Geopolitics of Outer Space: competition, militarisation, cooperation?

Is space governed well enough, and can we still prevent it from becoming a field of conflict or competition? Serafima sits down with Michael Byers, Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, co-director of the Outer Space Institute and author of Who Owns Outer Space.

Space is more governed than people think, Michael argues. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty was a remarkable document, and its negotiators were prescient. But space is developing very quickly. In just the last ten years we've gone from 2,000 operational satellites to 15,000, with plans for more than a million more. Add superpowers who are suspicious of each other, a heavy military reliance on satellites, and Donald Trump's so-called Golden Dome with over 1,000 space-based missile interceptors, and the security dilemma starts to look familiar.

Drawing on his years working on Arctic governance, Michael walks through the parallels between two areas beyond national jurisdiction where countries almost necessarily have to cooperate. They also get into the renewed race to the moon and why it might really be about Donald Trump's ego, Elon Musk's Mars ambitions and the Starlink user agreement that already declares Mars "a free planet beyond the reach of nation states," the bubble economy of space startups, and what it would actually mean for humanity to find ancient life on another world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Circumpolar. Is space governed well enough? And can we still prevent it from becoming a field of conflict or competition? My guest today is Michael Byers, professor of political science at the University of British Columbia, co-director of the Outer Space Institute, and author of the book Who Owns Outer Space? Michael, it's fantastic to have you. Thank you for coming.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

My first question to you then is: Is space governed well enough?

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Space is more governed than people think it is. And the reason I say that is that in 1967, the Soviet Union and the United States came together with other countries to negotiate a constitution for outer space called the Outer Space Treaty. And it's a remarkable document. Negotiators were prescient. They identified a lot of future issues. And they also, and this is very important, they also specified that international law, including the Charter of the United Nations, applies in space. So what this means is that international space law is not a separate body of law. It's part of general international law. And this is really important today because people who are working on space governance issues can very legitimately turn to other bodies of international law, like international environmental law, to solve problems in space. We have a unified system. So space is not a wild west. Space is governed by general international law and a number of more specific treaties. Does that mean everything is okay? No. Space is developing very quickly. We have almost exponential growth in terms of the number of satellites. We have some of the world's most powerful private actors. We have superpowers like Russia, China, and the United States who are suspicious of each other and have uh um you know a heavy dependence on space to support their militaries. So there are serious challenges, but is it ungoverned? No, it's it's governed. And there's a lot that um that international lawyers and scholars of international relations and diplomats can do.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Aaron Powell You've spent years working on Arctic governance before this. And then you moved into or Arctic law, Arctic geopolitics, and and then you moved into space, the space sector. If we can just take into uh the people who follow Arctic politics, can you see any commonalities and differences between these two arenas or these two frontiers?

