HELLO FUTURE: Spies in Space — The New Great Game

Speaker 1 (00:07):
When we went to the Moon. Was it about going
to the moon or was it about spy satellites? In
the future, are astronauts going to become James Bond astronauts?
Are they going to be space spies? Hello Future, It's
me Kevin. This is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier
the planet Deserve. The year is twenty twenty five. My
name is Kevin Sirella. We talk a lot about space
here on Hello Future. We talk about the national security implications,
but I never really thought about espionage in orbits. Well,
my guest today thinks a lot about espionage in orbit.
His name is doctor Anthony Vincey. He's the frequent guest
on the program. He is the author of The Fourth
Intelligence Revolution, The Future of Espionage, and the Battle to
Save America. Anthony, thanks for coming back on the program.
You were also the first technology Officer of the National
Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which essentially, folks, it looks at all
the satellites, the spy satellites. Jiz right. I mean, that's
at a basic level for like a kindergartener, Anthony, that's
what you did. You you looked up sad. I'm just kidding.
But what essentially that's what you did.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, exactly. We were in charge of analyzing satellite imagery,
drone imagery, and other geospatial information, using that to write
intelligence that informed decision makers.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
So in your book, you write, which I thought was
very interesting, the greatest explorers have also been great spies.
The two professions are intimately linked, with both spies and
explorers illuminating the unknown. You also said the space race
was not just about putting men into orbit or landing
them on the mood. It was also about putting up
spy satellites. Today, there's more than ten thousand satellites I
think it's up to eleven thousand now in orbiting zooming
around the planet Earth. When I read that sentence, I thought, wow, okay,
so this is way more interesting. And I was thinking
back to when I interviewed General Gagnaud of the US
Space Force, and he was telling me that the Chinese
and the Russians have demonstrated capabilities to have their satellites
go right up to other satellites and zip out all
of this like information from other satellites, which is crazy
and sounds like a robot war in space. As you
think through space, where does espionage play in orbit.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Anytime there's competition or conflict, you're gonna have espionage. You're
gonna have spies because you want to get ahead in
that espionage in that conflict, right, and there is competition
and there may become conflict in space. We use satellites
to collect information about what's going on Earth. We put
satellites up there there to use to communicate, you know,
between troops and so forth. We use satellites to warn
us of, you know, potential missile launches and so forth. Russia, China,
other countries do the same thing. And so when you're
doing that, you want to know what they're doing. What's
their capability. Are they able to see using their satellite
what we're doing on the ground. Can they see into
our military base, Can they do what you're saying? Can
they come right up to our satellite and see what
it's doing and maybe even take information. And so, anytime
there's that competition, you need to see what the other
guy's doing, collect that information so you can make a
better decision.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
So Sputnik was haunting for Americans because I think it
was the first time they conceptualized for a generation what
it meant to be able to look out in their
backyard and look up into the heavens and see the Russians.
The Russians put a satellite in the heavens. And then
I think the similar chill effect was the spy balloon
from the CCP and China and whatnot. When you see
it and you conceptualize it, you understand it. What I
find haunting is what might be happening on the dark
side of the moon. And China has its own space station.
A lot of people think that China was involved in
the ISS. It wasn't. They've got their own space station. Well,
we can't see them doing in space. Is kind of scary.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Look, anytime your adversary is doing something that you don't
know what they're doing, you want to know what it is.
And China has put up an exploration system, let's say,
on the dark side of the moon. That's what they say.
You know, they say it's for scientific reasons and so forth,
and maybe that's true, maybe that's the primary use, but
they're also collecting information. This is what it was getting
at with explorers and spies. As soon as you go
somewhere that other people haven't been, Yes, you're looking at
it for exploration purposes or whatever, but you can also
use it for military and other purposes. So maybe they're
over there looking for places that they could set up
a base. Maybe they're implanting things like sensors that might
concern us later. So we want to know what's going
on there, and so we will try to spy back,
and they're doing the same to us. They're worried whenever
we send up something that they don't know what it is.
They want to try to learn what it is as well. Well.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
In your book and the chapter on space, you talk
about specific businesses and I don't want to name the
specific ones, but you talk about specific businesses that are
American that are innovative and whatnot. But I'm still back
on the dark side of the moon. Why would China
want to be on the dark side of the moon?
