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Good afternoon. Welcome to the session on A Day Without Satellites.
My name is Ram Jakhu.
I'm from the Institute of Air and Space Law at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
Last night at a dinner, somebody made a presentation on cyber security
and the data that gentleman described was fascinating.
He said that there are five billion devices connected to the Internet
and there are half a billion smartphones connected to the Internet.
Now, very few people know the benefits of the Internet,
because what we know is the benefit of the computers, not the Internet.
And extremely few people know the risks when you lose Internet.
And that situation is very much similar to the satellites.
The satellites I describe, I consider them invisible hand,
invisible to eyes, a tool or means to make not only the Internet work but other devices.
So the question here before us, the topic is A Day Without Satellites.
We would like to start the session a satellite with satellites.
That means what are the benefits of satellites for industry
and society as a whole, for you and for me.
Then we'll see what are the risks to the sustainable use of satellites.
What are the threats to the use of satellites?
Risks and threats.
And then we'll get into what should be done to mitigate these risks
or to eliminate these risks and to expand the benefits of satellites.
So these are the three main questions
which have come out of the five questions mentioned in the program.
While we'd certainly like to have relatively longer questions and answers session,
we would very much appreciate your questions
and our panel will describe their answers or try to answer the questions.
The panelists here are very well-experienced,
and knowledgeable in the utilization of satellites.
We have a representative of people working with private industry,
a person working with NGO and our lady from the European Space Agency,
working in the government, and I'm from the academia.
So that means it's a good variety of people who are here to address this issue.
We will start with our first panelist,
Ray Johnson, who is the Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Fellow
with Lockheed Martin, a private corporation in the United States,
one of the top manufacturers of the satellite.
So, Ray, here we are.
What do you think about the benefits of satellites for the society and for industry?
Thank you, Ram, I appreciate it. Good afternoon everyone.
I'll do a little bit of an introduction which will kind of introduce the theme
that some of the other panel members will be talking about.
I'll begin by introducing some of the benefits, the challenges,
and the risks associated with space.
As many of you know, space is an essential tool for global security and safety
and has many capabilities and benefits that we often take for granted,
which I think is what Ram was talking about when comparing it to the Internet.
Space benefits mankind in many ways.
A few of the examples that will make it, I think, very clear to you,
the first one is very easy and that's navigation, and GPS devices,
and other location-based devices.
So there are currently about one billion GPS devices on the planet,
and it's not just GPS, it's not just maps in cars, it's also your iPhone.
So when your iPhone you say can I give you some information about something
that's near you, you answer yes,
well, it's using your location, typically using GPS to give you that location.
Another area is space exploration and observation,
both the human-space flight component and also the science missions
that many nations around the world are taking part in.
Satellite television and more broadly, entertainment-based communication.
Weather observations and forecasting; communications in general, telecommunications.
National security; disaster management and environmental monitoring.
Environmental monitoring is not just monitoring of the environment
which you might consider a science mission,
it's also food security, wetlands, resources, a broad variety of uses there.
For space to provide security, space must be secure.
So, there are risks to space, there are risks to the satellites that are in space.
A few of those risks are number one, space debris.
Space debris is, interesting to me,
when I looked over the World Economic Forum Global Risk 2012,
in that document, space debris was one of the lowest rated risks
in terms of threat to mankind, threat to the world.
I'm not going to assess whether that's proper or not,
but it is in fact a statistical fact.
But, I think it speaks to the fact that people maybe don't understand all the risks
associated with what those objects can do to satellites and the impact that it can have.
Solar flares, other near-earth objects, and spectrum issues.
Spectrum issues having to do with the radio frequency spectrum
and the need to allocate frequencies that can be used.
Also, secondary impacts, if you think about losing space assets,
downturn to economics, trade, commerce, heightened political international tensions.
Part of the national security component of space is
awareness of what other people are doing.
And so with that awareness, comes a sense of security.
National disasters that result in loss of life and property.
And then transportation coordination issues, especially air transport.
You can think of space and the satellites as having this triad,
and the triad is interesting because it's a conflict between all of these.
The competition, the conflict and the cooperation
that nations of the world now experience with regards to space.
So how to prevent these problems?
International cooperation on space issues and policies and procedures,
collaboration on space debris and near-earth objects tracking and mitigation.
So to kind of summarize, as we begin introducing the other panelists,
many of today's complex global security challenges
involve space as a component of the solution,
probably something that's not recognized broadly.
What we're seeing today is that no single nation, not even the United States,
is able to go it alone in space and so that speaks to the need for collaboration.
Cooperation is essential and so the US and other space-faring nations
must commit to a global collaboration.
Because of this collaborative environment,
we need to also look at space from a systems engineering problem
where you can think about developing affordable solutions
to solve many of these problems that I've talked about. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ray. Fascinated by three elements you mentioned.
To ensure space security, space must be secure. I think that's very good.
The second is competition, cooperation and collaboration.
They are existing or they are prevalent at the same time.
It is fascinating to see that. A good introduction to the subject.
The next speaker is Geraldine Naja.
She's the Head of the Strategic Studies for the European Space Agency.
It is logical or natural for me to ask her two types of questions, I would say.
First thing, we are in Europe
and the European Space Agency spends about ג‚¬4 billion per year,
is the fourth largest spender in the world on space.
What benefits do the European taxpayers get out of spending $4 billion?
And the second thing with respect to... -Euros.
Euros, sorry. I'm used to...
And also the benefits of satellites for special purposes,
something like disaster management, water management, food security, climate change.
Thank you.
Okay, Ram. Easy questions there.
Wait.
So indeed the European Space Agency budget is about ג‚¬4 billion per year
which amounts to about one cinema ticket per year per European,
so it's not much when you look at it in retrospect.
It's much less than what we spend on the lottery and games or bets
or food or whatever, things like that.
I would like to say for those ג‚¬4 billion, Europeans, as a whole, get a lot of return.
Economic return, that is a demonstrated fact
that each Euro invested in space has an economic return
in terms of industrial competitiveness, in terms of highly qualified employment
and not an employment that can be delocalized.
It's an employment which is within Europe.
We have had several studies done which show
that the return is between two and four, depending on the sector.
So for each Euro invested, Europe gets ג‚¬2 to ג‚¬4 in terms of economic return.
But economic return is not all.
I think you said that Europe is the fourth largest spender.
I'm not sure about being a spender. There are major space powers in the world,
obviously the US, the major space power, but China is now a very large space power,
Russia and also Europe, Japan, Canada, India. India is a major space power.