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Aaron Powell Well, the first thing to say is that I am uh a generalist. I I'm I'm a general international lawyer and a political scientist, and I've worked on issues from from human rights to the use of force to the law of the sea, and through the law of the sea on Arctic issues. So I'm very comfortable in seeing Arctic issues and space issues through the same lens. And indeed the two are connected. I mean, the most distinguishing aspect of the Arctic are the extreme seasons, the uh cold and darkness of winter, the 24-hour daylight, the melting in the summer. All this is due to the tilt of planet Earth as it orbits the sun, right? So the Arctic is space, and so I'm very comfortable moving between the two. But the other thing that's interesting in terms of commonalities is that people also talk about the Arctic as somehow ungoverned, as beyond the reach of international law. And that is far from the case. We we have the Constitution for the Oceans, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that governs most of the Arctic. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents. And we have a wide range of other treaties. We have incredible cooperation, often overlooked because it works so well. So you know, think of the Cospus SARS search and rescue system, which is based on a treaty, has a secretariat based in Montreal, coordinates the use of satellites to support search and rescue, was created in 1979 and has saved tens of thousands of lives. And I would wager that only one out of 10 people listening to this podcast has ever heard of Cospas SARSAP because it works. I see uh Russia, I see the United States, I see a big small country called Canada, big geographically small in terms of population. I see the Nordics, I see China on the horizon, much the same dynamic as exists in space. You have the the space powers, you have Russia, the United States, China, India, Europe to some degree. Um and you're in an area beyond national jurisdiction where no one has sovereign control, where countries have to cooperate, and where they do most of the time. So no, there's there's really no difference. The the Arctic expertise translates to the space expertise. I mean, you need to learn some new science. I've had to learn a lot of astrophysics the last seven or eight years. But I had to learn a lot of sea ice physics and climate change science when I started to work on the Arctic. So that's that's just a intellectually enjoyable uh experience to learn new context and to talk to people outside of our own discipline to understand what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Aaron Powell This reminds me a bit of a piece you wrote or an article you wrote describing space, the Arctic, and the Antarctic as cold, dark, and dangerous. So maybe that's also something about it.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Or yeah, I always thought that would be a great title for a James Bond movie. Cold, dark, and dangerous. Point is that um that that there are there are commonalities, and one of the big ones is that these are very hazardous and expensive places. I have lost four colleagues to aircraft accidents in the Canadian Arctic. Those four astronauts launched from Cape Canaveral on Artemis II. There was probably a a risk of between one and five percent that they would not come back. And we would never accept that. Uh you know, you you couldn't fly out of Oslo airport with a 1 to 5 percent risk of a catastrophic failure, right? We accept risk in space, but we also cooperate. And one of the things that people don't realize is that the cooperation um in in both domains continues to this day. Within the last year, a Russian cosmonaut has launched on a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida, and an American astronaut has launched on a Soyuz rocket from Bakanor, Kazakhstan, as part of a deliberate signaling of continuing cooperation. The Americans could have launched their own astronaut. The Russians could have launched their own cosmonaut. They chose to signal continued cooperation. And in low Earth orbit, just 400 kilometers above us, we have the most expensive machine ever created by humans that has been occupied by human beings for over two decades in a remarkable partnership that still brings Western countries and Russia together in a demonstration uh that that we need each other. I mean, the the International Space Station was designed so that it can only stay in space because of regular boosts from a Russian spacecraft. And the air conditioning only works because of the American air conditioning system and the American module. So the International Space Station can't actually exist without continued cooperation. That was deliberate and brilliant at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Aaron Ross Powell And you're also touching upon right now the topic of then security. And this is essentially security cooperation in a way, a different form of security. But what do you think are the most important questions then? You mentioned cooperation, state cooperation, and is one thing. But what are the most important questions we should be asking about security in space?