From an intelligence perspective, that's that's wild to me. A
lot of people think by the way that the moon rotates,
it doesn't It's not like Earth. It doesn't rotate, So
why would you want to be on the dark side
of the moon.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
We could speculate on reasons there. There's value on the
dark side of the moon. For example, that because it
doesn't rotate exactly. If you want to hide something, you
could find it there. You could put say a weapon
system that we couldn't see if it was launching, like
you could have a missile and then it could sneak
up that I'm just speculating, you could use it.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Gave me the idea for my next book. Okay, go ahead,
that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
You could put a base. Maybe you want to have
a base there for military purposes. Maybe you want to
mine the moon there. Maybe there's a good location there
for mining something that would be useful. Maybe you want
to use it to put a telescope or something like that.
So we'll see what the uses are. But I think
what I'm getting at in the book Kevin, is that
anywhere that people go, spies are going to go.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
But it's more than people, it's where technology now goes.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, we're going to use AI, we're going to use
autonomous vehicles anywhere that we put something, and that's the
Moon to start, it's going to be Mars. Ultimately, you know,
we're going to want to know what other people are
doing on Mars.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Or robots are doing on Mars. I think it's really
interesting because I wasn't even going to do a space
episode with you because so much of the book, and you've,
for frequent listeners of the program, you've heard him talk
about the book. You've heard him talk about thinking like
an intelligence officer in our everyday life to protect our
own minds and our own brains from the chaos of
social media and whatnot. But the space thing and just
is such a natural interest of mine, and we talk
about it so much on this show that I didn't think,
I mean, even just what you just said is so
simple to someone like you, but to people like me,
I would never think of why an adversary wants to
have technology on a far fledged part of our solar system,
or a part that we don't even see, and to
think that that's where the technology is leading us, which
is weapons systems or hiding things or you know, protective
data centers or whatnot. That's in the zeitgeist these days
of data centers in space and whatnot. Is crazy. Satellite
imaging for planet Earth, by the way, to take it
back on our planet. You don't have to be on
the Council on Foreign Relations, which you are, but I'm
not to know that how important satellite imagerying is for Ukraine,
How important satellite imagery is for Taiwan, How important satellite
imagery is to Jamaica which just recently got decimated by
a hurricane. And to be able to have quick, reliant,
immediate images of the destruction from a humanity standpoint, from
a human rights perspective, so important, so so important. So
all of this is really interesting. And to think that
espionage and the way we get intelligence and our government
gets intelligence, how that happens, is really really fascinating. What
is the craziest thing that you think about in outer
space and intelligence that maybe is like one hundred or
two hundred years off, but it's just really cool that
people like me will find fascinating.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
We're going to have people living on the Moon pretty soon,
like staying there for long periods of time, and after
that we are going to have people living on Mars.
This feels sort of inevitable. And any time you have
people living in places, you're going to need all the
things that you have on Earth. We have this image
of science fiction where we only see, you know what
they show, You're gonna have all of this stuff. I
don't know. You may need schools, you may need transportation,
like how you're gonna have to drive around the Moon.
You're gonna have to have some way to call somebody
at the other moon base. So that means you're gonna
have telecommunication systems, probably satellite based. That means you're gonna
have to have police. What if there's a crime in space,
somebody might get killed and you have gonna have to
investigate it, or you're gonna have to have the military,
because what if something somebody tries to attack your base,
Well you've got to defend it. And so if you
really start playing it through, we're gonna have these societies
up there, and they might be small to start, maybe
there are one hundred people, maybe less, but over time
they'll get bigger. But we're gonna have all the things.
And when you have all those things, it means you're
gonna have spies. There's a satellite telecom system on the
moon so that people can call each other right and
communicate with each other. Somebody is going to get the
bright idea at some point that hey, why don't I
listen in on those cell phone in case there's a threat,
in case there's somebody trying to plan it. Maybe there's
even terrorist attacks on the moon. Right, maybe there's somebody
who's such a radical, has such a radical belief in
something maybe religious or anti scientific or something like this,
they want to attack. So you've got to be able
to head off those kinds of attacks, which means you
need counter terrorism on the moon. And this is what's
sort of fascinating about it. And it's not two hundred
years away, like this is within our lifetime.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
I agree. That's why I ditched legacy political journalism and thought,
say hello to the future, cuz it's here and I
want to understand it. The Fourth Intelligence Revolution, The Future
of Espionage, and the Battle of Stave of America. Anthony Vincy,
frequent guests of the program, congrats on the book. It's
just burning up the charts and really really congratulations. It's
a great, great read.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Thank you,