What is for sure is that with relatively modest budgets,
because our budget is ג‚¬4 billion, NASA's budget is about $15 or $17 billion,
and it's not the only spending for space in the US.
So Europe has a fairly modest spending in space, but with that it manages quite well.
It is certainly a leader in space science,
earth sciences, which is understanding how our planet works,
the different components, atmosphere, oceans, lands, ice;
how do they interact with each other, so it's a crucial effort
to understand climate change and environmental effects.
We are also very good in services, but I am sure Michel will talk about that.
We have not invested in human space flight,
so this is the sector in which we have not really invested,
but we are also a leader in commercial launchers
with the *** Launcher and Arianespace, I'm sure many of you have heard about that.
So I would like to say this spending provides economic return but also societal benefits,
improving the knowledge, improving our knowledge of our planet,
improving our knowledge of the universe and also applications,
because we mentioned, Ray has mentioned it, you have mentioned it,
space can provide many services
and, nowadays, we integrate the different disciplines of space,
for instance, earth observations, telecoms, navigation, to provide integrated services.
You mentioned disaster management.
For instance, space can intervene in all phases of disaster management and mitigation.
Space can help forecast, for instance, if you look at forest fires,
you want to know the dryness of the soil
because that tells you where a forest fire is likely to take place.
With space, with satellites, you can make mapping of soil dryness.
You can also, in certain cases, you can have an early warning,
you can have an early warning of volcanic eruptions, an early warning of floods.
So all these, obviously, of weather events,
you have an early warning of hurricanes, of cyclones, et cetera.
So all these help prepare for the disaster.
Once the disaster has happened, unfortunately it does happen most of the time,
space means are crucial to manage the operations, the rescue,
to help with disaster management.
So with space means, you can replace the infrastructure which has been destroyed,
because it is very frequent when you have a disaster
that the terrestrial infrastructure is destroyed, telecoms or whatever,
so you can immediately replace it with space means.
You can also help the rescue teams to locate themselves and to go about
because usually when a major disaster has hit a country,
infrastructure such as bridges, roads, et cetera, have been damaged,
so you can give the rescue teams a rapid map, what we call rapid mapping,
which helps them orient themselves.
They know which bridge they can still use or which they cannot use,
which road they can still use, where they have to go, where is rescue most needed.
So that is crucial in disaster management. It also helps in recovery.
After the disaster, in building up, recovering, space can also help.
So you see, if you only take the example of disaster management,
space helps, but there are many other sectors.
You can talk about education, tele-education,
and in India it is a major application for space.
You can talk about medicine, tele-medicine,
in many remote areas the only way to get medical care is through space means
because you do not have doctors who are able to come
when you have a problem instantaneously.
They are remote, so it is a very important application.
You mentioned food.
It is true that there is an important new applications sector for space
which is agriculture.
Space can help you maximize the yield of the crops.
So you put less fertilizer which is better for everyone's health,
and you maximize the yield of the crops.
You also can find spots of resources using earth observation.
So you have many, many sectors.
One last sector which I would like to mention is energy.
Energy is, we all know, a main challenge for the future.
It so happens that when you look at space systems,
they have to be energetically correct.
It means that they have to consume as little as they can,
they have to carry as little fuel as they can
because space systems are by nature, very good at saving energy
and also, they use solar cells
which is now very interesting, also for terrestrial applications.
So space technology helps us with energy.
In the future it could even help us more
if we one day manage to gather the energy from the sun and, perhaps, bring it down to earth,
but also, with space means, you manage the power grids,
you manage the power systems which distribute energy on earth.
By the way, should we lose the use of satellites, in particular GPS,
we would have problems with our energy distribution systems
because they all rely on GPS for synchronization and distribution of power.
So this is one thing we usually forget.
Space is also helpful in this type of application.
So, I think this is what I can say but I could say much, much more.
Thank you very much. Excellent. Two things impressed me.
The first thing is really what I get from my buck
and the economic return is fascinating to see, especially in Europe,
and, of course, in North America also, due to the financial crisis.
So your data is quite convincing to me and I'm sure to our audience also
that if you spend ג‚¬1 you get at least ג‚¬2 to ג‚¬4 in return.
I think that creates jobs and I feel that's very good.
The other one I think on search and rescue,
if I'm not mistaken, thus far SARSAT satellite system have saved over 30,000 lives
and I think this is where the wonders of the invisible hand is there.
Thank you. Our third speaker is Michel de Rosen,
and he is the Chief Executive Officer of Eutelsat.
Eutelsat, for people who do not know is one of the largest operators
of telecommunications systems.
Michel, tell us about this invisible hand.
If I want to make a call from Davos to a small, remote town in China,
how does it take? Who takes my call there? Thanks.
Thank you, Ram. A word, if I may, about Eutelsat.
I don't know how many people in this room have seen the movie
2001 A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick.
You may not know that this movie was made from a book,
written by an American called Clarke.
Clarke was both a science fiction writer but he was also a great scientist.
So he was working, I'm saying this in a school.
He was working with paper and a pen and his brain,
and he calculated just with his intelligence and education,
that if you put a satellite at 36,000 km from the earth,
it would be at the right altitude so that gravity would not take the satellite down,
but also that the distance would not be such
that the satellite would simply drift away.
So he invented, with again, a paper, a pen and his brain,
the theory of what is called geo-stationary satellites.
So our satellites are indeed so-called communications satellites.
They are at 36, to be precise, 35,650 km from the earth, above the equator,
and around approximately 160 such satellites, out of which 29 are from my company.
When I say mine, I'm only the CEO, I don't own the company.
Eutelsat is a European company, very European.
Our headquarters are in Paris and we have 27 nationalities in our headquarters.
So most European countries, nationalities, are represented.
So, if I may, let's imagine that satellite communications for one day stop working.
Something happens, okay?
I brought here a few figures to share with you about what this would mean.
There would be black screens for 27,000 TV channels. 27,000 TV channels.
On our own satellites, we have more than 4000 TV channels, just Eutelsat.
There would be no TV at all for over 20% of homes that have TV, worldwide.
This is more than 350 million homes that have TV only through satellites.
Hundreds of millions of Africans would have no mobile phones.
You have approximately 1 billion people who live in Africa, 500 million mobile phones,
out of which 60% work because satellites enable them to work.
So, suddenly, if there were no satellites,
60% of the 500 million mobile phones in Africa would not work anymore.
There would be no coverage, obviously, of news breaking events across the world,
in Davos, in China or anywhere else.
There would be no Internet connections for several million users.
There would be, of course, no disaster recovery exercise initiatives
as the one that Geraldine was describing.
