A revised version of my paper „Tackling the Space Debris Problem: Practical Proposals from a Global Commons Perspective“ is now available for free on ResearchGate. Here’s the abstract: The growing amount of space debris raises risks of collision cascades in low-earth orbit which threaten to make orbital bands permanently unusable. But even though this has been known for over four decades, there has been little progress in governing the problem. This paper proceeds from the assumptions that space is a global commons and that calls for a centralized form of management are unlikely to succeed. In line with other recent…
Monat: Juli 2023
Did you know that I am not just a political scientist but also a coach for teachers in higher education? And that you can hire me? My specialties are inverted/flipped classroom scenarios and active learning techniques. You can find all the details and more on my new page for Higher Education Coaching.
As global politics is evolving away from the “liberal international order” towards a “new bipolarity” or a multipolar world order, we observe a deepening and intensifying competition for technological leadership among major powers. You know the relevant terms – the „AI (Arms) Race“, „technological sovereignty“, the „Chip War“, etc. To be sure, technological competition has always been an element of great power politics – just remember the Space Race. Nonetheless, this competition for technological capabilities in „emerging technologies“ among major actors (the US and China in particular) has clearly intensified over the past decade or so. In select technological fields,…
I’m still not convinced that we are seeing clear momentum towards stronger outer space governance. However, there is movement on more specialized issues. Not in a centralized, formal-agreement-at-the-United-Nations manner but in a more polycentric way. I’m referring to two recent announcements regarding space debris mitigation (i.e. preventing new space junk from being created). Industry: The Space Industry Debris Mitigation Recommendations The first are the Space Industry Debris Mitigation Recommendations, published in June 2023 by the World Economic Forum. It is an industry effort, organized by the WEF’s Future of Space Network in collaboration with ESA and signed by 27 aerospace…
Although the competition for artificial intelligence leadership is not an arms race in the classic sense, the narrative of an „AI Arms Race“ has been popular, especially among US defence circles. Other people have thoroughly debunked this notion already, so I will not belabor this any further, except to point out a German-language article by Carlo Diehl and myself from last year. In it, we gave a brief overview and summary of US, Chinese, and EU policies for AI. Carlo also came up with this masterful timeline of key documents and policies from 2016 to early 2021. Given how quickly…
I am co-organizing two panels on the geopolitics of digital infrastructures at the German Geographical Congress (not sure about that translation, though – it’s the Deutscher Kongress für Geographie). I’m doing this together with Georg Glasze and Finn Dammann – two proper geographers who have kindly taken on this boundary-crossing political scientist. Both panels are scheduled for Friday afternoon (22 September). This is possibly not the most attractive time for conference-goers but it allows me to attend the DKG even though it overlaps with the SPS conference in nearby Darmstadt. Here is the panel abstract: For some years now, questions of…
Is there new momentum in space law or the global governance of outer space more broadly? The German government seems to think so – in its recently released National Security Strategy, developing and updating the outer space regime features as one of the major space-related agenda items. Possibly this is just reflexive multilateralism without substance, which would hardly be surprising. (German governments have never seen a multilateral initiative they don’t like.) However, there are some indications of movement in the outer space regime, leading my SichTRaum colleague Maximilian Bertamini to call it „The Most Exciting Field of International Law“ in…