of the entire population.

And when you think about it, that is a big number.

(people chattering)

The industrialists are now saying

we're not gonna make cars anymore.

We're not gonna make clothes in America anymore.

We're not gonna make this and that in America anymore.

We're gonna make weapons.

This is our space tracking surveillance system.

And this is a more advanced version of a

missile detections satellite,

to detect, track, and discriminate missiles in flight.

So this finds them, somebody else shoots them down.

Here at Lockheed Martin we have

all kinds of cool stuff.

We're working on some of the world's most important

and spectacular technologies,

and we're the best in the world at what we do.

While most US industries struggle

to endure a recession, the weaponization of space

still feeds thriving corporations with contracts.

(rock music)

♪ Keep on ridin' ♪

Now here on our right we see one of the new guys

in town, SI International.

Companies that are growing very quickly

that no one has heard of before,

such as L3 Communications,

Sparta, these are names that are not familiar

names to people, and yet they are the new

strong players in military contractors.

You have The Aerospace Corporation on your right.

You have Mitre Corporation on your left.

♪ Ridin' ♪

As we cross over here, you will see

a Lockheed Martin plant.

Now here to our right is Northrop Grumman.

Northrop Grumman has always been a big contractor,

but a couple of years ago it bought out TRW Corporation,

and so now it is one of the biggest

military contractors in the world.

This is the kind of new growth we are seeing

in Colorado Springs.

Out of every tax dollar in the United States today,

50 cents out of every single tax dollar

goes to the Pentagon.

For past wars, for current wars, for future wars.

We are being made into a warrior culture, if you will.

Nearly three quarters of a million

remarkable individuals serving their country,

and they all believe they have the best job in the world.

How cool is it to be able to go home at night

and tell your kids that you fly satellites

at geosynchronous orbit?

That is great stuff.

How cool is it to know that you operate

the most powerful radars in the planet

and surveil the heavens, that you operate telescopes

that are critical to national defense?

How cool is it to tell people that you are responsible

for maintaining nuclear missiles on alert

for the defense of this country?

This is a cool business that we are in.

Join us, America's Air Force.

No one comes close.

This is our larger laboratory,

and off to this side we have freshman,

or first year cadets, working on components

of our Falcon Sat-5 satellite

that we're in the process of designing.

And we'll be testing those at Kirtland Air Force Base

in New Mexico.

Since I was a kid, I've been fascinated

with aviation and space exploration.

So after high school I started looking at colleges,

and the Air Force looked really cool

because I could learn about space technology

and satellite design,

so the Air Force Academy was just the natural choice.

Present arms.

I like number four.

Right there. Earth four.

Awesome!

We're at the Air Force STARBASE La Luz Academy

at Kirtland Air Force Base,

and we've got students working on

a engineering piece of software

to design a space station.

So if they were trying to present their model

to somebody to buy or to be excited about.

Oh, that's cool.

There are all kinds of stories across the country now

where young people in their schools

are being indoctrinated at very young ages

in this warrior culture, and in new space technology.

Each year, over 50,000 children

are educated in space technology

at military bases in most states across the US.

The Pentagon takes a long term view,

seeking to enlist generations of youth

in ritually subsidized aerospace careers.

It's extremely important for us to have

students learning about science, technology,

engineering, and mathematics.

As our workforce continues to age,

we need to make sure that we have

young people in the pipeline that are interested

in filling those career slots

that our current scientists and engineers are in.

(tense rock music)

I would argue there is no better time than today

for us all to commit to a future of excellence

and leadership fueled by the next generation

of our airmen.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're ready today,

with our great industry partners,

with you at our side we'll be ready for tomorrow.

God bless you, and thank you very much.

(audience clapping)

The Pentagon has said that moving the arms race

into space will be the largest industrial project

in the history of the planet Earth.

They can't take any chances.

They have to have an enemy.

They have to make the people afraid.

Someone's gonna attack us with nuclear weapons.

We've got to have missile defense

in order to protect us from attack.

Iraq, one of the rogue states.

Iran, North Korea.

And now they throw China into that equation.

Wait a minute.

What about the Chinese threat?

Didn't China, like the US, show that it can destroy

orbiting satellites?