So suffice it to say, many things would stop happening,
and that could impact negatively and dramatically
the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
So without being too long, why are satellites important for mankind
and why will they be more important in the coming years than in the past years?
I believe there are three simple reasons to that.
One reason is that people use more and more the Internet.
There is more and more data flowing from different parts of the world
to other parts of the world,
and this increasing flow needs satellites to take part of it
because there is an increasing congestion of the flow of data.
The second reason, and saying this in the middle of the Swiss Alps,
is that terrestrial technologies cannot go everywhere.
Millions and millions of people can only be connected because of satellites.
When I was a student, there was a great philosopher called McLuhan
who spoke of the global village and the global village then sounded like Utopia.
Well the global village now becomes possible
but for some people it requires satellite services.
The third reason that satellites are also fundamentally necessary for the future
is that terrestrial technologies, like fibers, are great technologies
but it makes no economic sense to use them everywhere.
It can be estimated that it takes approximately ג‚¬10,000
to bring fiber to someone who lives far in the country or in the mountains.
That is of course, an absurdly and extravagant type of cost.
So for millions and millions of people,
including in Europe, and many more in other continents,
the satellite is the only rational way to be connected to the rest of the world.
So, Ram, this is what I wanted to say. -Thank you very much, Michel.
First of all, I'm very thankful to you that you started a presentation
explaining the work done by Arthur C. Clarke.
I personally owe a lot of gratitude to him
because I did my doctoral degree on his concept of geo-stationary satellite orbit.
When I did it back in '83, not ages, people, even in the Space Law Discipline,
were concerned what is this geo-stationary orbit?
Thanks to his ideas. Now there's a small similarity between him and me.
He was much more intelligent than me that he used his pen and brain.
I think that's what I did.
I did not have a computer, certainly not Internet.
I was fascinated and you gave a very good answer to that
and I am fascinated by your figure that 60% of 500 million Africans
would not be in a position to use their mobile phones,
that you're talking about 300 million people.
I think that one data is good enough to justify or explain
the benefit of satellites, particularly communications.
Not on all of the things that you said, I think.
And I'm also glad that you have already touched on the second topic we'll get to do,
life without satellites.
So that brings us to our fourth speaker in the debate.
Brian Weeden is the Technical Adviser to Secure World Foundation,
based in the United States.
Secure World Foundation, in my view,
is perhaps the most active and competent NGO in the space sector,
and Brian, a good friend of mine,
I'm always privileged to be in his company, and I learn a lot from him in two areas.
One is, his military background helps me understand the importance of space
for the military and I will say conflict resolution.
And the second is, his experience in making very difficult technical terms
to some less technical person like me.
Brian, tell us the use of satellites for conflict resolution,
how to avoid conflicts?
What happens when conflicts rise, and then we'll come to the others.
Thank you, Ram.
Satellites have played a large role in national security for decades.
In fact, some of the very first uses of satellites
were by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Since then, some of those uses have expanded to being used by other countries
and also, to perhaps, more of a global perspective.
For example, we've known for a long time, in the United States and the Soviet Union
of others that used satellites to capture imagery of the earth
to determine where there are armies and where there are troops
and where there are potential military activities.
Now, there are commercial companies that are selling satellite imagery
at 1/2 meter resolution which means the smallest thing you can see
in one of those photographs is 1/2 meter in size
that can be bought on the open market with a credit card over the Internet.
There are new uses for this data that are being found.
One recent one is a project called Sentinel Sat
that gained the headlines last year in its use of data and imagery
on what was going on in South Sudan that was being used by NGOs
to put pressure on governments for human rights abuses
and they had actual imagery that showed that there were villages being burned
and that there were atrocities being committed
and that in turn, put pressure on governments.
That would not have been possible without satellites
that were able to take this imagery,
and be distributed to NGOs and private citizens in the public
to then be used for political pressure.
There are going to be more examples of the use of satellite imagery
and other satellite data as it gets beyond just governments
into the hands of the public and into the hands of NGOs
that will be used for the global good.
To pick up on a few of the themes that have already been addressed
and provide some more specific examples.
In the case of disaster response, when the earthquake struck Haiti,
satellites played a major role in the disaster response.
Using some of these same commercial satellites, they were able to take
very high-res images of Port-au-Prince and the areas affected by the earthquake.
And using tools developed by Google and other software companies,
they were able to determine exactly which buildings were destroyed,
what it looked like before the earthquake and after the earthquake
to help rescuers target the places where people were most likely to be found
to try and save lives.
Back to the issue of navigation systems, it turns out that if you have...
atomic clocks are very useful in that they generate an extremely precise time
but they're expensive and they're not very small, at least not yet.
Well, all of these global positioning system satellites, GPS satellites and others
have atomic clocks and these signals can be picked up anywhere on earth,
so in addition to navigation,
there are a whole host of other uses that people have found,
that are very interesting, innovative ways to make use of a highly-precise timing signal.
It was already mentioned, coordination of several activities on earth,
but the banking sector is another one.
You have all of these automated, electronic banking transactions
going on at a rapid pace, more rapid than humans can detect,
and, in many cases, they are using the precise navigation signal from the GPS satellites
to calculate and timestamp exactly when these transactions happened,
to help keep track when they were, and who moved first and who moved last,
and the values of various goods.
There are also multiple fields within scientific research that have opened up,
because you can now, more precisely measure things using these accurate timing signals.
So research into tectonic plates and earthquake detection
and a whole host of other things have developed.
The global shipping network uses a system called AIS
which is a device that you can put on a ship
that communicates the ship's location and other data up to satellites,
and they're being used to coordinate global shipping
and in some cases, to help with navigation through tight spots,
but also they're being used if there's an accident at sea or if a ship gets lost,
to help try and locate it in a search and rescue effort.
The very last thing I'd like to touch on,
is something that was mentioned by Ray to begin with
and that's something called near-earth objects.
Near-earth objects are asteroids that orbit the sun in a very similar orbit to the earth
and we know over the history of the earth,
the earth has been struck many times by these asteroids.
They range in sizes from a few small meters that burn up in the atmosphere
to hundreds of meters, potentially even kilometers,
that many think may have then wiped out some of the dinosaurs.
We know that, in the future, the earth will be struck again.
So part of what we can do with space now
is we have potentially some of the tools to be able to prevent this from happening
should we, in the future, detect an asteroid that will be on a collision course with earth.
That would involve various technologies to actually change its orbit
so that it doesn't intersect the earth and that could be a major...
