"Beijing's intended strategy is to dominate the high ground of the twenty-first century":
In a forthcoming memoir, former US politician and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson offers a blistering assessment of China, saying the United States must do all it can to retain its leadership in space exploration.
"Beijing's intended strategy is to dominate the high ground of the twenty-first century," writes Nelson in Space Odyssey, a book to be published by Harper Horizon in January 2027.
A former Congressman and Senator from Florida, Nelson served as a mission specialist on a space shuttle flight in 1986 and later as NASA administrator from May 2021 to January 2025 under President Biden. The book largely focuses on his space policy work in Congress and his tenure as NASA's leader.
[...] Nelson has long been wary of China as a threat to the United States, noting his concerns about technology theft from the West. Unlike his predecessor under a Democratic president—former astronaut Charlie Bolden, who served as NASA leader under President Obama—Nelson supported the Wolf Amendment, which strictly limits cooperation between NASA and China's space program.
The reason, Nelson says, is that China's space program is militarized and highly secretive.
"China is not a partner to be trusted," he writes. "Partnership requires trust, and trust is founded on transparency. With China, despite repeated efforts to build verifiable, rules-based cooperation and set commonsense guard rails for engagement, there has never been much of either."
The flashpoint of the near future is the Moon, where both NASA and China are in a contest to not just land humans but also establish a long-term settlement. As for how this competition is going, Nelson writes, "America is not the obvious favorite."
[...] China, Nelson writes, is planning "infrastructure for lunar permanence," seeking to occupy the limited area at the South Pole of the Moon where the most resources are. "They are not sprinting against us to plant another flag; they are settling in for a marathon, an endurance race that will take us deeper into space than humankind has ever dared to venture before," Nelson writes.
[...] "When you realize there are only limited parking spots that get us access to that training environment, it creates an urgency, and we must [go fast] because the Chinese are going to the exact same locations," Isaacman said. "They are partnered with the Russians. They are going to put a nuclear reactor there, and they could potentially deny this training environment that is a necessity for America's space ambitions."
[...] Being first, and being there for the long haul, matters, Nelson says. And he tells his readers to not be fooled by talk of exploration, especially when it comes to China's space program. This is a competition for the high ground of the 21st century.
"What looks like exploration on the surface is, in truth, also a raging struggle for space supremacy," he writes. "This race will determine who sets the rules for a new era of human expansion beyond Earth. For Beijing, this race is not about exploration but about domination, securing the infrastructure of orbit in much the same way empires once seized trade routes and aggressively defended sea lanes."
Should the United States lose this competition, Nelson writes, "we'll watch the next frontier slip from our grasp."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gawdonblue on Tuesday September 29, @08:57PM (7 children)
> Former NASA Chief Sounds Alarm on China's Lunar "Exploration" Plans
Oh dear, China cannot be trusted and so the word exploration needs quotes.
This from the country that just admitted to weaponising space.
This from the country whose leader goes to the UN and threatens to annihilate entire other countries. Who talks about how great it is that they're currently dying - presumably of starvation - because of the sanctions he has in place.
This from the country that no other country - including long time allies - now trusts over anything.
(Score: 3, Troll) by ikanreed on Wednesday September 30, @01:30AM
All that being said, from a national governance perspective, hypothetical threats are threats that need to be taken seriously. Inventing malice on the part of foreign nations is how you maintain enough security to remain a nation. I know, I know, that line of reasoning is how you end up with 5 times the nuclear arsenal necessary to depopulate the planet hooked up to a paranoid hair trigger second strike plan.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by arslan on Wednesday September 30, @02:48AM (4 children)
It is not an unusual default position - China has conflicting values against the Western democratic world.
Just looking at it logically, they're one non-benevolent dictator away from being a destructive superpower. This isn't a baseless view, it is grounded on a long history where dynasties rose and crumble as it moves toward decadence, corruption fueled by an incompetent monarch.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @05:02AM (1 child)
So does the USA.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday October 01, @02:11AM
What has that gotta do with my comment? I'm not American nor did I mentioned the US. Go stroke your US hatred elsewhere
(Score: 4, Touché) by epitaxial on Wednesday September 30, @01:29PM (1 child)
Look in the fucking mirror there buddy.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday October 01, @02:07AM
I'm not American.. maybe you need to grow up.
