Thomas Ayres is the chief legal officer and general counsel for Voyager Space. He is a retired Army Maj. Gen., the former 20th general counsel of the Department of the Air Force, and was the first general counsel of the U.S. Space Force.
Federal Newswire:
Why was the Space Force created?
Thomas Ayres:
I'd say the reasons why you have a service is to lay out the doctrine and thinking, to think about a domain in a different way…The other thing the service does, it talks to Congress about the requirements for what is needed, the funding that is needed to ensure that we're ready for what's next.
As I think about the creation of the Space Force, two things come to mind.
First, … when you talk about space and all the very expensive satellites we have in space, our everyday life depends on space. The blue dot on your phone is provided by the Department of the Air Force. The timing of Wall Street transactions, every ATM transaction, and tractors that are out in the fields right now with farmers, everything relies upon space.
We built those glass houses in a world without stones. There's now a world with stones in space. There are potential competitors who would like to take away our ability to use space for our everyday life. Of course, many military operations, many military systems rely on those same space capabilities; whether it's communications capabilities, intelligence, ISR capabilities and GPS or the dot on your phone. That's the major reason that the Space Force was needed.
But… when you look at how some other nations were funding their Space Force and their space capabilities, we weren't keeping pace. Particularly when you look at what China was doing in terms of potential offensive and defensive capabilities in space.
So somebody who could talk about the space needs specifically, was very important.
Federal Newswire:
Should we keep the civilian and military sides of space policy separate?
Thomas Ayres:
Yeah. There are a lot of areas where the analogies to the seas, the high seas and space don't work. But maybe this is one where it does work.
You need to be able to explore and commercially use the seas. But there is also, as with any commercial endeavor, there are people who would want to be pirates who would want to take advantage or gain some leverage over your operations, commercial or otherwise, whether they be nation states or criminals. You need some type of way to protect that.
What's been in space has been just nation states. We're now seeing that that's starting to flip, … where you're talking about SpaceX, Intel, Maxar, all these different satellite companies, they're providing satellite services apart from the government.
It used to be that the government was the only one building and sending them, but now the government is more… buying rather than actually building many of the satellites.
Federal Newswire:
Should we have a separate cybersecurity service on par with the other branches?
Thomas Ayres:
Yeah. I think for right now we've got the right solution. We needed a Space force. One of the first things the creation of the Space Force did was it created a member of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, so a Chief of the United States Space Force.
You have this new world where Congress saw what was not funded in space. If you created a Cyber Force, you would probably get that right.
You now have more oversight by Congress and by the American people about what is above and below the line of what needs to be funded. But I would also say that I think that Cyber's a little bit different because [there is] NASA, and there is a difference between NASA and the Space Force.
I think cyber is primarily a civilian realm. It's primarily where commerce operates and its civilian agencies, whether it be national security or others, who can defend that realm…I'm not sure it should be uniform people in the lead there. It could become an area of war, but I think primarily it's an area of commerce.
Federal Newswire:
How can Letters of Marque play into cybersecurity and cyber warfare?
Thomas Ayres:
The term itself...is French. I don't know how they pronounced it, but letters of marque were around before the creation of the United States. It was a way for the government to “deputize” in some ways a ship, the owner of a ship to defend themselves and also to attack others.
Very much like the Merchant Marine in some ways. A little bit similar to CRAF, the Civilian Reserve Air Force. But this idea that you take something civilian and you give it a military nature, you give it some type of ability to act on behalf of the nation.
What's really interesting is the fact that letters of marque are in the Constitution. There are not that many words in the Constitution. Maybe we ought to pay attention to that.
The last time that a letter of marque was granted was during World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, a letter of marque was granted to a blimp called the Resolute. There was concern that attacks would happen on the West coast. A blimp was given a letter of marque to patrol the coast and see if there were any ships coming into Los Angeles.
So if we could extend letters of marque in 1941 from ships to airplanes, well, then maybe we should think about it in space as well.
But to go back, the time they were most used historically by the United States under the Constitution was in the 1805 era with the Barbary pirates. There was concern about American shipping in the Mediterranean. [Ships were] being attacked by pirates in the Mediterranean, and the size of the Navy was minuscule. At one point, [around] 1805, the Navy had one ship, a 14 gun sloop enterprise. That ship couldn't do everything on its own. It had lots of commercial vendors put cannons on [their] ships. [They said] “go fight back against these pirates, and we'll give you a letter of marque.”
Federal Newswire:
Would the Federal Government declare that cyber criminals are pirates, and where do we go from there?
Thomas Ayres:
Yeah. When you look at the Microsofts, Googles, and Amazons, the amount of money and resources to defend themselves–to potentially fight back–is much greater than what probably the federal government could do. You've got lots of innovative young companies too.
I think that the idea behind the letter of marque is…when you gave a letter of marque to a captain of a ship…then it could go fight a pirate. The real incentive for them to go fight the pirates was that if they captured that pirate ship and [any others with it] that it had taken all the cargo, they could then take the titles of those ships and cargo. They could [then] bring it to an admiralty court and they could become the rightful owners of those ships and cargo.
There was a financial incentive to get these letters of marque and then go after those pirates. The idea would be the same thing.
How do we financially incentivize these large cyber companies and smaller companies to help us in this fight where the federal government can't do it alone?
Federal Newswire:
Could a new kind of computer business spring up to deal with this?
Thomas Ayres:
It sure could. The most analogous incentive to the letters of marque about pirates is actually, if somebody could go back and recover data, [such as] stolen Bitcoin or things like that, that's one thing. But I think the difference here is, you really need something defensive. How do we ensure that these companies are helping the nation stay secure?