SPEAKER_01 8:15

There's some new and enormous challenges of environmental security with regards to space. We have um a uh a risk of losing access to low Earth orbit because of uh collisional cascades because of space debris. So in the in the space of just the last uh ten years, we've gone from 2,000 operational satellites to 15,000 operational satellites. There are plans for more than one million additional satellites. We're into congestion and collision problems. We're we're seeing chemical changes to the upper atmosphere as a result of the re-entry of thousands of satellites, which are supposed to burn up, but of course, mass never disappears. So they just turn from a thousand kilograms of metal into a thousand kilograms of metallic particles in the stratosphere, um, which could have serious effects on the ozone layer, for instance. We we don't yet know. There are issues of human security. If we lose safe access to low Earth orbit, we'll lose a lot of the earth imaging satellites that support food production around the world. Um agriculture, modern agriculture is dependent on satellites, modern fisheries is dependent on satellites. So there's a human security dimension. And then there are the more traditional military security issues. And since the late 1950s, militaries have realized that satellites are very useful for communications and for reconnaissance, and today for operating uh drones or uh targeting missiles. Um so over the course of the last seven decades, we we've seen a lot of military reliance on satellites. We haven't seen weapons in space. And and this is one of the great accomplishments of uh of of seven years of of diplomacy, is that we've avoided an arms race in low Earth orbit. But we we we have this heavy military dependence. And and the biggest security challenge um with regards to space at the moment is that there has been a rethinking of this non-weaponization issue driven by Washington, D.C. And and and driven by what in international relations we call a security dilemma. So so China is, of course, the the rising superpower. China has invested a great deal in uh in its space capabilities. It's uh it has more than a thousand satellites. It goes and retrieves samples from the far side of the moon. It's a very capable space power. And of course, it's a country that's regarded with great suspicion by the uh military-industrial complex in Washington, D.C. that sees these capabilities as a potential threat and is uncertain about them, partly because Americans don't talk to Chinese officials or experts very much. And so in a situation of uncertainty, you're tempted to take a precautionary approach and to build up your own military capabilities. And in the last couple of years, the uh U.S. government, at the encouragement of the U.S. military, has been talking about space as a quote, war-fighting domain. And Donald Trump created the U.S. Space Force. And a lot of money is now being diverted away from space science and space diplomacy and given to companies to develop space weapons and other mechanisms that could be used if armed conflict were to break out in space. And the most recent manifestation of this is Donald Trump's so-called Golden Dome, this plan for a continent-wide missile defense system in North America that would include more than 1,000 space-based missile interceptors, so weapons in space. And and I worry that um that the security dilemma and and the push for more and more spending, big, big contracts for uh companies like Palantir and SpaceX and Lochin Martin is going to prompt the Chinese to build up their own military capabilities in space, even if they had no intention to do so in the first place. And this is the security dilemma, right? You have uncertainty, you take precautionary action, you build up your military, the other country sees you engaging in this buildup and logically starts to build up on its own, even if it had no intention to do so in the first place. And this escalates into an arms race. And that's the big problem with regards to space security, is the security dilemma. And the answer to it, quite frankly, is to get people talking to each other, to improve those those opportunities for confidence building and cooperation. And the European Space Agency gets this. Just a couple of years ago, when the Chinese brought a sample of lunar soil back from the far side of the moon, there was a European Space Agency instrument on that Chinese spacecraft, right? And and we need to get through to our American colleagues that the communication is a good thing, and that and that an arms race is not a necessary thing, that that that that space is another area beyond national jurisdiction, like the oceans, where we've learned to stabilize relations by international cooperation, by international institutions, by communication. And of course, the oceans are still militarized. You just have to look at the Strait of Hormuz. But isn't it remarkable how peaceful most of the oceans are most of the time? And I could say the same thing about the Arctic Ocean, right? So why not space? Why can't we keep space like the oceans, a place where we're not engaged in a full-out arms race and where we can have, you know, a global economy dependent on safe shipping, on safe sustainable development? That should be the future, and that's what what I'm trying to encourage people to do.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

You talked about unintentional escalation. I just want to follow up with a question on that, because you mentioned the unintentional kind of arms race escalation. But can you see these um, for example, uh the increased use of space in in defense, specifically for defense and specifically for war? We have seen earlier since the Cold War, there have been many almost accidents, nuclear almost accidents, where nuclear weapons has almost been launched um because of some signal uh mistake or error. Do you see this or situations like these as more uh more of a risk now than before with the space in mind?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. As as space becomes busier. So, you know, if if you go from from 2,000 satellites in orbit to 15,000 satellites to 100,000 satellites, you're going to lose satellites to to collisions, sometimes with small pieces of space debris. So, you know, a a very expensive military satellite could all of a sudden stop working. And and you would have no idea why. And it could well have been because a one-centimeter piece of space debris punched through the electronics of the satellite. So you do have an escalation risk, if you have suspicion. Or increasingly governments are investing in spacecraft that can uh maneuver in orbit and uh do what are called rendezvous and proximity operations. So they can come up close and take a picture, or they can come up close and uh refuel a satellite. And these dual-use uh spacecraft, which are all robotic spacecraft, only add fuel to the security dilemma. Space is is relatively transparent in that satellites operate on predictable orbits, and and you can you can look at them with telescopes and radar, but a satellite that's in geosynchronous orbit is 35,000 kilometers away. And so a small maneuverable spacecraft could uh could could approach almost certainly undetected and do nefarious things. And so this is the sort of thing that that that we need to worry about is how do we we actually change the narrative to one of transparency and communication and confidence building. And right now I can tell you that that in Washington, D.C., and in Oslo, and in Ottawa, and in Beijing and Moscow, that the culture is mostly suspicion, which is why it's so important that the Russians and Americans are still launching each other's astronauts and cosmonauts, why it's so important that the COSPAS SARSAT search and rescue system is still working. Those are the small glimmers of hope of continuity. But it's it's tough right now, and it's tough because Washington, D.C. is dominated by people like Secretary of Defense Pete Heggs, who is actively hostile to international cooperation, and Donald Trump, who doesn't understand the concept of international cooperation, this feeding frenzy of large corporations. I mentioned Palantir, I mentioned Lockheed Martin, I mentioned SpaceX. These exist in Oslo and Ottawa as well. And to break that dynamic to say, look, this doesn't need to be an arms race. We've done it before. We know how to stabilize areas beyond national jurisdiction. There is a role for the military, there is a role for defense contractors, but there's also a role for science, there's a role for sustainable uh economies, there's uh you know a an important component of saying that enough is enough, of realizing environmental risk. So when I was a child, you know, we thought the oceans were so big that you could just dump garbage into the ocean and it would never be a problem. We also thought the atmosphere was so big that you could dump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and there would never be a problem. Well, I'm sorry, these are finite places, and Earth orbit is a finite place, and we need to recognize that that tragedies of the commons can unfold if you're not careful, if you if you don't exercise a degree of restraint.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