We're at the point where we almost have the tools
to save our own species from extinction, and that is a pretty revolutionary thing.
With that I'll stop. -Thank you very much, Brian.
So, the satellites not only help us live our modern life,
but, also, can guarantee our survival. -Maybe.
Can't guarantee or help us surviving in that. That's good.
We have already touched life without satellites.
I think we should pursue a little bit further than that.
Of course, all the benefits which have been described
will not be available if the satellites are not there.
So the question before us is really to see what are the threats,
what are the risks, for the utilization of satellites.
Life without satellites in a certain way.
I would like to ask our panelists to expand a little bit more on that,
coming again to raise the point here is the benefits of space.
Space has to be secure.
How we can secure that, what are the risks involved with that?
Now, again, anybody can take the floor.
-I can start with a briefing. -Yes, please.
Well, one of the biggest challenges that Ray mentioned
is something that we call space debris.
There are approximately 1,000 satellites that are currently orbiting the earth
that are being used for a variety of purposes.
But there's a lot of other stuff up there that is essentially the leftovers
of our activities in space over the last several decades,
and collectively, these dead satellites and used rocket bodies
and small pieces and nuts and bolts are known as space debris.
There are currently about 21,000 pieces of space debris, bigger than 10 cm
that we know exist and we're tracking and we know the locations of them.
The scientists that researched this know that there is approximately
another half a million objects down to one cm
that also exist in orbit.
All of these objects are moving around the earth
at speeds between 7 km a second and 4 km per second.
So if you can imagine a car crash on earth at speeds of 100 km with two cars,
can you imagine a car crash between two objects travelling at 7 km per second?
What's even more significant is that on the earth, if you have a car crash,
well, you come by with tow trucks and you pull the cars out of the way
and you sweep up the street, everything's fine.
The way that the physics work with satellites,
when you have a car crash in space, the debris ends up staying in orbit,
along with all the satellites for a very, very long time.
In 2009 there was a crash between an American and a Russian satellite
and there was approximately 2000 additional pieces of debris created by this collision
that are going to be in orbit for decades.
Of course, that means that there are more chances for this debris
to impact other objects and cause more clashes which again causes more debris.
Space is vast, trillions and trillions of square km,
but the debris exists in the few areas that we use
and so it actually coexists with all of our satellites.
Research now shows that we can expect a collision like that to happen
on the average of every five to ten years.
As more collisions happen, we're going to end up with a faster pace
of rate of growth of debris.
-Thank you very much. -Can I add something to that?
Please.
It is true that it is almost a vicious circle because the debris created
then leads to more collisions, to more debris
and if we don't do anything, the situation will be worse anyway.
So, it is not a question of stopping to create debris.
At one point it will be a question of how to remove some of the debris.
I would just like to add something that this debris issue is mostly concerning
what we call the lower orbit,
so it's the area between let's say 300 to 1000 km around the earth,
so it is less of a concern for higher orbits,
but unfortunately, this is also the area where we have the space station.
You know we have the international space station which is orbiting above our heads.
It is permanently inhabited by six astronauts;
Americans, Russians, Japanese, Canadians, Europeans
and it is frequently now that the space station has to maneuver to avoid debris.
It is very frequently, also, that space operators have to maneuver their satellites
to avoid them being destroyed by debris or to avoid collision.
By the way, maneuvering the satellites means that you use the fuel
and means that the satellites have a lower lifetime.
So you reduce the lifetime of satellites, you are less efficient.
So, for many reasons, it is now becoming a really urgent issue to address
because we cannot continue like that.
Already, all the space agencies and space operators are taking measures
to ensure that they do not create additional debris.
For instance when you launch a rocket, you make sure that the pieces of the rocket
will go down, burning through the atmosphere,
and will not stay in orbit creating more waste.
All the space agencies now take care that at least they do not aggravate the situation.
But, I think, the problem is now how to decrease the number of debris
and we are reflecting on a number of technical solutions
but there are no real technical solutions operational for the time being.
Thank you. So that means if I want to go to space with my wife,
I have to be very careful.
-Yes. Not only for debris reasons, but yes. -Thank you
Brian, you mentioned... -I'd like to comment.
I think Michel wanted to comment. -Michel? Yes.
Not on debris, and not only for your wife who is sitting here,
but, I believe for anybody, it is good to be cautious when you go to space.
Because you spoke of threats, if I may, I'd like to add a few considerations.
The first consideration is that, we are of course very excited by what we all do.
It's interesting to remember that the history of mankind with space
is a very recent history.
The Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union less than 55 years ago,
and 55 years compared to the history of mankind is just one second
compared to what mankind has been doing in other fields.
So we are at the beginning of what I believe will be for thousands of years,
an extraordinary adventure going forward.
The second comment I want to make is it's good to...
When we speak of threats it can be quite chilling, oh my God.
I'd like to share two figures with you.
A communications satellite in 1985 weighed one ton,
carried seven television channels and lasted for approximately seven years.
A communications satellite launched in 2012 weighs six tons,
can live up to 20 years, and can serve 1,000 television channels.
So, in terms of durability, of using rare resources, this is a huge progress.
The third comment I want to make, is now another threat, which is jamming.
In our life, jamming is a serious topic. There are two types of jamming.
One is voluntary jamming׳× the other one is involuntary jamming.
Voluntary jamming is when a country decides that what some TV channels or
radio channels are saying should not be heard by the people of that country.
This is called censorship. It is opposed to freedom of information.
To be blunt, I'll give you one example.
We carry on our satellites a channel called BBC Farsi.
BBC Farsi gives news in the Farsi language, which, of course, people who live in Iran,
are particularly interested in.
We also carry Deutsche Welle, Voice of America.
So all these channels, what do they do?
They bring information that people want to hear,
when they don't want to hear propaganda.
Especially, if you remember, a few years ago, it was the 30th anniversary of the revolution
and there was a lot of attention then given to Iran and from Iran to news.
When these television channels brought news in Farsi language to Iran,
there was a lot of voluntary jamming, to prevent Iranian people
from having access to this news.
I just want to say, here we are in Davos, whose aim is, I believe,
to make the world a better world.
I believe that voluntary jamming is bad.
And, it just happens, that the worldwide conference on telecommunications
has started in Geneva a few days ago.
They meet from time to time, thousands of people.
I hope that this conference will address this topic,
and that progress will be made in building a world-wide consensus
on the fact that voluntary jamming is simply unacceptable.
To finish my comment then, there is involuntary jamming
that is more difficult to handle, because, involuntary jamming,
comes with, of course, more.
The more data there is, the more that sometimes indeed there can be some issues.
