Once in a while, a pair of simultaneous events offers us a warning about the future, if we are able to open our eyes and see the lessons of the present. Over the last few weeks, we have experienced the excitement and pride that comes with watching Americans return to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years. NASA and Elon Musk have announced ambitious plans to return to the Moon and settle there. In parallel, the U.S. Navy began a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as part of America’s risky and uncertain war with Iran. While these two events may appear unrelated, a closer look reveals that they have a lot in common.
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway, until recently controlled by a hostile enemy, which serves as the transit point for one-fifth of the world’s oil. Cislunar space, though seemingly large, actually contains a few unique and exclusive points of transit through which all lunar craft must pass. Like the Strait of Hormuz, it’s a critical, strategic passage. If it falls into the wrong hands, all of NASA’s and Musk’s nascent lunar enterprises—the first steps in a multi-trillion dollar space economy—may have to be written off.
Serious people are aware of this risk and are planning accordingly. The U.S. Space Force (USSF) is developing capabilities and force structures that can defend cislunar space, which military theorists are beginning to refer to as “the high ground” of space.
We applaud these efforts, but based on our research in writing the book “Space Piracy,” we would like to suggest that the Space Force and other stakeholders in lunar defense expand their scope of threats to include crime and piracy.
How Vulnerability is Built Into the Plans
The plans for a permanent human presence on the Moon, impressive as they may be, embody a high degree of vulnerability to malicious actors. Consider that NASA envisions spending $20 billion on the infrastructure required to get to the Moon, including orbiting way stations and in-space logistics platforms. The operations are envisioned as joint projects between NASA and private space businesses such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Here’s what NASA may not fully understand: A $20 billion asset is someone else’s $20 billion ransom target. It’s like parking a Lamborghini in a dark alley with only one way out. If someone has the ability to block access to this space infrastructure—a system whose failure could cost human lives—that someone has a lot of leverage over the owners.
The potential risks multiply when one contemplates the Musk plan. Musk apparently wants to build a nuclear-powered “self-growing” lunar city, which he calls Moon Base Alpha, near the lunar South Pole by 2028-2030 using the Starship rocket. He wants to establish a permanent, industrial, and scientific base that would leverage water for fuel before expanding to Mars, with potential for AI data centers and manufacturing. It’s not hard to imagine that there are people in the world who might feel tempted to extort a ransom from a man worth $800 billion by threatening to shut down or destroy Moon Base Alpha.
Lesser risks include the obstruction of lunar commerce, theft of lunar cargoes in craft that can outrun existing space vehicles, financial crimes on the Moon (or in the Earth-based infrastructure supporting the Moon), person-to-person crime on the Moon, theft of space hardware, theft of intellectual property, and theft of valuable data. Smuggling and drug trafficking should be serious concerns, as well.
Or, consider the potential for legal but unethical actions, such as a corporation that is situated physically in such a way that it can charge exorbitant rates for access to extremely expensive space assets. You can sue, and even win, but will you be able to enforce your judgment at a distance of 250,000 miles? Would American courts even have jurisdiction?
Scenarios for Attack, Criminality, and Takeover of Lunar Infrastructure
One can imagine many different scenarios for attacks, criminal infiltration, or outright takeover of lunar infrastructure. The incident may not start with anything overt or notable. There could be a quiet infiltration of the commercial supply chain. By exploiting the “first-ready” lander model, a criminal cartel could place sleeper agents within the engineering teams of SpaceX and Blue Origin.
An attack could unfold during the grueling 14-day lunar night, when solar power does not work. Attackers could seize control of the Lunar Reactor-1 (LR-1). By holding the lunar power grid and only lifeline hostage, the attackers could effectively paralyze the Artemis Base Camp, its foundational surface habitats, and vehicles.
While a common storyline in fiction, the idea that someone would actually commit a crime or act of piracy in space may feel far-fetched. Astronauts are the best of the best. They have “the right stuff.” They don’t steal and pillage.
Except… the lunar world envisioned by NASA and Musk is the first step in much more diverse human participation in space enterprises. The inspiration of Neil Armstrong’s “for all mankind” is likely to yield to the harsh realities of life experienced by all mankind on planet Earth.