I have get motivated and a little bit um scared thinking about the future with that. But um, if we go back to Artemis II uh that you mentioned, it just recently uh splashed down uh first crewed uh mission around the moon in over 50 years, and Artemis III is uh aiming at landing uh next year. We're also seeing engagement uh in the moon from China, we've seen it from uh Russia. So what's the what's the deal with the moon? What's the renewed interest in the moon? Is this also a security dimension to this, or is this competition?

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Well, there's absolutely a security dimension to this because part of the motivation for going to the moon is that there are potential competitors, right? You mentioned uh China, Russia, India has successfully landed a rover on the moon. And so the the American focus on the moon is is driven by this potential competition, this perceived uh security threat. But let me remind uh your listeners that it wasn't supposed to be this way, that when Barack Obama became American president, he instructed NASA to build a rocket that could take astronauts to Mars. And he was supported in that by a young Elon Musk, who has for his entire adult life wanted to put human beings on Mars. And it was only when Donald Trump was first elected, came into office rejecting everything that Mr. Obama had done, that Donald Trump ordered NASA to go to the moon. So the whole Artemis thing is Donald Trump's ego, unable to accept that Obama had a good idea, which was to take humanity further, to do something new, to go to a planet where there is abundant water just under the surface, to go to a planet that that actually has one-third Earth gravity, to go to a place that that is far more interesting scientifically than the moon. The moon is, quite frankly, it's a waste of time, right? And and it's all about Donald Trump's ego. It was still, it was a spectacular mission. Artemis, too, it was great. There was this fantastic launch, there was this made-for-TV splashdown, there was this wonderful camaraderie between the different astronauts. It felt like a 1960s retro experience, right? I mean, we were, we were, we were living Apollo all over again. But from a cynical point of view, it was all just a political farce to stroke Donald Trump's fragile ego. So yeah, it was good. It motivated lots of young people. The first woman, the first person of color went beyond low Earth orbit. That's all great. But we we lost sight of the more interesting place, which is Mars, the red planet. That's where we should be going next.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

And this just reminds me, you mentioned this is like uh going back in time, this is retro. And another thing that is very retro right now is the Cold War. It's the comeback trends come and go. And it gets used a lot as like a parallel in the geopolitics of today in many, many ways. But back then it was state versus state. It was kind of these state actors competing. Now the you mentioned Palantir, you Lockheed Martin. I mean, the place is com way more messy. And uh or or or Blue Origin and SpaceX. And now, what is the relationship, would you say, between like the private actors and the state? Are the private actors just a continuation of the state? Who is holding pulling the strings in this relationship?