I believe that we all, we satellite operators,
but also satellite manufacturers, telecom companies, we must do more NG work
to be able to address that topic, because, as traffic will grow,
this issue is bound to grow, if we donג€™t address it head on.
So I think that is one that should be, must be
one of our common priorities for the years ahead of us.
-Thank you, Michel, -I'd like to make one comment.
Yes please.
I'd like to make one comment on Brian's comments about space debris.
And I mentioned that the need for collaboration, global collaboration,
and coordination, and space debris is an important area.
A few years ago the Chinese demonstrated, an anti-satellite capability
against one of their non-working weather satellites,
and it created a tremendous amount of space debris.
The purpose of the test was to effectively show
that they had that capability, but the downside is,
that there is a tremendous amount of debris that now the ISS has to move,
satellites have to move, et cetera, et cetera.
And so cooperation across that is very important.
Also jamming affects GPS as well.
GPS, as we all know, was developed for military purposes, originally,
and then, as I said - a billion devices, broadly spread to many civilian uses.
It's possible that in a conflict it can be try to be jammed,
and that can not only affect the military, but can also affect the civilian use of that,
so it's a big deal.
Thank you very much. I'm glad you brought that.
That was on my list to touch on that.
We have a problem of...
Just one more quick addition to that.
A perfect example of what Ray was talking about,
they're starting to move to incorporate GPS into air traffic systems,
and particularly, aircraft landing systems.
And they were doing some tests in the United States,
and they discovered that at a certain time every day,
the GPS signal at the airport would go out, and it would come back.
It would happen at the same time every day. People couldn't figure out what was going on
until they discovered that there was a delivery truck
that would arrive every morning around the same time,
and the driver had installed a GPS jammer in the truck,
because his employer had a GPS tracking device to monitor where he was going.
He, of course, didn't want them to know where he was going.
These are things that you can buy off the Internet for not a whole lot of money,
and they're fairly simple to operate.
In this case, the unintended consequences were that everywhere he was going,
it was jamming GPS around him in a fairly significant area.
It's not an easy solution to try and prevent some of these problems.
Obviously, he didn't intend to.
So that's your intentional, unintentional jamming?
Well, he intended to jam GPS in his truck,
but he did not intend to jam GPS at the airport. That was just a side effect.
Thank you very much. That's quite interesting to see that.
That means to build a GPS satellite, and launch it, you need a rocket scientist.
But to jam it, you don't need to be a rocket scientist.
That underlines, and I'm sure there are others,
I don't know if you want to add anything to this.
No. I was going to make a comment about the tracking of the debris.
There are many initiatives now as you mention, going down to one centimeter,
so we're actually involved in a new radar that will help catalogue
and identify the very small pieces, so that we can do a better job of avoidance,
because of the tremendous damage that can be caused at that speed.
That's good.
Question of jamming, question of censorship, question of space debris,
anti-satellite systems, the list can go on and on.
So, these risks and threats to space utilizations are serious,
and can make our life more difficult to the point, perhaps,
that space might become very difficult to utilize.
One of the implications of those risks, I will say, threat to space industry itself,
which is about $300 billion today,
which creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in that situation.
Now, so what should be done about it? What can be done about it?
I, personally, would like to have very straightforward, daring solutions,
which may not be acceptable to the governments or anybody else
because it is you and me who are going to be suffering,
and I think we should be convinced these steps must be taken to secure the world,
to secure space for our benefit or gain. Anybody wants to add?
Michel, you mentioned a few points. The question of jamming.
Should it be prohibited?
How could it be prohibited, and how that operation could be implemented?
I think the question you're raising is, in fact, a very broad one.
Probably all the people in this room are here because they have an interest
or even some passion for space matters.
It's easy to be passionate about space. It's extraordinary.
However, if we look ahead, choices are going to have to be made.
Investments in satellites, launchers, new projects are expensive, cost money,
Geraldine reminded us of figures across different countries or groups of countries.
It is also clear, it's been heard in Davos a lot this week,
that governments have in Europe, in the U.S., are going to try to save money,
because of the deficits and the debts that have been accumulated.
Choices are going to have to be made. We can't just say that because it is space,
we must do it, and accumulate projects which then taxpayers would one day say,
why should we do all of these?
We cannot have taxes go up. That's a general comment.
In that general comment, I would volunteer the following recommendations.
One recommendation is that, when we look at different projects,
we should look at what they bring to mankind. How do they make the life of people better?
In other words, I was brought up in the world of the two blocs, when the Soviet bloc
and the so-called Free World bloc were fighting each other.
And there was sort of a competition. We use the word competition.
If they do it, we'll do it.
There was the Soviet Sputnik, and then Kennedy said,
we'll go the moon before the Soviets, et cetera, et cetera.
Of course, competition, in relation, does create progress,
because people are incented to do better.
But, on the other hand, now that great things have been achieved,
the question remains, when we look at all the many projects that can be started
and completed in the coming 10 to 20 years,
which are the ones that should be given top priority?
And I'm recommending that a key criterion be not the prestige of the states
or the countries, not the so-called sovereignty,
but what does it bring to mankind, to the day-to-day life of people?
That's my second comment on that.
My third comment is that, in that context, I believe that a very important priority
should be for the 10 or 20 years to come,
to make sure that every person across the world be connected.
So the broadband is for all, so that it's not just for the happy few,
for one half of humanity, or 60% of humanity,
but I believe it should be a goal that broadband be accessible to people,
to everybody, except my mother who doesn't want broadband,
to everybody across the world. I say that because, you know I'm French.
In France, you hear a lot about trֳ¨s haut dֳ©bis, very high broadband,
and there are goals and talks about it.
That's great, but let's first make sure that everybody has access to broadband
before we put too much energy on very high broadband.
If I may Ram, I'll finish with the following two comments.
Some topics we can make significant progress by just good will and strong work
and we don't need budgets.
Voluntary jamming is a good example.
If this becomes a real important cause for the nations who are the United Nations,
and if they make it a priority, jamming is not only done by Iran.
Other countries in the Western world also do jamming.
This is not such an easy topic.
It will take courage for countries to agree that indeed, jamming is not acceptable.
I'm just saying this one doesnג€™t need money, taxpayers' money, it needs courage.
My last comment is that the newspapers have been full in recent weeks
about the plans of China in space for the coming five years.
Just as there was competition between the Soviet Union and the US in space,
you can see it coming that there will be now some kind of competition
between China and the US.
I would recommend, just as a citizen, an approach where the big powers,
US, China, the European Union, Russia, India, the five leaders in space,
instead of saying I want to do better than them, we would work together.