(Score: 2) by jb on Wednesday September 30, @06:53AM
Obviously China itself cannot possibly be bad. Over a thousand million people live there. Like the people in any country with more than a few hundred people in it (which is pretty much the hard population limit for "everyone's a genuine fanatic" type societies), some of those people are all good, some are all bad and the vast majority are somewhere in between.
The Chinese government on the other hand, is a whole different kettle of fish. As the song goes, "if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao..."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RedGreen on Tuesday September 29, @11:33PM (3 children)
If your Repugnant Party buddies would actually care about building your country instead of destroying everything in sight you just might have hope in hell of doing something about it. As it stands it is never going to happen, the murdering Chinese bastards in their government know how to build something that enhances their society and they progress they want to achieve. None of this lets make certain we keep the rich scumbags happy with stealing all of the cash in sight for themselves. There when those in the Epstein class get too big for their britches and that greedy they get a good comeuppance and put back on a path that benefits their society again.
"Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills." -- larryjoe on /.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 30, @12:21PM (2 children)
Yes, this is why the Chinese are succeeding:
In the US (and, unfortunately, in a lot of democracies) there is no long-term planning. Each President and party in power changes plans in order to either GET votes or KEEP votes (satisfying the
monetary investors/the richvoters).Some Presidents are just disruptive (Trump, the Mule).
The Chinese, on the other hand, are planning for today, tomorrow and the future... and they are winning.
Are you sick of all the winning yet?
I still believe the best form of government is the Benevolent Dictator... you just have to find someone you can trust... :)
(But the Chinese form of govenment seems to be succeeding better than the American form... depending on your idea of success).
Skipper: Failure is not an option.
Trump: Which is fine by me, because I do not intend to fail. I vow to do the opposite of fail!
Marlene: You mean...succeed?
Trump: No, I will not suck seed. No one will be sucking seed!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @01:04PM (1 child)
Trump, the mule? Poor choice of metaphors. Go read the Foundation books again. The Mule was sterile, in the story, and in real life.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 30, @02:02PM
PROVE to me that Trumps' children are his own.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 29, @11:50PM (2 children)
> Congressman and Senator from Florida
Okay, this is the real headline. In a parting gift to his political masters, a former politician with nothing to lose is sending out feelers to see how well the "CHINA BAD" strategy will play out in 2028.
"noting his concerns about technology theft from the West."
There's a recent-ish PBS Nova special hosted by Kaiser Kuo about the rise of Chinese tech dominance. It explains the idea that the East views tech evolution as iterating on an established product in many different directions while the west views tech evolution in the "cult of genius" as in a super smart guy works alone and comes up with a product that revolutionizes everything (Steve Jobs and Elon Musk get all the credit for their companies work). The Eastern view is that knowledge cannot be patented, only branding and packaging. Anyway this results in the incredible scale at which southern China has set up to become the factory of the modern world in a way that the West just cannot compete based on infrastructure and number of functioning people alone (i.e. China has more high achievers than America has people and second tier cities have infrastructure that makes the NYC metro area look antiquated).
An even wider 10000 foot view is that the past 500 years of Western dominance was an aberration based on identifying a new source of free natural resources (the Americas) and free labor (slaves) in their quest to sail west and obtain Chinese manufactured goods that the West themselves could not make. Fine china, silk, silverware, spices. Even the whole "Gutenberg invented the printing press" thing is just marketing of a grifter who introduced the East Asian printing press to Europe (after all, East Asian writing systems of characters vice phonetic letters yields movable type blocks by default), and when sued, decided to use his printing press to make free Bibles because it's a bad look for someone to sue a man of God (sound familiar, Trump?). Anyone who's ever visited the Gutenberg museum walks away with the feeling that the man was nothing more than a salesman, a grifter. Same with anybody who is old enough to watch Elon Musk continually miss the pitches thrown right down the middle, but because of his daddy's money, he gets more than three strikes at bat, and he gets to stay at the plate until he hits a home run.
But without incredible social change and the way the West views technology, there's no way to compete. It's a broken system. So the result is reduced competition because your companies have lobbied to ban more competitive, cheaper products from China. Tri-fold screens have been a thing for years now in East Asia. PWM flicker is regulated on screens in China, which is why you can have high frequency toggles on OnePlus phones but not on Samsung (after all, why would they spend money on that?) and it's only available on the flagship iPhone Pro and Pixel Pro. The ban on East Asian tech has resulted in an economy in the West where companies just post up and re-brand Chinese product as ... not Chinese. The rise of middlemen in countries with favorable trade agreements with both China AND the USA, which allows them to import, rebrand, mark-up, and export to the USA at a cheaper price than US citizens ban purchase on their own. Maybe this the end result for the West. Who really made your Fairphone or your Tuxedo computer? Where did your openwrt One router come from? Can you even buy a phone without your carrier whitelisting it, usually at an inflated price in the USA any more?
