HELLO FUTURE: The Small Business Case for Space (and Why It Matters for Beating China).

Speaker 1 (00:07):
There's a new space race underway, and it's between the
United States and the Communist Party of China. But why
should you care? Why does space impact your day to
day life, your family's life, and the future of the
United States of America. Hello Future, It's me keV. This
is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier. The planet is Earth.
The year is twenty twenty six. My name is Kevin Surrilli.
And remember you can listen to all of the latest
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MTF dot tv, where we cover all things future and
of course report on all of our great episodes from
Hello Future. My guest today is someone who is thinking
about policy for the United States, for the future of
our country. Happy Birthday, America two hundred and fifty years young.
Her name is Mary Gunther. She is the head of
space policy at the Progressive Policy Institute. She's also the
former vice president of space policy at the Commercial Space Federation,
where she helped to build consensus among nearly ninety companies.
She was a Senate staffer prior to that, and she
really was instrumental in working on the Chips and Science Act, which,
of course, for those of you familiar, is all about
making sure America has the infrastructure it needs and the
public private partnerships it needs so that we don't run
short on chips, which are the DNA for modern life. Mary,
I can't thank you enough for coming on this program.
You're someone who I followed specifically all of the great
reports that you at PPI are putting out on this
topic on space policy. So few people are doing it,
and you really come from the Washington zeitgeist world and
really made a foray into space policy, which I just
find fascinating and really really interesting. And there's such a
national security case for space and I'm wondering how you're
thinking about that, especially right now when the geopolitical environment
is so hyped.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Thank you so much for having me on. That's a
fantastic question. You know, Artemis two has drawn attention to
the space program in a way we haven't seen since
really the Apollo era. It's been magical in uniting for
the nation. But Americans haven't necessarily been watching the massive
economic boom of space and the contributions it has for
our war fighter. You know, you see the space Force,
mentioning the impact that space is having on their successes,
whether they are in operations in Ukraine, I Ran Venezuela
include space is vital to the way we fight and
win ultimately in the geopolitical domains. However, space is also
highly relevant to people's day to day life. If you
use Google Maps today that had contributions from space. If
you check your weather app, a lot of that information
came from space. Your farmers who grow your food need
space as well to ensure that they understand what the
weather conditions look like and the water conditions look like.
It can grow food successfully that keeps all of us nourished.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
So I think it's really interesting how you just outlined
all of the different populations that are using this if
you're in a city, if you're in rural America. And
then I think of the geopolitical lens and the Chinese
Communist Party, and I think the media has really and
I'll say this you don't have to as someone who
comes from that media world with that background, I think
they've done a really terrible job, especially the political press,
at explaining to Americans why this is so important. You
hear these buzzwords militarization of space, and you just kind
of ure up these images of astronauts with machine guns,
like it doesn't even make sense, But in reality, it's
cyber in the digital orbit world. And if you could
just help us think through why that matters that the
US be out in front of that. When the Chinese
Communist Party they don't really care about our freedoms or
our way of life, but what's happening in space directly
impacts what's happening in our day to day lives. So
if China gets ahead of us, whether it's on the moon,
whether it's in orbit, that is going to have significant
repercussions to Americans' way of life.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Right, it's an angel story. Society relies on technology, as
do the warfighter. So the societies that pioneer new technologies,
whether it's space AI quantum, are going to be the
folks who are economically powerful and have the most geopolitical
power because the leader in these areas are going to
be able to set worldwide standards about how space is used,
what the norms are for how space operates long term. Now,
the United States has historically had that leadership mantle, and
we are the flag of choice for the commercial space industry,
meaning if you want to do space, most folks come
here to the United States of America. We're very lucky
to have that. Unfortunately, you know, unless we make sure
that our regulatory system and our funding system continue to
support that, there's a risk that as other nations continue
to step up their space ambitions, we lose that designation.
That's going to have terrible impacts for us economically as
we think about our GDP growth and how that works.