There is already, which is big progress in the past ten years,
collaboration between Russia and the US.
If you had said that 30 years ago, people would have said, what?
Collaboration between Russia and the US? You would have said, no way.
Well, I'm recommending the same between the US and China,
the European Union and Russia and India.
I believe it is a way to save money and to bring people together,
and do great things together.
Thank you very much.
That ties in with what Ray said to start with,
international cooperation and collaboration is a must.
Geraldine...
- I would like to add one thing, if I could. -Sure.
I think you mentioned President Kennedy's comment
about going to the moon by the end of the decade.
There were many reasons for making that comment.
And I think it became a clear passionate goal of the United States to achieve that,
which they did.
As I said, there are competitive reasons and other reasons.
It became a passion.
In fact if you talk to people working in engineering today,
especially those who were entering the field then,
many of them say, I started in this business because of the space program.
I got the passion for my technical field.
So we're struggling with jobs and we're struggling with STEM education ג€“
science, technology, engineering, and math,
and not just in the United States, in fact globally.
So, there are certain attributes of space in the excitement that it brings.
But, I think where we are today is, many nations, including the United States,
are lacking in specific strategic plan for what's next.
Having moved away from that Cold War conflict to what's next, having gone to the moon
a long time ago now, I think you pointed out several unique attributes.
Let's kind of do a contrast.
Let me contrast, the cost of terrestrial landlines in China versus mobile phones.
It would be impossible to landline wire China or India,
but look what's happened with the explosion of mobile devices
because of the ease and the affordability with which that can happen.
I think that space offers unique advantages that should be considered.
I mentioned in my introductory comments, that systems engineering approach,
to make actual comparisons between terrestrial systems,
between space systems, and see where the advantages lie.
I'm quite sure that 300 million people in Africa who have mobile access
because of space assets are delighted with that ability.
But, it's not just providing broadband. It's using broadband for other ways.
It's thinking about how space-based connections can produce
sustainable business models that can bring food, water, and health care
to rural villages in Africa and India, and other places in the world.
To think more broadly about what space can do, more than which services
can be derived from- and then all of a sudden,
the cost benefit analysis becomes much easier when you look at it
from that systems engineering and strategic planning approach.
Thank you very much.
We have to stop in three minutes from our side,
so, Geraldine, do you want to talk about
the European initiative to come up with a code of conduct for securing space?
Yes. Just to bounce back on Apollo. The Apollo as astronaut said,
we left to discover the moon and we have discovered the earth.
I think it is true that it is this conscience that the earth is a very small, finite place,
with limited resources, which came from the space program.
It's a very small place in the big black universe.
So, I think, indeed, space can help us solve some earth challenges.
We mentioned energy, food, disasters, et cetera.
And I think, indeed, we need to have broadband for everyone.
But first, we need to have water and food for everyone, I think.
So for all these reasons, space can contribute and honestly,
for relatively small cost.
Because we talk about billions of Euros or dollars.
It sounds huge, but if you look at the cost, for instance, of what it costs
to build a highway, well it's much more expensive, I tell you,
to build a highway than to build a satellite.
The real budgets of space agencies are actually quite small.
This being said, I think our objective is nowadays we want to share the benefits.
You mentioned very rightly, space started as a dominance tool.
The reason was to be better, to be leading the other.
Now space is a tool for cooperation. It is a tool for peace.
When you look at the International Space Station,
it is true you have Russians, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, Canadians
co-operating and, perhaps Chinese, in a fairly short term future.
It is a tool for peace and for collaboration and perhaps it is a tool that can replace,
if I may say, perhaps I'm being optimistic, conflict, instead of fighting each other,
we can do things together in particular using space.
And finally there is also one thing we have not mentioned,
it is a tool for answering questions.
After all, everyone around the earth, wonders is there life elsewhere.
We haven't mentioned it. It is a pressing question.
Perhaps not one that requires to invest lots of money,
but after all, it is a compelling question. Are we alone?
Is there life elsewhere in the universe?
And that also, I think, is a question we must seek to answer.
Thank you very much.
Very quickly on the topic of potential solutions.
I will just bring up two.
One is acknowledgement by both governments and companies,
and whoever else who operates in space that the space environment is fragile
and that the long term sustainability of the space environment should be a priority.
And that means looking at what you are doing in space with an eye towards,
is it going to have negative long term impacts on the space environment.
And the second thing would be norms of behavior.
It was easy when space first started, it was just the United States
and the Soviet Union using space.
It was kind of a gentleman's agreement about what we did and didn't do
and both sides kind of understood how to operate in space.
Now, there are nearly 60 countries that are operating at least one satellite.
And every year, there are more countries adding additional satellites.
And not everyone knows what is responsible behavior and what is irresponsible behavior.
And so a discussion, a dialogue between all those countries on what are norms of behavior
and what is responsible and irresponsible behavior is a much needed step.
Good. Thank you very much.
Now we have 25 minutes. It's your turn.
Anybody, any questions. That gentleman there?
Listening to the learned gentlemen and lady up there,
I had the impression, that you were trying to sell us satellites.
I was feeling like an advertising action.
And when I was young, I heard a song of Deep Purple saying,
the Dark Side of the Moon, and a satellite is an artificial moon.
So there is very little we heard about the dark side of these moons.
And quite in particular, at the Orwellian action and concept of global surveillance
of intelligence chips implanted into individual citizens, losing their freedom
and not just vans that the boss wants to track down,
but individuals around the whole world who should be observed.
Now this is something that I think should be mentioned,
and I would very much like to ask the most courageous of you to take up this issue.
While we were waiting to come in to listen to you,
we were given a leaflet quoting Orwell saying, that in a time of global control
and surveillance, it is a revolutionary act to speak the truth.
May I encourage you to be revolutionary?
Thank you very much. Any person dare?
Sounds like a law question to me.
It's a law question.
Michel. Thank you Michel for taking on this challenge.
So, I don't know your name but I donג€™t pretend to be more courageous than my colleagues.
I'm sure. But I'd like to make two comments.
One is that speaking for the world I know, which is geo-stationary satellites,
we are not involved at all, in any way, in anything that is observation.
We are in the business of telecommunications not in observations.
So I very candidly, this is not about courage or no courage,
I candidly have no interesting knowledge to share with you on this topic.
We are not involved in any way in observation.
The second comment I want to make, to come back to what you said at the beginning,
you get the impression that we are selling.
The four of us were invited to attend this panel and we were not invited to sell,
we were invited to share information, knowledge,
and debate between ourselves and with you.
