What Happens if a Nuclear Weapon Detonates in Space?

In this episode of At the Boundary, Todd Schmidt, PhD, speaks with Richard Harrison and Peter Garretson, PhD, about their new report, Space Nuclear Weapons Analysis.

The conversation covers the growing commercialization and militarization of space, as well as the importance of adopting a more proactive approach to space security by investing in space-based infrastructure and technologies.

The episode also describes what a nuclear weapon’s detonation would look like in space (whether in low Earth orbit or at high altitude) and what impacts it would have on everyday Americans and the world at large. Harrison and Garretson then outline their recommendations for addressing these threats, discussing how policymakers and decision-makers should think about strategic deterrence, space security, nuclear defense, and left-of-launch capabilities. 

As space becomes increasingly central to modern life and national security, this discussion highlights why the United States must prepare now for emerging threats in the space domain.

Links from the Episode:

• “Is America Ready for a Nuclear Explosion in Space?” by Richard Harrision and Dr. Peter Garrettson.

• Race to the Bottom: Is Seabed Mining Worth the Cost? By Dr. Linda Nhon
• Ours to Keep? Diego Garcia, Mauritius, the UK, the UK and security in the Indian Ocean by Dr. Guido Rossi

• Why Canada is Essential to North American Defense GNSI Video Series episode

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At the Boundary  from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida,  features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.

A "boundary" is a place, either literal or figurative, where two forces exist in close proximity to each other. Sometimes that boundary is in a state of harmony. More often than not, that boundary has a bit of chaos baked in. The Global and National Security Institute will live on the boundary of security policy and technology and that's where this podcast will focus.

The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.

Look for our other publications and products on our website publications page.

Transcript

 EP 135 - 15 June (Schmidt_ Garretson and Harrison)_Edit-1

Mon, Jun 15, 2026 9:14AM • 40:21

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Nuclear weapons, space-based, low earth orbit, radiation belts, satellite disruption, strategic influence, space situational awareness, detection capabilities, negation tools, reconstitution, international cooperation, policy recommendations, national security, space industrial base, global impact.

SPEAKERS

Richard Harrison, Todd Schmidt, PhD, Peter Garretson, PhD, Jim Cardoso

Jim Cardoso  00:03

Jim, welcome to this week's episode of At the Boundary, the podcast from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Jim Cardozo, senior director for GNSI, and your host for At the Boundary. Today on the podcast, we're bringing in a trio of guests to discuss what looks to be the next evolution of nuclear warfare, space-based nuclear weapons. This will be an intriguing conversation, but first, a couple of notes to tell you about the latest genocide research publications are now available on our website. Dr. Linden Young has written a research article on seabed mining, a comprehensive examination of what may be the answer for advancing critical mineral independence. Just go to publications, and then click research articles. Linda's article is a great introduction into the topic of deep sea mining and critical minerals, which will be the focal point of our next Florida Security Forum, scheduled for october 20 to the 20-second at the USF St. Pete campus. Be on the lookout for more information on the conference in the coming weeks. Also, GNSI research fellow Dr. Guido Rossi has written our latest genocide decision brief, which takes a closer look at the politically tense and legally gray situation surrounding the US military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The United Kingdom's discussions with Mauritius to transfer sovereignty of Diego Garcia creates significant issues for the US in terms of strategic influence and power projection. It's available on our website. Go to publications and click on decision briefs on our YouTube channel. We posted a fascinating discussion between genocide Dr. Tad Schnaufer and Dr. Jeff Collins, assistant professor at the University of Prince Edward Island and former senior policy analyst at Canada's Department of National Defense. Collins argues that Canada is a vital part of North America's defense and that cooperation between the US and Canada is a cornerstone for regional security, considering ongoing geopolitical tensions between the two nations. It's worth your time. Check it out on our YouTube channel. All right, time now for our future conversation. Nuclear weapons in space was discussed in depth during GNSI Tampa Summit six in March, one of our speakers from that conference is here to further explore this disconcerting development. Peter Garretson, a senior fellow in Defense Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, he's joined by Richard Harrison, Vice President of Operations and Director of Defense Technology Programs at AFPC. They co-authored a special report for AFPC that warns it is increasingly likely the US will confront the reality of a nuclear explosive device in space. Moderating the discussion is genocide non-resident fellow and retired US Army Colonel Dr. Todd Schmidt, who's also chief academic officer at the US Diplomatic Studies Foundation. The three of them got together recently to have a comprehensive conversation on nukes in space. Today on At the Boundary,