Isn't China trying to gain military superiority in space?

(garbled chatter)

The threat to our space security is real.

Kind of an electronic Pearl Harbor.

That could only be aimed at the United States.

There are individuals who are hyping

the Chinese threat saying that it's imminent,

that it's aggressive, that they plan to launch

a preemptive massive attack

on US space systems in the Pacific,

to which they call a space Pearl Harbor.

And they often look for these stories,

these sensational stories, in newspapers or tabloids.

And these publications tend not to be very reliable.

For example, this parasite satellite story.

Where a Hong Kong tabloid published a bit of information

it got off of a Chinese website.

And then this made it into US Pentagon reports to Congress.

And nobody ever bothered to figure out

if this original Chinese website source

was credible or not.

And as it turns out, the person who was posting this,

it was on his personal web page.

His sort of own personal blog.

And he was really just sort of making it up.

And if you look at all of the other things

on his site, which include things like pictures

of scantily clad women, and sensational photographs

of secret weapons systems,

he's clearly not a credible source of information.

They didn't bother to trace the information to its source.

Which took us about six hours to do.

For the last three years the Pentagon

has been trying to make China the new boogeyman,

and China unwittingly played into the United States hands

with its anti-satellite test.

(rocket engine roaring)

At the time, I was at a conference in Colorado Springs

and the military officers in the room

actually left to watch the test in real time.

So they were observing the actual Chinese

anti-satellite test.

We know about every space launch.

We know about every rocket launch.

We have reconnaissance and surveillance satellites

that can detect all these.

We detected the Chinese test, for example,

and in fact, we detected the two previous

Chinese tests that failed.

So we know about this, it's extremely difficult to hide

space tests, they're one of the most observable

weapons tests you can possibly imagine.

(explosion booming)

What was the point of China's display

of destruction?

The reason is simple.

They want to give you a signal, a warning.

So the warning must be known by the other side.

In effect, the Chinese were saying.

You want to be dominant in space, you deal with us.

China intended to alert the world

to US plans for military dominance of space.

And China warned it will confront that ambition.

It is able and willing to destroy US weapons in space.

We wouldn't really want to see, in the future,

an Earth surrounded by an outer layer

of weapons which will make mankind

even more vulnerable than the situation today.

China offered a preview

of the deadly contest that would start

if the US positions weapons in space.

How close is that risk?

The US military is developing what the Air Force,

in particular, has called prompt global strike.

That is basically currently we have nuclear missiles

that could strike anywhere on Earth within 30 minutes.

What the military is talking about

is a similar conventional capability

that could be used to knock out say a Chinese

anti-satellite weapons launcher in a matter of minutes.

(explosion booming)

A number of concepts are being studied with this notion

of prompt global strike.

One is a orbiting space plane that would

have the capability to be able to maneuver

and also to fire weapons at a much faster pace

than is currently the case.

Another is a space satellite that would actually have

missiles on it that could be fired from space

and reach a target in literally five to 10 minutes

as opposed to the current 30 minutes.

We're talking about a satellite system

called Rods from God which can put

heavy tungsten metal rods from satellites

onto the Earth to penetrate bunkers.

All that's being developed.

We've spent billions of dollars on research

on these weapons.

And a number of these weapons are getting ready for testing.

Were they deployed in orbit,

global strike systems could hit 100 targets

on Earth at once, at nearly 7,000 miles an hour.

They wouldn't be weapons of mass destruction,

as defined in UN resolutions,

but the destructive impact of a Rod from God

would match that of a nuclear warhead.

Satellites can identify a target

through overhead imagery, process communications

about the target between military decision makers,

and then guide a bomb precisely enough

to destroy the target with one shot.

Would it really be that big a step

if a projectile itself were also launched from space?

There's no practical difference,

and I'd venture to say that the person

on the receiving end wouldn't see the distinction either.

(dramatic music)

In the high tech field there's a notion

called normal accident.

It means the kind of accident that is going to take place,

unpredictably, in any complicated system.

Like anyone who owns a computer

knows about normal accidents.

Every once in a while the thing just crashes

for some unexplained reason.

And when you get to much more complex systems,

of course that's gonna happen.