And, I believe, that a key reason for that is that the satellite world is not well known.
I can tell you, I meet senior officials, governments, cabinet members
and I sometimes ask them, you know, we have geo-stationary satellites and they say what?
So I ask them, do you know how high we are?
And very senior people, including very famous people tell me 10 kilometers,
15 kilometers, maybe, come on, 50? And when I say, 36,000, they say, ah.
So the level of knowledge of understanding of what we do
is in fact very, very, I would say, insufficient.
And I will give you one concrete example.
My company launched a satellite in December 2010
which became operational in June 2011 called KA-SAT.
It is today the second most powerful satellite in the world
and it delivers broadband services across all of Europe, North Africa,
some countries of Central Asia and the Gulf States.
And we are a B to B company, we are not a B to C company.
For those who don't know what this jargon is, it means we work with companies,
we don't work with people. Our clients work with individual people.
And, so, this satellite is a fantastic satellite.
The launch went very well, the services we provide,
up to 10 megabits to people in broadband who live in places like the Alps
or countries or far from cities, the service is terrific.
Our main challenge about commercial success is that many people donג€™t know that we exist,
don't know that satellites can provide these kinds of services
because they believe that the future's only in fibers.
And so I have to confess, when I got this invitation, I thought,
I'll come and maybe I can do a little, not selling, but information. Okay?
Thank you. Geraldine, you want to supplement him?
Yes. It is true that space is a unique means of gathering information,
including gathering information of localization,
and retransmitting it instantaneously and everywhere.
And so it is this function, which may lead to uses,
some of them are good, some of them are bad.
It's very difficult to discriminate obviously,
when you have such a powerful technology between the good and the bad uses.
I do believe that there is a notion of ethics at one point that you have to raise.
We were mentioning debris and the fact that it is up to the space-faring nations
to take responsibility.
We mentioned a code of conduct for space- faring nations.
The uses that can be made, some of them, I agree, may be unpleasant.
Now if you want to avoid that, you should not have a mobile phone, I tell you clearly.
But I think there is a true question of space ethics.
And I think, by the way, Davos is not a bad place to reflect
on the possible bad uses that could be made. Technology is neutral.
Technology is not bad or good, it's neutral. It's the use that you make of it
that can be bad and we must reflect on it. It's true.
Thank you very much.
The gentleman at the back? Sorry, the one who is standing.
Excuse me sir.
My name is Stephan Kleinsauger. I'm a business consultant.
I live in Strasbourg in France. I work for the aerospace business
as a head of finance and I'm interested in business ethics today
so my question goes into nearly the same direction but a little bit differently.
Because my statement is satellites are not democratically supervised.
And the second statement is space is a free good which should be open to all.
So don't we need an international framework which forces all nations
which are operating satellites to give a certain portion of their satellites
as a free good as well?
Because if I understand the world correctly, for example, the US government
still can threaten the world by switching off GPS for national security reasons.
And, if that would happen, we would not have all the goodies
you mentioned for the last hour.
Okay. Thank you very much. Yes.
I'm not American but I'm the space Agency person here so I can reply to you on that.
First of all, I don't know about NASA but I know about ESA,
scientific data from our satellite is free. It's open, you can have access to it.
Our earth observation satellites also you can have access to the data.
So that, clearly, our goal is to share the data and to maximize the services
that can be made using this data. That is clearly our goal,
to ensure that everyone can use this data for the best possible purposes.
Second point, you talk about GPS. It is true, or at least it was true,
but there is no monopoly of GPS anymore.
Now GPS is one of the navigation systems available worldwide,
and the temptation to use monopoly as the tool obviously disappears
once the monopoly is gone because if you have several systems which you can use,
and by the way, which are being made interoperable,
so there is also the idea to cooperate between the systems.
It means you cannot do this kind of blackmailing anymore.
And that is why, in particular, Europe has constructed its GPS system called Galileo
which should be soon available.
But also China is putting together its GPS or its navigation system.
Russia. So I think it is less the case
when space benefits become shared and when more and more nations
are developing their systems. It makes it more available to everyone.
But this being said, I'm challenged by your statement, that space is not democratic.
I think maybe building satellites, if you wish, is the privilege of rich nations
but having access to space data is democratic because, as I said,
at least our satellites, you can have free access to it.
Thank you. Michel.
I'd like to take two stabs at your very strong statement
that satellites are not democratically supervised.
In my world, the Telecoms Satellites World, we have in fact two kinds of supervisions.
As a European company, there was a legislation called something like
Television Without Borders, European legislation of 20 years ago,
which organized the fact that any satellite operator based in Europe has to be supervised,
is supervised by the national body of the country where that company is based.
So in our case, we are based in France and there is a regulatory body called CSA,
Conseil Supֳ©rieur de l'Audiovisuel, Superior Council of Audiovisual.
They are independent people, and what they do is, in our world, they observe content.
We do not observe content, okay?
When a customer comes, we don't say, we don't like your show
so we are not going to take you as a customer. But CSA does that.
And if there is something illegal in what the channel does,
they have the legal right to write to us and to say,
we ask you to stop serving this channel. Okay?
I'll give you an example. A few years ago,
we received such a letter from CSA about a channel
that was working very closely with Hamas and the order we got from CSA is that
that channel was being violently anti-Semitic, saying things like,
we must finish the work that Hitler did not finish. Okay?
So we got the order and we immediately obeyed, and we stopped serving that channel.
But the point I'm trying to make to you, which may shock some of you,
is that we donג€™t try to judge ourselves the content
because we are a company with mostly engineers.
Our job is to make satellites work and, legally, if we start saying,
we like those guys, we don't like those guys, et cetera, where would that go?
And so we respect the law and the law says that it is the supervisors who are,
in the case of France and in the case, I believe, of all the other European countries,
who are appointed by elected officials to do exactly that job,
to be the representatives of the people who then have the right to give us orders.
This is about national supervision.
Then, there is a second field which is, let's say, global supervision.
Our global supervisor is ITU, International Telecommunications Union.
This is a United Nations agency based in Geneva.
As I told you, the World Conference started this week
and they have been created by the United Nations,
and the member states of the United Nations to try and supervise what we do.
And I will tell you, their task is very difficult
and coming back to your statement about, I read it again,
satellites are not democratically supervised, what does it mean democratically supervised?
What does it mean? This is a real debate.
Some people say, let's give this agency of the United Nations teeth
so that they can give orders, give member states orders, do this, don't do that.
And other people say, hey, those are just experts.