Potential bad actors threatening lunar infrastructure and its Earth-based support system run the gamut from disgruntled insiders to global criminal cartels. There is certainly no lack of talented personnel to help out with organized criminal activities. As the Russian space sector struggles, world-class space engineers may go to work for criminal organizations. The lunar colony might discover, too late, that it has cartel employees among its personnel.
Money is probably the biggest motivator of potential crime and privacy on the Moon. However, geopolitics could also be a factor. “Hacktivist” entities might object to lunar exploration and seek to disrupt it. Or, criminal entities may serve as proxies for nation-states that want to ruin America’s lunar project and destroy its strategic foothold in space, but do so with deniability. This is already happening in the cyber realm.
The Current Approach to Risk Mitigation
The stakeholders are aware of many, but not all of the potential risks. The current approach to risk mitigation includes deterrence and diplomacy, with the U.S. relying on a dual-track strategy of technological superiority and international law. In particular, the Artemis Accords can be a shield against bad actors through its reliance on international norms for resource utilization and space governance. However, these policy-driven approaches have their limits, especially with criminal organizations that don’t abide by such rules.
The USSF is playing a role, too, setting up the ability to monitor potential threats to space infrastructure and developing systems to ensure uninterrupted communications for both civil and commercial missions. This would include nuclear resilience.
The apparent limitation, however, is the prevailing focus on nation-state adversaries. While it makes sense to plan for threats against lunar infrastructure from countries like Russia and China, the U.S. and Musk might be wise to expand their understanding of attack vectors to include non-state actors and irregular threats.
Even before contemplating countermeasures against irregular threats, the USSF might want to make sure it can respond to incidents quickly enough to make a difference. In the nuclear reactor takeover described above, will the USSF be able to develop a meaningful response plan and execute it in time to stave off the devastating consequences of the attack?
Addressing the Risks
How should the United States deal with these irregular threats to our space/and national security that are still dimly seen over the horizon? Based on our assessment, it seems the U.S. intelligence and space warfighting community is overly siloed and narrow in its strategic mandate.
This is not anyone’s fault, but rather the unintended consequence of a disciplined, focused approach to space defense. A broader perspective is needed, on more than one level. In addition to expanding the intelligence and defense plan to include criminal cartels and non-state actors, new possible areas of endeavor might include:
- Casting a security-driven eye on the full terrestrial corporate and logistical ecosystem that supports the lunar infrastructure, including the entire industrial supply chain and intellectual property portfolio that makes lunar exploration possible. There are innumerable hiding places in this vast environment for bad actors.
- Adopting a comprehensive intelligence approach to discover and neutralize criminal and non-state actors that threaten lunar infrastructure.
- Taking a cross-domain approach to space intelligence and dense that spans all the air, land, sea, and cyber elements that support space operations.
- Working (or working more deeply) with sister agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office, National Geospatial Agency, Air Force, and CIA.
- Considering the creation of a new unit, or independent agency for space intelligence, i.e., a Space Security Agency (SSA), which would coordinate all space-related intelligence and be in possession of both analytical and clandestine
It might also be useful to explore the use (or greater use) of secure design principles in the creation of the proposed lunar infrastructure. It is doubtful that security and anti-crime factors have been a key consideration in designing the future lunar colony. It would be smart to think about these issues now, rather than try to retrofit them later, after a major incident.
Finally, the USSF and related intelligence apparatus might want to see what it can learn from the U.S. Navy, which has been fighting pirates at sea for nearly 250 years. The Navy, by strategic doctrine, views the maritime environment as a venue for criminal activity and acts accordingly. As far as we know, there is no comparable point of view in the Air Force or Space Force. It would be helpful for space security forces to take on a naval perspective on space.
Are we going to prepare to go to the Moon and not take the opportunity to learn lessons from geopolitical dramas playing out right now in the Strait of Hormuz and other hotspots? The new vision for space is ambitious, but its very scope and breadth of participation invite crime and piracy. It is naïve to imagine that this is not the case. The time to start preparing for mitigation of irregular threats is now. Success will come from embracing a broad understanding of potential risks, including those from criminal cartels and on-state actors—and building intelligence and mitigation capabilities for a lunar future that will hold its share of unpleasant surprises.
Marc Feldman and Hugh Taylor are co-authors of the book Space Piracy: Preparing for a Criminal Crisis and Founders of the Center for the Study of Space Crime, Piracy, and Governance.