With all our technology, we know bloody well

that we cannot be assured absolutely 100%

that our bombs, so-called think bombs, smart bombs,

are hitting the targets.

We know from Afghanistan and Iraq alone

in the last few years that that's a fallacy.

You are hitting civilian people.

You are not hitting the Iraqi bases.

What you are doing is wrong.

How much worse would the probability

of hitting the wrong target or hitting ourselves

from outer space would be.

We have no way of calculating that, it's not possible.

At least one weapon could go awry and land in Iowa,

or New York City, or God knows where, you know.

That's a reality, and if we don't accept that,

well we're just whistling in the dark.

And we're gonna be victims of our own technology.

(electronic whooshing)

(dramatic music)

The rest of the world understands that the US

is planning to militarize space, of course.

So there have been efforts to renew and extend

the outer space treaty.

This says weapons of mass destruction can't be in space.

Doesn't say other things,

and there have been attempts to renew it

just to affirm it and to strengthen it.

The US blocks it every year.

It is 160 to one, 170 to one.

The United States is the only nation

actually voting against this.

We're isolated on this issue.

(tense music)

It would be nice to think that space weaponization

is prevented not because there's a huge outcry against it,

although that would be an interesting prospect too,

but because no one, including our own nation,

has the money to spend on this anymore.

But in an era when the United States still maintains

a $500 billion military budget every year,

I don't think we can count on that happening.

It's really insane.

We are willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars

over the years to develop space control means

that a treaty would take care of,

would make unnecessary.

If we had the will to negotiate such a treaty,

if we took the lead we could get one.

It wouldn't be easy, it would be a very difficult

thing to do, but it could be done.

How can a treaty ban all

anti-satellite weaponry?

A ground-based laser, a conventional missile,

and most orbiting systems can be used

to demolish satellites.

Could a treaty guarantee that kill vehicles

would only target missiles,

not satellites or Earth-bound objects?

Opponents of a new treaty argue that such promises

are untenable, and too late.

Weaponization of space has happened a long time ago.

This idea that it's a pristine environment,

that if only we stop where we are right now

all will be well, is simply nonsense.

And it's even more foolish to think

that somehow we can stuff this genie into a bottle.

We do indeed need a United Nations treaty.

This is not enough, this is only step one.

Step two says okay, space has been militarized,

there are military networks in space,

many of them like GPS are useful,

but we should work on international treaties

to make those military space networks

used for multilateral purposes.

Do I think that's going to happen?

I'm very doubtful, but I have to keep hoping

and believing that there is a prospect for that.

Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama.

(crowd cheering)

I will cut tens of billions of dollars

in wasteful spending.

I will cute investments in unproven

missile defense systems.

I will not weaponize space.

Those fearing the weaponization of space

could find hope in Barak Obama's election.

As soon as he took office,

the White House announced it would be seeking

a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere

with military and commercial satellites.

(unsettling music)

But it proved tough to change decades

of entrenched military policy to weaponize space.

Obama's 2010 defense budget requested close

to a billion dollars that was applicable

to space warfare systems.

It included a new program called offensive counterspace,

which the Pentagon defined as offensive measures

to disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy

any adversary's space capabilities.

History suggests that nations do not voluntarily disarm.

They disarm because they're defeated.

Or they make small adjustments in the way they

buy, and build, and deploy their weapons.

But no superpower says you know it would be better

if we were weaker.

I don't recall that ever happening.

(rock music)

Two. Yeah.

Three, four.

Five, six.

Seven, eight.

Nine, 10, 11.

It's hard to obtain space superiority

without attacking, so I'm afraid that

if we want space superiority we're gonna have to attack

and use assets which, I don't know if you know much

about orbital mechanics, but if you created debris

up in space, that would just get in the way for you as well,

and it would kind of start a chain reaction.

And pretty soon you just have a cloud of debris

surrounding Earth.

About 600,000 fragments rush through space,

at 10 times the velocity of a rifle bullet.

All of these objects are traveling

at 14,000 miles an hour.

So even an object the size of a pea

traveling at that speed has more force

than a cannonball.