Todd Schmidt, PhD  03:38

let's begin. And my name is Todd Schmidt, I am the Academic Chief Academic Officer of the US Diplomatic Studies Foundation, Director of the Command and General Staff College Foundations Simon Center for Ethical Leadership and Interagency cooperation, and I am also a lecturer at the University of Kansas. I've been invited by GNSI and the University of South Florida to do this podcast, which I'm very excited to be a part of, based on my background with space and missile defense, and I'm also a senior research fellow with GNSI. Gentlemen, I'd ask you, starting with Rich, if we could, if you could just give maybe a three-minute introduction of yourself.

Richard Harrison  04:30

Sure. Thanks for thanks for the opportunity, Todd and GNSI. We're happy to be on this podcast. So, my background is aerospace engineering. I work at the American Foreign Policy Council, and I'm a vice president of operations, and I run our defense technology program and our space policy initiative with my colleague here, Peter Garrettson. We've been working on this initiative since 2019 We've published a few books, The Next Space Race, and then more recently Space Shock, and then. And as the purpose of this call, we're here to discuss a space nuclear weapons analysis. So, looking forward to jump into the conversation.

Todd Schmidt, PhD  05:09

Great, thank you. Rich, Peter.

Peter Garretson, PhD  05:12

So, my name is Peter Garretson. I am a senior fellow in defense studies at the American Foreign Policy Council. Generally, I focus on sort of the nexus of the space industrial base and commercialization and national security in space, and I am one of the co-authors of the of the special report on nuclear weapons in space.

Todd Schmidt, PhD  05:33

So, an incredible paper on a very salient topic, especially as we think about just really, what's going on in the space domain, not just the commercialization of space, but also the militarization of space. Could you, one of you, start with maybe just a short description of what really motivated you to, you know, obviously pursue this line of research and writing, and then kind of lead that towards the impetus of the paper.

Peter Garretson, PhD  06:13

Sure, so I would say there were there were two motivations, one was we had completed our book Space Shock, and it was clear, you know, to the the funder of those of that project that they were curious how we would explore a scenario based upon the the new revelation that Russia might be pursuing such a weapon. On my end, it was very clear to me that even though I had had a hazy notion of this threat, I wasn't in a position to provide any kind of meaningful policy advice, and since I had had a pretty broad background in, in, you know, space and, and its challenges, the fact that I didn't have a clear idea about what exactly this threat meant, what it would do, meant that I wasn't in a position to have a good conversation with policymakers, and that made me suspect that very likely policymakers also had only a hazy notion about what the threat meant and what we would need to do about

Richard Harrison  07:21

it, and just to jump in and piggyback on what Peter was saying, when we're trying to think through what we're structuring for our next projects, you know, we spent two books advocating for why the US should take a proactive approach to space, as in the next space race, and then the second book was on what happens if you don't take a proactive approach and you sit back and what happens, now the reality is we realize that the investments or space are really important, and we've already gone down that path. There's lots of, you know, companies that are mega constellations. We use it for a lot of different resources. The reality is a nuclear weapon detonation space is a great equalizer, right? They could really wipe out everything. So we really wanted to get a sense for what would happen if this, if this horrible event could take place, it makes sense to write about it, and if we're not prepared, what should we be doing? So that analysis just wasn't really out in the public domain. We thought maybe we would be able to help contribute, and again, it's not just the British Harris and Peter Garrison show with this project. We did a lot of war gaming with very senior people in different facets of the space community.

Todd Schmidt, PhD  08:22

Excellent. so you know it's not so much that our adversaries have to match us with what we're doing, it's really just the ability to neutralize us in so many ways, and the incredible advancements that we've made with what SpaceX is doing, what Blue Origin is doing, although they've had recent setback with New Glenn, they don't have to match us, they don't have to pace us, all they have to do is neutralize us. Can you talk a little bit about what the effects are, we'll get into some of the specifics, you know, whether it's, you know, low earth orbit or high altitude, but I mean, just help Americans and listeners understand what the impacts of a nuclear detonation in space means for us, just in everyday life.

