Inside the Space Force’s unconstrained first days

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Time Markers

00:00 – Episode introduction00:46 – Terran Orbital01:07 – Welcome01:15 – What was it like to start the Space Force?04:33 – On convergence of the sectors07:27 – The opportunities & challenges of relying on commercial10:33 – On protecting space assets13:33 – Regulatory frameworks and mischief17:23 – On data centers in space20:24 – What the path forward looks like?23:36 – Space Takes – NASA Budget, Jared Isaacman, Elon Musk33:36 – Space Takes – China’s “Starship”

Transcript – General John Show Conversation

David Ariosto – Well, I’d love to start this conversation with Space Force. You know, 2019, new, new arm of the military, new mandate. Lot of questions about what this means. What was that like, not only being an early part of it, but what were the conversations like within the military and within Washington and at that time?

John Shaw – Yeah. Well, yeah, I could, we could spend quite a bit of time just talking about that. I know you want to cover different topics, you know, I look back on now, this is five years ago. You know where I was at the time. I was the commander of 14th Air Force out at Vandenberg, now Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, but Vandenberg Air Force Base and and that was a pretty large organization at the time, was all of our space ops and our space training and test and tax development and the launch wings, all in one large organization, and, and, and I’m going to make it I’ll try to make it as concise as I can, but basically, when the president we saw it come in, we prepared. We thought about, how do we need to do things? How should we organize for a Space Force? How are we might be going to reorganize? What do we think about at the end of it, though, when, when it actually got passed as part of the NDA, and the President signed it, you know, I got told right away you can’t be 14th Air Force anymore, because you’re not part of the Air Force. You’re part of the space and so, so come up with a name, you know? And so Space Operations Command was born at that kind of same moment. We had to change our name, and I remember myself and my Command Chief, Chief Pennsylvania, who’s now the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force. You know, we put out a memo to the troops that said, Hey, we’re changing our name, but our our legacy kind of continues as the as the space war.

Fighters and so in the aftermath of that, and that also was COVID Year 2020. Was, it was, I would say, it was a lot of asking ourselves, what can we do different now that we are now unconstrained by, you know, and not to say anything too pejorative about the Air Force, but when you’re part of a broader organization that’s got a lot of its own culture, a lot of its way of doing things, you kind of have to align to that. And I saw that in a lot of my previous jobs, when I was in the Air Force. But now that we weren’t part of that air force anymore, we’re unconstrained. Most it was like, What can we do different How can we do this better and faster, and how can we, even as a new service, set an example for the rest of the department on how to, you know, quickly move to the to the sound of the gun, so to speak with with the threats we were facing the domain. And how do we do it? So it was a very exciting time, and we made a lot of decisions, you know, led, led by General Raymond as the first chief of space operations on how to organize, how to think about our culture and just that, just that thing. I think it continues today, this idea that it can be a different service. You can do things differently. Your next question to me, and I’ll anticipate it would be, is, has the Space Force moved as rapidly as you thought? And I would say, No, it hasn’t. And there’s lots of reasons for that too. But even now, I think we’re still seeing that positive progress being made by this face the Space Force as an independent war fighting service, particularly in some of the documents that have come out this year from the Space Force.

David Ariosto – Well, you know, it’s so interesting the context that that not only was the creation of this new arm within the military taking shape, but it was taking shape at a time of sort of pivotal transition for the industry itself. So, you know, see this explosion of commercial space that happened over the course of the last decade, in tandem with sort of the growing recognition of this quote, unquote, ultimate high ground that the military wanted to take, and had to take, take advantage of. And I’m wondering, like, if you can look at that in the context of what’s happening now, sort of fast forward a little bit in terms of, there’s a pretty different and bigger reliance on the commercial players right now. SpaceX, obviously, is in the catbird seat in a lot of different ways. But you know, when we look at plans for Golden Dome, this missile shield, we talk about China, you know, and other actors, not, you know, withstanding Russia, North Korea and others really developing some of these newfangled technologies like hypersonics. It seems like we’re at this inflection point into when it comes to the military, when it comes to space, and how the commercial sector fits into that, I guess is a question.

John Shaw – Yeah, I think so there’s a talk I give called the third space age, and we don’t need to get into it now. And if your listeners want to google it, I’m sure they can find or written or talked about it. But this idea that, and really the both the ultimate ideas, exactly like you said, we’re at this interesting convergence of of the sectors, not only commercial and national security, but also the civil side. David, right, is there’s going to be a lot of focus on NASA, I think, in this next year, on where they’re going.

