Is Space Critical Infrastructure?

This episode is about infrastructure, a subject, no doubt, that you have probably been hearing a whole lot about these past few days, especially if you are in the United States. That’s because the U.S. Congress is getting set to vote on two multi-trillion-dollar bills, one of which is called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The success of that feat depends on whether the lawmakers can actually reach an agreement. What’s kind of funny though, is that there is another infrastructure debate going on in this town, and it’s about space infrastructure - that’s both the assets on orbit and on the ground. Laura Winter explores the question of whether the Department of Homeland Security should designate space systems a critical infrastructure sector with Ron Keen a cybersecurity expert with the Department of Homeland Security’s National Risk Management Center; Samuel Visner, a technical fellow at the Mitre Corporation, which bills him as its in-house global thought leader in national security, cybersecurity, and space systems security; and John Doyon, the executive vice president of the Intelligence National Security Alliance. Visner also spoke at this week’s Aspen Security Forum and is a key author of a white paper titled “Designating the U.S. Space Sector as Critical Infrastructure,” which INSA published this week.