Peter Garretson, PhD  09:21

Sure, so first of all, we have to say that how it affects us matters tremendously. What altitude and what inclination the explosion takes place at, there are, you know, it's particularly bad if it's in a high inclination, and it's particularly bad if it's in low earth orbit, as and that is because we have these, you know, the earth is a giant magnet, and it creates these donuts where or particles get trapped, and those which are called Van Allen belts can certainly, you know. Wrap the the outputs of a nuclear weapon, but as you get above those, you know, into geostationary orbit, it's much less severe, so you know basically, you know, there's no atmosphere, so when a nuclear weapon explodes, it delivers a bunch of prompt radiation, x rays and gamma rays and neutrons, and those you know, each have a certain kill radius, but they're, you know, direct line of sight, and that can go out, you know, from from a few kilometers to have some upsets, you know, you know, maybe hundreds to 1000s, but the thermal kill is pretty close, but if it happens in low earth orbit, it's truly devastating, because what it does is a fission reaction produces an enormous amount of electrons, and those electrons get trapped and bounce back and forth in those radiation belts, and so even though you know a nuclear weapon, you know, might only immediately kill with thermal radiation stuff that's fairly close to it on one side of the earth, and the other side is completely shielded. The stuff in low earth orbit, as they orbit through, get continually bombarded with electrons, and you know they're only built to withstand a certain amount of electron radiation over their lifetimes, and this takes it up, you know, many orders of magnitude more, and so the long and short of it is basically everything in Leo, which is almost 90% of everything that's a satellite in space, goes dead in about a week.

Richard Harrison  11:41

Let me, let me just try to paint a picture for your, for your listeners, as to what that looks like for the average American, right. So, Peter did a great job detailing the physics of it. You know, this is, I like a lot of people picture a mushroom cloud going off when they think of a nuclear weapon detonation, but when we're talking about low earth orbit, you might not, you might look up and not see or hear anything, but, but your life is going to be affected, right? In terms of, you know, connectivity and applications, you know, satellite, internet, direct to phone services would suddenly fail. Many systems and applications depend on space-based services. You think about trying to get on your Lyft, or, you know, Uber, or, you know, your Amazon package may not be coming, so supply chains will be affected, you know. Public defense, law enforcement may, and military may not be, might have communication outages. It could cause problems for aviation. There, you're not going to be able to understand what the weather is going to be like, because all these things are so satellite dependent. So, while you may not have these horrible, you know, immediate death from a city being destroyed by a nuclear weapon. There's going to be a lot of effects you're going to feel immediately, or within a couple hours after a detonation.

Todd Schmidt, PhD  12:52

Yeah, so you know, obviously, you know, some folks might describe some of those challenges as first world, you know, problems, but the, the incredible impact that could have just within the medical environment, and, and how that could impact, you know, like you mentioned, you know, first responders or our military, or things like that, incredibly impactful response. Just for a contrast, though, you know we've talked about a little bit about low earth orbits, and you know how much we've really begun to leverage that commercially and militarily. Talk about a little bit, if you would please, the high altitude and what impacts that may have as well,

Peter Garretson, PhD  13:45

well, you know, a high altitude nuclear exclusion could be comparatively discriminate because most satellites are not close to each other, and so, you know, a the open source of our previous anti-satellite that the United States, you know, had in the Cold War suggests that the thermal kill radius, you know, was less than 10 kilometers, so in theory that might take out just one or two satellites, but then it depends on, you know, which satellites those are, so you probably need to take out more than one to really affect the global positioning system and timing, but it could also go after, you know, our nuclear missile warning satellites, that would be an extremely big deal, and that would make the United States worry that it was a precursor to a nuclear strike and force us to posture differently, you know, there are also nuclear command and control sites, you know, that you could, you know, take out individually, or as a course of, you know, measure, you might, you know, you could imagine somebody like taking out, you know, a Taiwanese satellite, or you know, a Ukrainian, you know, geostationary communication satellite, you know, just to show. Their, you know, their anger and seriousness,