David Ariosto – Oh my gosh, yeah.

John Shaw – Already, there’s already focus in terms of what their budget should be, what it’s being suggested to be, at least in the near term, and then what might be coming so they

David Ariosto – With an existing infrastructure or the existing sort of policy priorities. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of sort of question marks, I think, in terms of the direction of this. But I sorry I interrupted.

John Shaw – Well, yeah, no, I agree with you, and I like to see this. You know, I tend to be a positive guy most of the time, and I send to see this as an inflection point for some really good change to kind of get us aligned, but, but, yeah, so in this kind of new space age, here we have, yeah, an explosion of commercial ventures, many of them are now possible because of the decrease in space launch costs, with some new technologies, with low Earth orbit communications, and then I Think you’re going to see a lot of other phenomenologies from space. They’re going to have commercial applications that we still haven’t fully exploited. An example that I would give you, I think, is synthetic aperture radar, which is, to this point, been largely a national security phenomenology, but I think it has the capability to become a commercial, commercially leveraged phenomenology, and much the same way electro optical has become in the last 15 to 20 years or so. That’s just a quick, quick snippet. There a whole topic in itself.

David Ariosto – Well, you make an interesting point that a lot of these emerging technologies, a lot of the research and development comes on the government side first, and then is later sort of found its way into the commercial market. So the research oftentimes are through government driven grants and those sorts of things. And you know, there’s this almost natural symbiosis between the commercial sector as like sort of this intermediary where, you know, some of the thought leadership might start there developing commercial viability. You know, you work on things like rocket reusability, which is not a new phenomenon that you. Just made more possible in the course of the last couple of decades. And, you know, I just, I guess I wonder, as agencies transition, and they have transitioned away from from being true architects of a lot of these technologies and more clients of commercial sector endeavors like what what the vulnerabilities are, and what the gaps are and what the opportunities are when it when it comes to both of those things.

John Shaw – Well, first, I’d say, in the most macro of senses that we shouldn’t be surprised this is happening. David. I mean, this is the natural evolution of domain expansion. You know, pick your period of history, whether it’s age of exploration or the railroad period, or the opening American West, and which comes with a lot of its own. All those come with their own baggage along the lines, which you talked about, but it usually starts with government funded efforts, transitions to commercial ventures that then require security and then take and then pick up the momentum as they go. I think we’re seeing the same thing playing out in the space domain. And some would say, why aren’t we moving faster? I would just you say this, I think we are moving actually relatively fast compared to the fact we only just started going into the domain at the in the latter half of the last century. So now you you opened up a large box of potential topics to go down, right? I tend to do that the vulnerabilities, the I would I would say, I think it might be best to kind of say, well, let’s talk about Space Force.

You know, why do we really have a Space Force, and what should, what should, and how will it evolve in the future? And the the immediate answer to that question, and the most compelling why we stood up a space force and a United States Space Command. Let’s not forget so we also have the war fighting joint command also is because our our space capabilities are crucial. They’re crucial to how our joint war fighters fight worse. They’re crucial to our society, and they’re crucial to further economic development. And that’s really, in my view, the bottom line answer why you now have a service that has to devote itself to the protection of that domain against threats to the security of that domain, much the same as we have in the other domains when we just did not have that before. How are we how are we doing it before? We’re doing it mostly through the United States Air Force, some on the intelligence community side, and a smattering in the other services as well. And maybe that’s good when it’s sort of just a a domain that’s just sort of on the on the periphery, contributing to terrestrial activities. But now it is, it is vital and crucial to everything we do. So that’s why.

David Ariosto – I’m just going to say, I mean, when you look at the past, you look at the like the sheer volume of assets and machines that are operating up there relative, you know, decade ago, two decades ago, it is, it is on 10x you know, magnitude, if not more. And so it seems natural to want to protect some of those assets. I mean, when you’re starting to develop real space infrastructure, and you have economies that are run on orbit, and you have military assets that are guiding troops on the ground, and machines that operate in advanced theaters in places like Ukraine and, you know, questions of Taiwan and the rest of it. That makes sense, I guess, from a technological perspective, how do you protect all that? Because it strikes me is that infrastructure in space is extremely vulnerable, and so protecting that, you know, there are some like, knock on effects, right, like, so, you know, anti satellite missiles there, there, you can make the domain unusable for others, and maybe that kind of protects it in a certain way. But as some of these other technologies are coming online, cyber strikes, and, you know, the ability to sort of the melt the internal circuitry of certain satellites to blind relevant troop movements. It just, it seems like there’s just a whole host of technologies that you’re going to have to kind of ping pong between to protect.