When I think of the Colonial pipeline hack, and all of us on the East coast… we all sat in long gas lines for a while because of the hack.
What you had in that case, and in many cases when someone gets hacked, the company doesn't want to admit it at first. They're afraid for their brand and the publicity that comes with that. Their shares and stock prices are going to immediately go down because they just got hacked. It could be multi-billion [dollar] losses, even in excess of what was just hacked.
So there are disincentives to report early on. Companies have to make a profit and loss calculation about what defensive measures they put in place.
If you had a letter of marque, you could do a couple of things. You could give them some type of indemnity insurance when they were defending themselves. If they have bots that would automatically react and fight back and counterattack, some type of indemnity for that.
Then, some type of assurance that if they immediately report to federal agencies, the NSA or others–it still might get out, and their brands and their stock price still might go down–but what wouldn't happen is that a federal regulator or a state regulator wouldn't go in and fine them for not protecting consumer public data.
Uber, Equifax, Home Depot, they've all been fined millions of dollars for times when cyber criminals fought their way in and got their data. Then they were fined for not doing enough to [prevent] that.
Federal Newswire:
Do you think allowing companies to act offensively is a good idea?
Thomas Ayres:
I think it could have a huge beneficial effect on discouraging bad behavior. Because first of all, the major actor in this area is the National Security Agency. They're the ones that are trying to stop the cyber criminals at the gates. The problem is that they're like any agency, they can't look at US citizens.
What the cyber criminals do is they use our laws against us. They create their servers in the United States. They try to pose themselves as US citizens. Obviously, there are some cyber criminals who are US citizens. Then you're talking about the FBI and the NSA having to work together and they've gotten better at that over the years, particularly with the threats.
But if you've got folks with letters of marque, they're not going to necessarily have to go do the same things that the NSA and the FBI do, go get warrants, appear before judges, and things like that. In cyber, everything happens very quickly, those kinds of delays are problematic.
The other thing, just like with the letters of marque for the schooners and others that were against the Barbary Pirates in 1805, the pirates use safe havens. They would go into the territorial waters of Morocco or wherever, then the United States couldn't go in and find them, because then it's an act of war against the territory or country of Morocco.
So the same thing. There are lots of cyber criminals and hackers who are using friendly, neutral and not so neutral nations as a safe haven where we can't go and counter-attack them–where bots wouldn't go if there's a federal actor trying to counter punch against them.
Federal Newswire:
How do we deal with countries like China, Russia, and non-state actors who use these tactics against us?
Thomas Ayres:
We did start talking to some staffers on the Hill. We started to look at some legislation to actually implement this.
I'm more focused upon Voyager and MRX. We have the biggest contract from NASA to replace the International Space Station with a commercial space station, so I've been more focused on that now. But there were quite a few people who became advocates of the idea on the Hill.
Federal Newswire:
Were you involved in the transformation of the various medical services under the Defense Health Agency?
Thomas Ayres:
I sure was. When I was general counsel of the Air Force, that was starting to happen. There was a lot of concern about military commanders losing control over the hospitals on their installations. There was a lot of desire, though, to really cut costs.
There's nothing more expensive than health care. When you look at the overall budget of the United States, much of it goes to Medicare and Medicaid. But also when you look at the budget of the military, much of it goes to those benefits as well. How do you create efficiencies there so we can have more soldiers, tanks, and fighters? That's important. It's an important balancing act.
Federal Newswire:
Is your company working on the next generation of the International Space Station?
Thomas Ayres:
Yeah. It was originally supposed to cease in 2025. It's been extended to 2030.
Our plan is to launch by late 2028. We went from when John F. Kennedy gave his speech until the Challenger and the space shuttles, where the United States government was building rockets.
At some point after the shuttle program ended, there was a desire to move to launch-as-a-service. Rather than the government building the rocket to get into space, let's buy it.
That's what you [have] now [with] SpaceX, Boeing ULA, and Blue Origin who have all built rockets. NASA then promised to buy some number of launches from those organizations, and that helps them with the capital to build their rockets.
The same idea is that we've got the United States and Russia teams together to build the Space Station, and other countries are now part of that effort. But the government shouldn't be building a space station. Let's let commercial [companies] build it.
They put out what's called a space active agreement. There were 12 competitors to replace the International Space Station with the Commercial Space Station. There were three winners of the design phase. That was our company, NRX Voyager Space, and Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman. We're all working to design and build the Space Station.
One of the things we want to do is ensure that there's not a gap. There was a gap in the launches. There was a period of time that we had to use Russian rockets to get to the International Space Station because…[we were] transitioning from the shuttle program to launch-as-a-service program. We don't want a gap now.
Jay Raymond when he was the chief of the Space Force had a huge AOR, or area of responsibility. Well, there are only 10 people in that AOR. Seven of them are normally on the International Space Station. Three are on the Chinese Space Station. They have a full-time manned space station right now. Once the International Space Station ceases to operate, we need to have a US presence in low Earth orbit.
Federal Newswire:
Are the next plans for Voyager Space to build a ship to go to Mars and then onward from there?
Thomas Ayres:
It is, but we are singularly focused on the commercial space station. We need to get that built.
There are certainly parts of our technologies that will be used on lunar and other missions. There are other companies, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceX, that are very involved in looking at the upcoming lunar missions, and that's great. We are teaming with them. Some of our technologies are being used in some of those missions as well.
We do think having a human presence in low earth orbit in a space station is going to be very important to lunar missions in the future, and beyond lunar missions. You need a staging base.
We need to…[do] experiments. [There’s also] working out things like refueling. All those things are going to be needed for a long-term presence, not only in low earth orbit, but also cislunar and lunar as well.