(debris whooshing)

Right now, the problem with space junk is so high

that NASA is worried that if there is never another launch

of anything into space, because every launch

creates a little bit of debris.

In 50 years time certain orbits will be so polluted

that nobody can operate there.

Because the stuff that's already up there

will start breaking up and creating more and more clutter.

(explosion booming)

A satellite's destruction

unleashes a storm cloud of debris

that fouls the space around our planet

and threatens anything in orbit.

The point really is, is creation of debris

in this manner a good idea or a bad idea.

And clearly it is a very bad idea,

because there's no way to go up and clean that up.

The more times you go into space and you begin

to practice destroying other satellites,

you create so much space junk

that you literally create the very likely possibility

that at some point in time you will not be able

to get a rocket off the planet Earth.

Because it'll be like a mine field around the planet.

And you won't be able to escape the mine field

with that rocket because it would be destroyed

by all the space junk there.

So we've got to begin to look at space

as an environment.

(satellite trilling)

(explosion booming)

We have several hundred billion dollars

of investment in the peaceful uses of outer space.

I'm talking about weather satellites,

positioning satellites, scientific satellites.

The entire world communication network

is all satellite oriented.

All this incredible investment from the United States

and from the European Union and Canada

and other countries like this,

all this is completely in jeopardy

if we start putting weapons in outer space.

How would our world change if we lost

the use of satellites?

Day one, 6:15 a.m., communication satellites

hovering over the Americas fall mute.

Over a swath of the globe GPS coverage collapses.

Atomic clocks on GPS satellites

can't transmit Universal Standard time.

The synchronization of massive infrastructures snaps.

350 million cell phones are disabled.

Hundreds of millions of internet connections vanish.

Around the world card payments and bank accounts freeze.

Billions of dollars are sucked from industries

and businesses triggering a financial crash.

News services are crippled.

City streets reliant on GPS for traffic management

are in chaos.

Electrical grids lose synchronization.

Wide zones of continents are blinded by blackouts.

Coast Guards are deaf to ship's distress calls.

Dozens of aircraft are missing.

Air traffic controllers are fighting panic.

Worldwide flights are grounded or called back.

By midnight there's been a cascade of traffic,

train, boat, and aircraft accidents.

So far the world has avoided such a catastrophe.

But a space war would kill satellites

and blast tons of wreckage into orbit.

The system we rely on would shatter.

And be impossible to restore.

The time is 6:25, and this is a special

as part of the conference on world affairs.

We're discussing the militarization of space.

There is a point in time, that may be rapidly closing,

where the United States could dominate space to such point

where the would be no arms race.

Frankly I don't think it's doable.

I think the march of technology will mean that even

if we get a lead on other nations in attempting to do that,

that sooner or later we will again be challenged.

It's kind of like what happened after World War II.

We had the atomic bomb, nobody else had the atomic bomb.

We thought we had a big exclusive

and with our atomic weaponry

we would be able to dominate the Earth.

That didn't last very long.

The Soviets had an atomic bomb,

the Chinese had an atomic.

Likewise, in space, to think that we could move up there

with weaponry and be alone to be the king on the, uh,

the throne of space is a tragic miscalculation.

(somber music)

India has been discussing whether or not

it needs to build its own anti-satellite weapons.

You can be sure if India does it

Pakistan will be thinking about it in a heartbeat as well.

Israel has also been discussing this issue.

So what you see now is the potential

for a domino effect.

(dramatic music)

Few nations will willingly submit

to US supremacy in space.

Some will try to topple the US.

Others scramble for a foothold.

Enemies will vie in leaping ahead.

Stable and unstable nations will be

dragged into the race.

The European Union opposes the weaponization of space.

But for how long?

Russia would plunge into the contest.

It has committed to destroying any weapon

the US positions in orbit.

If Americans deploy space-based anti-ballistic

missile defenses then could you imagine interceptors

based on space stations, military stations,

would overfly territory of Russia

or territory of China, that would be considered

as quite unacceptable, I think, for Russians.

The potential victims are not going to say

here's my throat please cut it.

They know that they're a potential target,

and if the US were to develop space weapons

they'd be completely defenseless

unless they destroyed it somehow,

or developed a deterrent.

And deterrents are known.