John Shaw – So I’ll answer your question two ways. I think, in a general sense, I’ll invoke the other domains, right? I mean, the US Navy and the US Coast Guard has quite a quite a feat, quite a task in front of them, right? To protect and keep the high seas safe, for for shipping, for ourselves and our allies and such are they everywhere, all at once? No, do, what do they do? They provide a deterrent effect. They are there if needed when situations become particularly acute. And I think you see where I’m going. I think this is how Space Force will operate in the future. The first and foremost thing it can do is exist as a force, and therefore and will enhance its deterrent value of there is somebody watching you in space, and might be able to do something, you know, and probably do something about it.

And then I, I’d like to invoke that coast guard a little bit more, because I think the Space Force has some roles and responsibilities that are akin, maybe as much to the Coast Guard as they are the US Navy and the maritime domain, and that is providing transparency. And and and security and awareness of what’s actually happening that domain. And I think that is a characteristic that we have not had in the past, and we’re going to need in the future, going forward. What does that do? I think it has a deterrent effect against mischief or worse. And also, I think it has a an encouraging effect for increased investment in the domain when it’s understood, hey, we can operate with confidence because somebody is watching. And I think those are the that is not the end of it, David, but that is the beginning of the framework of security in space that, again, I think Space Force and Space Command are going to be very important parts of what.

David Ariosto – You use the word framework. And I want to drill down on that, because I think it’s a really important concept. Important context, not only in terms of that, but in terms of, in terms of the open seas, you know. So I’ve often heard spite space, sort of referred to within legal domains as sort of, you know, akin to international waters in a way. And what we’ve seen oftentimes is the being there and the setting up of sort of the regulatory frameworks backed by a degree of muscle, without putting to find a point on it is, is is like there’s a primacy of being first, in a way, primacy of being there early, in a sense of how you establish these rules of the road. And I wonder, in the context of how quickly China is moving, and how aggressively they’re sort of looking at their timetables, and also perhaps in the way that they viewed international waters in the past, in terms of maritime claims, whether you, I mean, you can see where I’m going with this now, in terms of, like, how we approach this thing, in terms of both a perspective of, you know, really going for it, and also the perspective of what precedent we’ve already seen from from sort of a chief rival.

John Shaw – So you’re looking, if you’re looking for easy answers. There aren’t any. There aren’t any in the maritime domain either. By the way, there’s a lot of mischief going on the maritime domain, with China, with piracy and things in between.

David Ariosto – Interesting way to put it, mischief, I haven’t heard that.

John Shaw – Well, yeah, there’s been mischief in all the domains. Hey, but what when it comes to and by the way, I’m glad you, you’ve heard the question, because I, what I didn’t say in my previous answer, was to say, this isn’t just Space Force and Space Command. It’s going to be all the instruments of national power, right? And that would include diplomatic right? Those, those have to be something. They’ve been part of other domains. They’ll be part of space domain going forward. Usually, when I get on that topic, my headline on that is the best kind of diplomatic efforts for any kind of agreements, even regulatory framework, I think in the space domain, probably start with those that enable commercial activities, not that restrict state activities. I think there’s a difference there.

If you go into the discussion saying we need an upgraded Outer Space Treaty or a new arms limitations treaty, and that has to be our starting point, I feel like that’s kind of starting at the wrong end, because that’s the one that’s going to be the most difficult to get agreement on with others If, however, you start on the other end that said, hey, we want to make commercial activities safer for everybody. We want to lower the risk of collisions, or lower the risk of electromagnetic interference on and such, the same way that we have civil air regulatory frameworks or even maritime regulatory frameworks for maritime commercial organizations. Think about that. And that’s where I think we we actually harvest a lot of low hanging fruit. And I actually think that’s where you’re going to see a lot of the international efforts in the years ahead are going to focus on it. There won’t it won’t be that. We won’t talk about weapons in space and nuclear weapons in space and other security matters. My point is, I think your most productive discussions on how to reach agreement on how we need to participate all of humankind in space are best done with focus on commercial efforts and doing that safely and securely in ways that people want to now invest in the domain otherwise be a little reluctant to because they’re not sure what they’re going to get.

