America’s preeminence in space is critical to our role as a global great power, but we don’t currently protect space systems well enough, writes MITRE’s Sam Visner, technical fellow and MITRE's former director of national cybersecurity, and Edward Swallow, senior vice president for civil systems at Aerospace Corporation.
In their recent Via Satellite op-ed, they point out that almost every National Critical Function depends on space systems. Large farms rely on navigation for their agricultural machinery, as does the transportation of people, food, and products nationwide. Space is also essential to our country’s communications backbone, including the internet.
While the federal government has designated 16 sectors as “critical infrastructure,” from financial services to energy, food and agriculture, and the defense industrial base—space systems and their related supply chains and technologies aren’t even on the list.
Visner and Swallow offer a set of recommendations for U.S. government and business leaders to work on a national and international basis to treat space systems like the valuable assets they truly are.