For example nuclear weapons are a deterrent,

terror is a deterrent.

That's why aggressive militarism

leads to an extension of proliferation and terror.

(suspenseful music)

During the Cold War humankind feared

that in a series of blinding flashes

the world would become an untended graveyard.

(wind whooshing)

Thousands of nuclear weapons are still maintained

around the world, on hair trigger alert.

The weaponization of space could detonate this arsenal.

(siren wailing)

So any anxiety induced by putting weapons in space

or launching weapons from space down to Earth,

could induce, by accident, by human fallibility,

by design, by terrorist takeover,

the launching of up to 9,000 hydrogen bombs

inducing a short ice age and the death

of most creatures on the planet.

We're on the edge of the nuclear precipice,

about to be annihilated.

If we move to weaponization of space,

we can bid farewell to the planet.

The chances of survival are very slight.

(somber dramatic music)

(footsteps thudding)

When you, all your life, have been told that

America is a exceptional nation,

that we are different from the rest,

when you're told that all your life,

you begin to believe it.

(crowd cheering)

I was in the Air Force.

I was a young Republican for Nixon.

And I grew up on the military bases

behind the barbed wire fences.

And so everything I really was taught

and was trained in was militarism

and a conservative way of being,

conservative way of seeing the world.

(crowd cheering)

But now I personally have learned

that what America is doing is not about defense,

it's about offense.

It's about an aggressive military doctrine

that talks about control and domination.

I really went through an entire transformation.

Everything that I knew was different.

But one thing wasn't different,

one thing always remained.

I realized I had a good heart,

even as a conservative, as a young follower of the military.

I had a good heart, I had a good intention.

And I realized that many people

in the military are that way.

That they have a good heart, they mean well.

They're doing what they think is the right thing to do.

They want to protect the country.

There are moments that will truly test the leader

within you, test whether you will take the hard path

or the easy path.

The wrong path or the right path.

Most people want to have a good heart,

and that when you challenge them to think

it doesn't mean that they change overnight,

I didn't change overnight.

It took me some time behind those gates

on that military base for me to make my change,

but it's all about initiating that change.

The willingness always to take the right path,

even if it's the hard path, is called character.

In every aspect of your life,

whether personal or professional,

you must always maintain the courage of your convictions.

Your personal integrity.

(crowd cheering)

We're living in a very, very dangerous time.

And there's hardly any alarm in this area

across the board, I mean people are just,

they're so inundated with so many things.

You know just making a living, just getting through the day,

just trying to remain sane in all this insanity

that's going on,

that it's hard to get their attention

and saying oh wait a minute, I know you think it's bad,

I got news for you, it's a lot worse.

People don't want to hear that, you know.

So we have to find a way to alert people

to the reality of what's going on.

And that's not an easy task.

Let's prevent something terrible from happening

before it does for once.

Usually we're trying to bring back weapons systems

after they've been deployed, nuclear missiles.

We're trying to bring them back.

Here's an opportunity, one of the first times in history,

actually, that we have a chance to be proactive.

That we have a chance to stop a new arms race

before it actually happens.

That's why this moment is so crucial.

The debate over space weaponization

is the most critical debate for the next century.

And we are one the verge of making decisions

in many nations around the world about which path to choose.

(cheering)

Congratulations, and may God watch over

all of you and these United States.

(engines roaring)

Lord, we pray today that you would allow us

to worship in spirit and in truth

as we go out into the world.

Can the high ground that nations seek

be the moral high ground?

Or are we doomed to pursue only the high ground

of military advantage?

Many nations are showing themselves

unwilling to find global peace

under the command of one.

Can the US show leadership

rather than strive for supremacy?

Rather than insisting on a Pax Americana,

can the US steer a union of nations

towards a Pax Universalis,

a peace for all the world.

In Christ's name we pray, amen.

(cheering)

(dramatic music)

What kind of a peace do we seek?

Not a Pax Americana,

enforced on the world by American weapons of war.

I am talking about genuine peace.

The kind of peace that makes life on Earth worth living.

Not merely peace for Americans

but peace for all men and women.

Not merely peace in our time, but peace in all times.

(dramatic music)

(suspenseful music)