Todd Schmidt, PhD  15:06

so tremendous impacts to not just everyday life, and you know, convenience, but just in terms of our own national security, the impacts of this threat, or this sort of phenomenon, obviously very profound in terms of not just, you know, Americans in the United States, but also our, you know, our partners and allies, not just from a national security perspective, but from an economic perspective could be very devastating. Can can we maybe shift focus now and talk a little bit about some of the recommendations and what your findings have kind of led you to as you've thought through not just the impacts and the threat but also, you know some of the very basic, as well as you know, maybe operational and strategic recommendations that you, you've had, you've come up with as well.

Richard Harrison  16:10

Let me jump in and start off here on this, and then Peter, he can go into the more detailed things. I think it's important that the listeners understand that a big part of this analysis was looking at a couple different scenarios. The first scenario is where we suspected that a nuclear weapon would be put into orbit. Now, if a nuclear weapon is, we suspected in orbit, what we realized, it's very difficult. One of the key findings, it's very difficult to detect if that's actually accurate. How do we, how do we ascertain whether something's actually in orbit? Do we have the technology to use and examine a satellite on orbit and figure out what's on there. That's a very, very difficult decision to try to make, so that can have premature escalation risks if you, if you know or don't know something's on there. So one of the things is we have to understand what are the recommendations. Well, we need to, we need to expand our space situational awareness. We invest in tools for attribution in that kind of a scenario. Then, in a second scenario, we looked at, well, what if an adversary tells us that they're putting a weapon on orbit? Well, now we have to understand, you know, is this a credible threat? Again, the same thing. How do we know that they're not bluffing, that they don't have something on there, and what are our even if they, okay, so let's say we do have a threat that this on orbit, what are our response mechanisms? What can we do to address that threat? Is there a proportional deterrence, or what kind of escalation guidance do we have? It's these are all difficult questions when we, when we, when we have that kind of a situation, and then on a third scenario, when there is a detonation that actually goes off in low earth orbit, for example, that would be a catastrophic problem, as we discussed, right? You have massive satellite losses, there's a, there's cascading debris from that, because there's something called the Kessler system syndrome, where satellites continuously collide, and there's just an incredible amount of orbit of debris in orbit, and all that radiation that's in there. How do we address the radiation? We don't have a way to what we call de pump the Van Allen radiation belts with this. We don't have a way to get all that debris out of orbit, you know. So these are all things that we have to consider if something were to happen, and then even in a very high altitude orbit, there's a detonation. How do we address that? So I just wanted to kind of set the stage, and Peter, you can go into more of the recommendations now based on the four different scenarios that occurred.

Peter Garretson, PhD  18:36

Yeah, so you know, at the high level, you know, the United States, you know, needs the kind of instrumentation that we can confirm or disconfirm that a nuclear weapon is on orbit, so that we're not reacting, you know, to a bluff, or that we know in advance that there's something we need to react to. Secondly, we need tools to negate it. How to do that, you know, you know, there are a lot of potential ways that you might negate a nuclear weapon, you know, but with the exception of maybe some cyber or electronic warfare tool, you know, at present it doesn't look like we have such a, such a system fielded, and then you know, as Rich mentioned, we need a plan. Well, we need a plan for the first two, and so part of the recommendation, you know, is that there should be, you know, a con ops and checklist for this, and our report provides, you know, a sense of what that might look like, but then you know the, you know, the ultimate catastrophe of somebody actually setting off a nuclear weapon, you have very little time to react, you know. If you want to prevent the worst-case Kessler syndrome, you need to de-orbit satellites and move them, you know, out of the worst radiation as soon as possible. And at present, it doesn't appear as if we have such a space traffic management system that sort. Links, you know, where the, where the space traffic is with where the radiation model says the radiation is, and can directly, you know, give orders to the private sector, so we're not postured for that, and then the reconstitution, you know, a, you know, we, we have neither invested in the somewhat speculative technology to de-pump the radiation belts, which typically deal with a kind of low frequency that causes the electrons to bounce at a slightly more acute angle, and so they enter the poles instead of staying in the Van Allen belts, or putting up, you know, some of these long conductive tethers that might, you know, help equalize things, and then, you know, we don't have a stable of satellites to relaunch, and even if we did, they're probably not hardened, so, you know, you could go as much as a year to two years before you're, you know, the only thing you're doing is putting up, you know, targets for the existing radiation, so all that you know means that we're, we're currently in a posture that you know it's not a very strong deterrent posture. A stronger deterrent posture would be, we'll know if you put it up, we have ways of taking it out before you detonate it, and even if you detonate it, you're not going to stop us from prosecuting, you know, a response, because you know we have, you know, we have postured ourselves to de-pump and repopulate.