David Ariosto – Well, when we speak about commercial you know, one of the things that I often think of, and this is sort of put, not this, put a come to a sort of a head, or there’s a fine point put on it, when it came to former Google executive Eric Schmidt’s testimony recently when he talked about relativity space was sort of tangentially talked about relativity space, and sort of later confirmed that big part of that play was, was the prospect of data centers in space and and huge, huge importance for the commercial sector, but also huge importance for the military. Yeah, and I wonder, like, how the military thinks about that. You know, what? What do they think about when they think about planning for data centers in space, not only just from the pure energy requirements and what you can derive from the sun and cooling aspects of being in space, but just the sheer volume of energy needs, with regard to both emerging quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, and how a lot of these sort of autonomous systems are going to be governed, and the energy requirements that they need. It just it seems like if, if you’re not thinking about data, you’re not thinking about energy at this point, you know, kind of behind the behind the eight ball.

John Shaw – So again, a very broad topic. I’ll start at the far end, and we’ll work towards your big data centers. And we’re really going to skip all right? I I’d like to say, and I’ve said for years, that, you know, cyber and space are BFFs, right? You don’t have one without the other. It’s been that way since the very dawn of doing things in space, by the way, and the very dawn of doing computer the first silicon based chip was the Apollo Guidance Computer. People didn’t realize that, but that that’s how it all began. And I can go on and on, right? Networks in space and so on. We’re.

David Ariosto – We’re working in tandem with, you know, those in California and MIT, right? So there was that partnership.

John Shaw – So, so then the next thing I’ll say is, if you buy that, that first axiom, that they’re BFFs, then all of the artificial intelligence developments we’re seeing, whether they’re weak AI or strong AI, generative to very agentic, they are going to have a space application. They will, and space is actually built for that, right? Built? You said it. You said autonomous before I did right? Autonomous machines operating maybe far away from their human controllers that are going to need some level of autonomy and one enable machine learning and do things, and there will be edge processing in the future on all kinds of platforms of various scales, depending on what that mission is. So you see, I’m building up to your big data centers piece. Those are, that’s a framework. Those are the building blocks of how we’re going to be operating in space in the future. Yeah, and I did see Eric Schmidt’s testimony. I do understand his hypothesis about power cooling and just getting it off the planet. I’d love to see a business case on when that finally closes and how that works. But he may be right. He’s been right about a lot of things.

David Ariosto – Right. You know, I’m wondering what the path forward sort of looks like, because in some ways, all of this is happening, not only with this explosion of commercial driven activities in space, and not only with the emergence of Space Force and sort of a growing recognition of military applications in space, but also China having maybe, I mean, these are my words, but maybe have sort of woken up, in a way, and maybe just woken up to the US in terms of, hey, wait a minute.

This, this, this sort of long held reliance and assumption of us supremacy in space is is under, not under threat, but it’s under there’s a challenge there now to to to the nature of supremacy in space and how that manifests on the battlefield and within the economy and all sorts of things when it comes to geopolitical influence and military capacity. And so I guess when you like extrapolate out, it’s always hard to tell within the US, because maybe the fickle nature policy here, but 510, years out. I mean, what? What is this? What does this all sort of look like? Where does this head, in terms of where you’re going? Huge questions out to you. I realize you take it as it comes, but.

John Shaw – So you talked about China, let me, let me. Let me address that a little bit. You know, they, they’ve been watching how we’ve been employing space since really, really, since the beginning, but more, maybe more focused in this century on how we’ve driven space down to the tactical level and integrated into our terrestrial domain operations, and it’s how you project power across the planet. Is through space very, very difficult to do that unless you have space capabilities. And they’ve seen that, and they watched it, and they’ve actually, in some ways, they’ve emulated what we’ve done. And you’ve heard some of the defense leadership. Talk recently about this, right? We talk more openly, now more open. Talk about the need for offensive capabilities in space, from a US perspective, an ally perspective, because of China’s ability to close kill chains and kill webs using their space capabilities, right? It’s integrated into war fighting, so you have to address it. And so they but in some ways, they’re actually demonstrating some some innovation beyond things that we have done in space before and that we really need to pay close attention to. Because it’s one thing to emulate what you’ve already seen and then scale that or integrate it. It’s another person. It’s potentially the immunology, and we’ve, we’ve seen them do a number of things along those lines. So I would say that you still have to, you know, watch closely what China’s doing and about evolve your own capabilities and doctrine and infrastructure to keep pace. And that is going to be a primary challenge, I think, in the next four to eight to 10 years.

David Ariosto – All right, well, that seems like a good place to leave it. General John Shaw, thank you so much for spending the time with us here on Space Minds.

John Shaw – All right, thanks, David, great to be here.