And to be clear, we're not just talking about rocket
science and astronauts. We're talking about welders, technicians all across
the nation, all fifty states. So you might not think
that you know someone in the space industry, but you
know your grandpa who lives in Michigan, who has that
machining store, who makes valves. He might be the only
valve maker of that type that the space industry needs
to survive. And I don't think that people necessarily connect
those really critical manufacturing jobs through the heartland as well
as on the coast.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
To the space I mean, I like to call them
space collar jobs. And we just did an episode on this,
and we've done a couple of episodes on it because
I think it's really cool, especially if you're a young
person and you're thinking about where the opportunity is and
where the jobs are, and you just hear in the
media AI is going to replace all of our jobs.
AI is going to replace all of our jobs. And
I'm thinking to myself, we're literally trying to build our
supply chain cess lunar in our lifetime between here and
the moon and then ultimately, and I'm optimistic. I want
to be alive when we're on Mars. I mean that's
so cool, and it's going to take a lot of
outside the box thinking, but also really strong As you
just mentioned hand builders, I mean to build the future.
I think that's one of the things that really kind
of sets you apart. And the work you're doing at
PPI and Space Policy is you've never lost sight of that.
I mean, these are space collar jobs. These are jobs
that are not only for space but also for national security.
And I think that's what really excites me the most
is as someone who likes to kind of look where
the media hasn't yet arrived and sort of drive attention
to because it's not just for billionaires and mega constellations
or billionaire personality contests. It's really for small businesses. It's
really space for Main Street and that has to be
rooted and it always has been two hundred and fifty
years in our society. It has to be rooted in
bettering America as a whole. And I'm not talking about
it from any type of partisan lens. I'm talking about
it from the sense of democracy lowercase D. Really strives
on innovation, and there are actors like the Chinese Communist Party,
not the Chinese people, the Chinese Communist Party who have
no regard for any of those principles. I like to
sometimes call them the trust principles, and innovation is such
a crucial one. They're really good at stealing our innovation
and stealing our intellectual property. But for small businesses, especially
those in the space supply chain, this is a huge,
huge issue.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Right. You hit it right on the head. It's so
easy to think of space as something that's out there
because you don't see the spectrum waves that are coming
through to power things here on Earth. You don't necessarily
see the application. But space impacts all of us here
Main Street, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and you know, I
think at the end of the day, it represents what
we can do in terms of the big things we
can achieve, and we all come together patriotically. These are
great jobs for the most part, whether you are a
space caller worker who love that term, who is working
as a welder, or a technician, whether you have a
community college degree, a four year degree, because space needs
folks who do policy and communications too, as well as
the obvious rocket scienceists literally and the astronauts the best
of us all. So I think for as Americans as
we look at our fractured political environment, space is one
of the few things that brings us together and reminds
us what American leadership looks like and what makes us
proud to be Americans looking.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
I mean, there's so many stats, and it's going to
be in the trillion dollar market more than that in
the twenty thirties. But just here in the United States,
I'm on the Labor Bureau's website and just their most
recent numbers two hundred and forty point nine billion dollars
in US gross output just in the space economy. That's annually,
So it's more than that because that's three years old
at this point. But that's the latest numbers because we
don't have enough data, which is something that you're really
passionate about. The nerd in me is really passionate about
wanting more data on the space economy. But in private industry,
the space economy, just in the United States alone supports
three hundred and seventy three thousand full and part time jobs.
So I think most people as they're opening their eyes
and their imaginations to the space economy, they think of astronauts,
and they think of astrophysicists. But to your point, all
of those awesome inspiring images of satellites that we see
of galaxies far far away, that's a lot of welding
to make a satellite, and so it is really really interesting.
Tell us quickly before I let you go, one thing
from a national security standpoint as it relates to space,
that gives you a lot of hope and optimism about
the direction America is orienting toward.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Frankly, just to our successes of late of integrating space,
you know, upping the space warps budget, being thoughtful about
how we engage in this domain, particularly as we see
our adversary China starting to pull ahead of us in
certain domain. Seeing this recommitment within the national security sector
and hopefully soon in the civil sector as well, that
matches this private enthusiasm and bringing the commercial sector in
to help us fight and help us win has been
really incredible, awesome.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Mary Gunther, she is the head of Space policy at
the Progressive Policy Institute PPI, thanks for coming on to
really help us think about national security and space, college jobs,
manufacturing jobs. I really appreciate it. I'm gonna have to
have you come back on because there's so much more
I want to talk with you about.