Todd Schmidt, PhD  21:34

Thanks, Beer. Thanks, Rich. Um, you know, so as we kind of think about, you know, some of those very impactful implications, effects, you know, here's, you know, basic standard question you hear a lot, like if you had the ear of members of Congress, senior senators or the president, you know, in terms of national strategy, in terms of, and even from an alliance perspective with our partners and allies around the world, What would you be advising to them in terms of like priority and and what needs to take place from a policy perspective, because you know, as often as the case, a lot of the solutions and a lot of the hurdles always come from a policy perspective. Any recommendations or thoughts as you would think about that scenario you're advising senior leaders on national strategic policy.

Peter Garretson, PhD  22:46

So, I would first of all state that after, you know, before we actually published, but after we had completed the report, the administration came out with the executive order on ensuring space superiority in December, and it's very clear that this is something that it expects the Department of War to incorporate in its strategy and be able to negate, and that's due in like four days or something like that, so you know one would think that that ought to be enough in terms of policy, but you know, in our own case, we went a step further, and you know, actually wrote a prospective executive order assigning tasks for this specifically, and that's one thing that you could do from the White House level, from the congressional level, I would say that, you know, first of all, there needs to be a clear, you know, tasking in law, you know, to US Space Command and US Space Force to have a concept of operations to deal with this, and what the Congress thinks is suitably comprehensive, and then the Congress really needs to resource the technology end of things that allows for the development of confirmation, disconfirmation, negation, and then you know, deep pumping and reconstitution, you know, which are not inexpensive things, and even though this might appear to be a low probability event, principally because any actor who does it, you know, is not just going to hurt the United States, they're going to hurt everybody. So, if Russia does this, they're also going to be injuring China, you know. If China did it, they'd be injuring, you know, everyone the world. It's a very indiscriminate weapon. Nevertheless, you know, it's something that's within the capabilities of basically every nuclear power to do, and it certainly, you know, upsets the table, and you know the strongest way you can prevent somebody from doing something like this is for them to believe that it's ultimately going to be, you know, ineffective, that you know, even even with the losses that they could impose upon them, it would. Not, it would not negate the ability of the United States to accomplish its aims, including retaliation.

Todd Schmidt, PhD  25:10

Rich, anything to add, or

Richard Harrison  25:13

no? I mean, I think Peter, Peter's right. I mean, the just the quick answer is just the things that we need to invest in, you know what we call left of launch, right? The best defense is just to make sure you can detect it before it even gets put in the sky, right, before it even gets launched. If you can make sure that that weapon never gets to orbit, there's no, there's no better thing than that. So, investing of what we call left of launch capabilities, and then you know you have to have detection capabilities on orbit as well, and then just again, Peter, as Peter mentioned, debris removal and radiation belt remediation programs. If you do those things, then we're going to be in a much better place than we are today.

Peter Garretson, PhD  25:51

Although, what Rich brings up, you know, is another thing, you know, one of the.. there are there are not kinetic and non-kinetic left of launch options, but you know that there is the dissuasion left of launch thing, and certainly the United States has tried very hard to, you know, go the diplomatic route and make sure, you know, by sort of calling Russia out, you know, in front of the world, you know, that this is inconsistent with them having signed the Outer Space Treaty, and even though you know, you can't really enforce international law, you know, the linkage of that, you know, with other things that nations want can have a dissuasive effect. So, I think it is, it is appropriate that we, you know, used our diplomatic cards to try to forestall this, you know, from from getting any closer to reality,