So this is just another footnote in the return to status quo, or circling the drain for the West. Unless incredible change is made in the way the West views tech, we've already lost. But let's keep throwing money at football stadiums, and fighting imaginary battles against the transgendered, instead of investing in something that would take decades to catch up if even possible at this point.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday September 30, @04:18AM
How many billions of dollars do you think Musk's dad actually had? I find it interesting in light of the above narrative that there's no real evidence for wealth transfer from father to son. For example, the father claims [quora.com] to have put $28k in Zip2 (some point in the mid to late 1990s), Musk's first home run, and that's probably been it ever since (assuming it happened, apparently Elon denies that the investment happened).
What's missed is that Musk hit a bunch of home runs using money from previous home runs to fund future ones. For example, $12-22 million from the Zip2 sale invested into Paypal which resulted in a return of ~$180 million from the sale of Paypal to Ebay. Almost all of that was in turn invested in SpaceX and Tesla.
It's not just one and it sure isn't just luck. And given your hopelessness concerning competition, it's worth noting that Musk's businesses have successfully competed with Chinese businesses and government in recent decades.
I get that people are tired of the admiration that Musk gets. But it is deserved. For example, the capabilities of the Falcon 9, SpaceX's workhorse rocket has been done multiple times between the 1960s and present. Seriously, there have been many attempts over the decades with some of them succeeding at a moderate level - including serious Chinese efforts. SpaceX's unusual success, operating at a completely different level than the rest of the global launch market, isn't because they hired good people and the other companies didn't. Similar thing goes on with Tesla. There has been a huge drought in successful US auto startups from when the big three were established by the Second World War, and the present. Tesla is the sole success story over an 80+ year period. In other words, two of his biggest home runs happened in fields where almost no one succeeded.
The West views tech evolution in multiple ways including both of the above - the Nova story is just typical ignorance of actual Western approaches to technology. The real difference is that when a "genius" happens in China that isn't under the thumb of the Chinese government, then there's a good chance the government will sooner or later, waste considerable societal resources just to control and/or take down the genius. In other words, the real story here is that China can't do the "cult of genius" because that threatens the government elite.
The real failings of the Western system are in higher economic parasitism (China has plenty and is growing quickly, but they were starting from near zero when they first embraced capitalism), higher cost of living, and a society-wide emphasis on punishing business and employment.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 30, @12:32PM
As well as Edison. Edison was a real piece of work.
Also, here's a quote that many Presidents have used lately in practice (remember Trump was the President who would not start a war?):
"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
--James Madison (maybe)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 30, @01:16PM (1 child)
How 'bout we stop playing silly games and semantics, stop pretending that the "no arms in space" agreement has any meaning.
There are 2 1/2 "super powers" in this world. (Sorry Russia, you've lost the rights to this title.) The powers that be are competing for an edge in space. With power comes economic as well as military benefits. The two are nearly inseparable. The power that controls access to the most worlds, moons, asteroids, and whatever other resources will enjoy a huge economic and military advantage over any other powers. Power is wielded, or power is lost. One of the superpowers is most likely to hold the advantages over all other nations on earth, including the other superpowers. That is how life has worked since time immemorial.
I can't understand how seemingly intelligent people can pretend that a new frontier in space is going to transform humanity, making us non-competitive.
Compare space to military service. Military service doesn't make anyone a good guy. Military service doesn't make anyone a bad guy. Every person who has ever worn a uniform was good or bad before he ever put the uniform on. But, military service gives a lot of people the opportunity to DEMONSTRATE just how good, or how evil he is. Stressful situation bring out the best and the worst in a person - whatever was there to start with, is free to make itself evident.
Space will simply be a more stressful situation than life on earth. Some people will show themselves to be saintly, while other people prove to be demonic. And, people will fight in space.
Hell yes, China is looking for economic and military advantage in space. So is every other nation with a space program. Russia, the EU, the US - even Iran. There is no magic border 100 miles up, where humans turn into something other than humans.
Alternative für Deutschland
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @03:52PM
Nazi found.