How can they give orders to countries where you have elected officials by the people,
so where is democracy?
Is democracy in this universal United Nations appointed body
or is it with the elected officials of country, per country?
I believe it's a combination of the two, I just want to say,
that the notion of what is democratic is not so simple to define
but we are supervised, we are.
-Okay. Thank you. -Thank you.
The gentleman there. Yes please.
Yes it's very interesting, but I have the impression that I've heard this all before.
If I think about the nuclear power industry, there was also a very steep development curve,
and today we're looking at putting an end to a nuclear power
because of the issue of atomic waste was simply pushed aside and ducked,
and now it's kind of leading to the end of nuclear power.
We might find ourselves in a similar situation with space exploration
because of the space problems which you've mentioned.
Very interesting question. Thank you very much.
Please, Brian.
That is an interesting question, although I would caution to say that, you know,
when we talk about, you know, space debris and the risk of collision,
for those of you who have seen the Pixar movie, Wall-E,
there's a scene where he's escaping orbit and gets hit by a satellite.
That is the Hollywood movie of this.
It will not be at a point where there is a blanket of debris around the earth.
That's outside the laws of physics.
What is the case, is that the density of debris will increase to the point
where it will become more expensive to have a satellite in certain locations in orbit,
and that may make certain missions and certain operations not cost effective.
But as far as preventing exploration, that is probably not the case
because today we've been talking about space debris and the orbit around the Earth
but of course the exploration, we're talking about, sending people away from the Earth,
to the moon, to mars, asteroids and other bodies.
And in that case, you're just kind of passing through.
It was mentioned that there is a particular risk to the International Space Station
and, in the future, we might look at having other laboratories, space stations,
and other activities in orbit. And that is definitely a concern.
Although, the saving grace is that happens at a low enough altitude,
approximately 400 kilometers or so that the Earth's atmosphere, of course,
doesn't just stop, it goes off for quite a ways.
It just gets thinner and thinner.
And at that altitude, debris and objects in space only stay there for weeks
to a couple of months before they get pulled into the atmosphere.
So there is a self-cleaning mechanism that does help protect the lower portions in space
which is where human activity and human space flight will take place.
The real risk is more to the robotic satellites
that operate up at the higher regions.
Thank you very much.
You assured me that I can take my wife to lower orbit, right?
-Not the higher level. -Sure.
Thank you. Gentleman there please.
... To the unsuccessful attempt.
Now do you know, is that the only attack on a satellite up to now,
and how many additional debris were created?
And another thing, would it be possible, via United Nations,
to give pressure on all the nations not to do such things again?
Good question. Very good question.
The question I believe was what was the number of debris pieces
that were created by the ASAT? Do you know the answer?
About 3000 pieces larger than 10 cm and tens of thousands smaller than that.
10 cm pieces destroy a satellite if they collide?
Right. So 3000 pieces large enough to destroy a satellite, right.
That's a way to think about that.
In terms of the international pressure, I don't know,
other people may have a better view of this than I do.
I think, probably, the awareness of the impact of doing that,
was brought to the international light in a way that hadn't been done before.
And I think that that awareness has created more pressure on all nations of the world,
not to do those kinds of things,
but I'm not aware of any particular international or UN recommendations,
sanctions or anything else like that that have to do with the space debris.
Brian, again, you may know.
There were several countries that brought pressure on China after this test.
Most were done privately.
I believe it was only Japan that publicly brought up the issue.
There was a significant amount of discussion about this issue
in the several different United Nations bodies and, interestingly,
the Chinese tested the same system three years later in 2010,
only they did it in a way that created no debris.
So, one can infer that a lesson was learnt and whether or not it was the diplomatic pressure
or other ways but they did not repeat what they did.
-They want to use Leo too. -Exactly.
They have satellites and they are investing heavily in building satellites,
and in building constellations, for all the same benefits that everyone else is using.
And they've had to maneuver a couple of their satellites
to avoid pieces of debris from their own anti-satellite test.
So I believe that, unfortunately, it was a bad thing to happen,
but I think there has been a lot learned from it
and you probably will not see something similar in the near future.
Thank you. We have time for one short question.
Just a general, ethical question.
Speaker Rosen spoke about jamming,
and the difference between voluntary and involuntary jamming
and how that was bad and how that since there's free speech around the world,
but then also spoke about how Western nations, such as France itself,
censoring his company's satellites
and do you think there should be some sort of overarching standard?
And should hate speech or offensive speech be censored?
Or do you think all speech should be allowed to be free, and regardless of the costs?
And, if so, how does that play in with the idea that jamming,
voluntary or involuntary, is good or bad?
Good question. Michel?
You know, I get every week, I told you we have 4000 television channels on our satellites.
Every week I get letters or phone calls from states accusing some television channels
that we are serving to be terrorists.
The definition of terrorists that some states use is probably different
from the one you would use or I would use.
Some states consider that any channel that is criticizing them as a terrorist, okay?
So, the point I'm trying to make is that you speak of hate speech.
What is hate speech?
Your definition may be different from the definition of someone else, okay?
So that's how democracy works. That this has to be legislation.
The legislation then says, what is indeed acceptable or unacceptable
and then it says who will be the judge about that.
And, what is, I believe, good about that is that in Europe, we satellite operators,
we are considered as not having the right legitimacy to decide this is hate speech,
unacceptable. This is not hate speech, acceptable. Okay?
So I think that's the way it should be that at the end of the day,
it's the people's representatives who need to vote the appropriate legislation
after the appropriate debates like the debates that take place in Davos,
or in many other places.
And, I'm just cautioning you on the fact that when people are emotional,
they may decide that something is unacceptable
and then what becomes acceptable may shrink and shrink and shrink.
So it is good that there are some wise people who are the regulatory bodies,
who at the end of the day make these decisions.
I do want to add that, I must have been unclear.
I did not say that France was jamming. I said that the channels that we are carrying,
I mentioned three BBC Farsi, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America have been jammed
and the source of the jamming was clearly Iran, that's what I said.
Thank you very much.
We must stop here and I have three conclusions
I picked up from the discussions and presentations
and my conclusions are, I hope you will agree with me,
is that satellites are indispensible for modern society and industry.
Second, is there are risks, some are serious risks,
to the sustainable use of satellites for the benefit of all.
And the last is international cooperation and collaboration is imperative
to mitigate these risks and enhance the benefits of space,
which also includes for maintaining or achieving peace on earth.
With that, we conclude our session but before I would like you to thank our panelists.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for you are a very good audience.
Okay very good. All right, thank you very much.
Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Thank you, thank you.