Todd Schmidt, PhD  26:43

yeah. So, you know, we have a few minutes left, and we've talked a little bit about, you know, obviously national strategic policy impacts at that level. We've talked, obviously, on the everyday level how it can impact Americans, but you know, sometimes, you know the biggest challenges are, you know, sometimes in our own processes, sometimes in our own, you know, organizational structures. We see stove pipe challenges, you know, Peter, you mentioned, you know, Space Common, Space Force, you know, Stratcom, I think, would also have some overlapping responsibilities here. A lot of challenges when you think about, you know, you know, more tactical or operational issues can be how our combatant commands have, you know carved up the globe, the globe. Any recommendations as it relates to cross domain or crop of operations challenges as threats cross man-made boundary? Any thoughts there? Because that can be, you know, challenging those stove pipe hurdles that can sometimes stymie reaction times or slow things down. Any thoughts on how those challenges impact how we can counter these threats?

Peter Garretson, PhD  28:19

Certainly not clear to me what the right solution is, because anytime you design an organization to optimize for one thing, it comes at a cost of other things. But let me just talk through what are challenges in this. So, first of all, you know one of the things you didn't mention is going to be the DoD DOE IC split, so you know the expertise related to nuclear weapons, you know, a significant part of that resides entirely outside the DOD, in the DOE, and so accessing that expertise, you know, and passing back and forth the proper cleared stuff is likely to be an issue, then you know organizations that are likely to have you know the subtle pre war pre operational tools you know to know about it potentially to diagnose it and potentially to you know in a you know in a less than public way undermine it, likely you know, may reside in the intelligence community. Then you know you've got this odd reality where it's a nuclear weapon that could be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a precursor to a first strike. So Strategic Command is going to have an interest in that one option to negate it is likely going to be a golden dome interceptor, which it looks like is going to be the responsibility of US North Com, and then of course all this is taking place on the military side in the area of responsibility of US Space Command in. And it is going to directly affect their equities and their ability to prosecute and support anything else, and then you know, in either of the scenarios we explored, you know, one of which would be, you know, US EUCOM, you know, related to a Ukraine scenario, or it would be, you know related to you know a Taiwan conflict in Indo Paycom, so all of those you know are going to have opinions about what the proper response to such a thing should be, you know how it should be viewed. I'm pretty sure that in a in a terrestrial combatant command they're going to see this as, you know, an escalation, you know, regarding their territorial conflict on Earth, and are going to be concerned about their loss of space services, and they're supporting space superiority. Space Command is going to be worried about, you know, the fundamental survival of space and the survival of space, you know, as a domain, US Strategic Command is going to be, you know, worried about whether or not this means, you know, that they're close to executing, you know, a nuclear response, and you know, Northcom, you know, is likely to have to, you know, worry about whether or not they're going to be called upon to use the future Golden Dome, so it is. It is a mess, and that is even assuming that there's no special capabilities tapped away in cybercom or so calm, which you know there, there might be there could be routes to negation in either of those. And then you know, I would guess both the command and control, and the response for us for global strike command, is also going to be a concern, so you know a scenario like this is probably as bad as it gets, or as close as bad as it gets, for you know, coordination, very short period coordination among all the major combatant commands and intelligence community and DOE, so pays to practice in advance,

Todd Schmidt, PhD  32:11

no doubt, no doubt, yeah, just an incredible challenge on so many levels, you know, not just with the impacts that such a threat has, but the challenges bureaucratically that we have, that we have from, you know, a policy perspective nationally, and then, as well as a challenge that we have, as we think of it from an alliance perspective, and how we tackle these things from international allies and partners, because, as you say, a global, a global impact. Just kind of wrapping up and closing, any parting thoughts, any parting recommendations, any recommendation? Recommendations on how we think about future questions to be asking research that continues to need to be done, not just maybe by you and kind of where you're pointing your, you know, intellectual efforts, but where you would suggest that other scholars interested in this domain, where they might be looking.

Peter Garretson, PhD  33:28

Well, for my part, you know, I definitely, you know, we were really hoping specifically to take the debate to a higher level with this report, and you know, we've really written it for the layperson, that you know, anybody in any allied nation, you know, any congressional staffer or congress person should be able to digest this report. It's very no-nonsense, you know, of course, for those who are, you know, developing, you know, the actual tools to, you know, detect, you know, mitigate or respond. They're going to want to have a much higher level of detail that likely is in the classified realm, and you know it certainly would be interesting for feature researchers to think through what different postures, you know, how in like a war gaming sort of way, you know, what sort of different postures lead to different behaviors, you know, by the aggressor, you know, do you get to a deterrence posture where it's just like, oh, in this circumstance I'd rather not do this, you know, you know, depending on, you know, what you feel or don't feel, and then you know the last thing I would say is that the the options for reconstituting for from below you know in the first year or so if you haven't sort of pre positioned you know your your mitigation options are are not terribly good but. Hmm, but you know, we're at this amazing point right now in a space where we could be creating an in-space industrial base, and if we start now, in a decade, you know, we might be able to be able to manufacture, you know, entire satellites or significant portions of satellite fleets, you know, on the moon or from asteroids and be able to build back from above and so that I think is an opportunity for what they call space mobility and logistics and in space assembly and manufacturing that meets a compelling national need that so far I think is unexplored

Richard Harrison  35:42

and just to add to Peter's comments, in terms of an area for policy exploration, there were two studies that we talked about briefly, but didn't actually really report on for recommendations, and there was a scenario where China would have a nuclear weapon in space and use it for as a potential option for planetary defense, and then another scenario where they actually detonated it as an option for planetary defense, so just to consider those options is something that to someone wants to carry the ball forward on that, and when one thing we didn't talk too much about, we talked about the confusion with all the different US government agencies and within the military about how to move forward with this, making sure that we're working with our allies, because obviously this is a scenario where something is detonated in space, it's not again, as you, as you've alluded to, it's not going to affect just Americans, it's going to affect everyone around the world, and so to the degree that we can work with our allies on improving these technologies for remediation or addressing this scenario, where there's where there are threats in space, that'll be to the better of us.

Todd Schmidt, PhD  36:47

Thank you, Rich, and thank you, Peter. Some tremendous challenges, and I feel like, you know, we've covered, you know, opportunities and challenges, I think from the tactical up to the strategic to the global strategic, and you know, really addressing questions that not only can students and intellectuals and academics begin to think about research and consider in terms of their adding to the body of knowledge, but also the actions and questions that policy makers need to be asking and thinking about from a policy perspective. I can't thank you both enough for not just contributing your study and your analysis, but participating in this podcast, and to GNSI and University of South Florida for sponsoring this kind of conversation, conversation that really, for those listening, has national and frankly global impact. So, thank you both very much, appreciate it, and and look forward to seeing more of what you contribute to this important issue.

Peter Garretson, PhD  38:01

Thank you, Todd, and to USF and GNSI. I really appreciate the opportunity to get the results of the report out to more folks.

Richard Harrison  38:12

Yeah, we really appreciate it. Thank you, all team.

Jim Cardoso  38:18

Special thanks to Dr. Peter Garretson and Richard Harrison of the American Foreign Policy Council for their discussion on space-based nuclear weapons. Also, thanks today to Dr. Todd Schmidt, GNSI non-resident senior fellow and the chief academic officer at the US Diplomatic Studies Foundation. While the concept of nukes in space is a frightening one on many levels. It's becoming a reality that the global society has to deal with. Next week on the podcast, we'll be joined by Dr. Jacob Holzer. He's played a crucial role in the development of our next GNSI policy dialogs, a virtual event releasing June 24 on our YouTube channel, Jake is an Air Force veteran who's now assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. It was his idea to examine national security through the lens of mental health and human behavior. It's a truly fascinating topic, and we're looking forward to our conversation with him on the 20-second and release of the policy dialogs just two days later. If you don't want to miss that episode or any other episode, be sure to like and subscribe to At the Boundary on your favorite podcast platform. And we thank you for sharing some time with us today. You can find GNSI on YouTube, LinkedIn, and X. Be sure to follow, like, and subscribe. Tell your friends and colleagues as well, and be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter. You can find all this on our website, usf.edu/gnsi That's going to wrap up this episode of At the Boundary. Each new. Episode of featured global and national security issues we found to be insightful, intriguing, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about. I'm Jim Cardoso, and we'll see you at the boundary,