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Yeah. Well, there are two levels to it. You know, first of all, there is the the lobbyists and power. Power dynamic that we see taking place in def different domestic systems. So Elon Musk spent somewhere around one quarter of a billion US dollars helping Donald Trump get re-elected. And part of his payback is that the two regulatory agencies that oversee SpaceX have pulled way back. The Federal Aviation Authority, the Federal Communications Commission. SpaceX has almost nothing in the way of regulatory constraint under this second Trump administration. But that's not new. You can go back and look at standard oil or look at the tobacco industry or the pharmaceutical industry and U.S. politics, domestic politics in many countries have been subject to industry capture. This is not new. But when you start talking about going beyond the geographic reach of nation-state governments, that's when things get really interesting. So Elon Musk is building a Mars rocket, Starship, his mega rocket that he he's testing out of Boca Chica, Texas, is intended to deliver human beings to Mars. And he's doing it entirely with his own funding. And SpaceX only exists because it has received so many government contracts over the last two decades. But really, Starship and Mars is his personal project. And if he can get to Mars, he will be so far beyond the reach of nation states that SpaceX will all of a sudden be the 21st century equivalent of the Dutch East India Company, operating on the distant reaches of, in that case, our planet, with a royal charter, right? But able to govern everything it found. Now, the important difference is that as far as we know, there is no intelligent alien life on Mars, right? There's no one to colonize. But still, what happens if Elon Musk and SpaceX declare that international Earth-based international law does not apply on Mars? That they're setting themselves up as this new sovereign authority. And here's the interesting thing: they've already indicated their desire to do so. Because if you read the users agreement that anyone has to sign in order to get coverage from Starlink, from SpaceX's internet broadband system, low Earth orbit system, you actually need to sign a provision in the contract, in the users agreement that recognizes that Mars is a free planet beyond the reach of nation states. Elon Musk is an evil genius. And I want to stress the genius bit here for a moment. He's thinking that far in the future, right? He he he actually is intent on escaping the control of Earth governments by going to Mars. Now, from a teaching perspective, from a philosophical perspective, this is amazing, right? Because it does raise questions about, well, what is sovereignty? How important is the nation-state? But I raise it just to say that when we're talking about these really powerful actors, sometimes the the precedents or the analogies don't come from the they don't come from the 20th century. They they come from the 17th century. And so history becomes part of this. That one of the things that makes developments in space interesting is that is that uh you know, we're reliving a great deal of of the human experience. Um, as I said, with the exception of colonialism um at the moment. But who knows? You know, in an infinite universe, there are almost certainly intelligent life forms out there somewhere. Whether we'll ever be in contact with them is another question. The distances are so great that I'm not counting on it, certainly not in my lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Aaron Powell This is like hearing the plot of a Star Wars spin-off from uh from uh George Lucas all over again. With uh uh it's it's uh it's uh insane how uh reality almost mimics uh fiction in the sense.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Aaron Powell But let me add something to that. Star Wars has a lot of conflict. Star Trek is based upon a desire for scientific exploration and diplomacy. So I mean, Star Wars is great fun. Star Trek actually provides a path forward.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

I wanted to ask you about one thing, because one of the reasons that the moon or Mars or or all of these explorations are also motivated has to come with some benefit that is only not symbolic. So, for example, I remember somebody mentioned critical minerals or these kinds of things. How much do you think this argument holds? Because I mean, how do you even get minerals from Mars or from the moon back to Earth? I mean, is this a real question that needs attention, the the resource aspect, or is it just fluff?

SPEAKER_01 26:44

So there are thousands of uh startup companies wanting to do things with regards to space. And uh like all startups, they they need to need to attract investors or or or government contracts or subsidies. You know, I sometimes say that every European space company is a PowerPoint and an ESA grant, a European space agency grant. And and not necessarily much more than that. So there is a lot of overselling going on, of of selling visions of promises. And and when you're selling something, you don't want to point out the the challenges and the risks. So one big issue for every space company is well, well, who's going to insure your mission? Is Lloyd's of London going to actually look at this and say there's a business case and give you insurance? And if not, you know, are you prepared to to to creating massive liabilities through an accident or or some such thing? But uh the the the reality of space, uh like the Arctic, is that it's really hard and it's therefore very expensive. And and the distances involved and the amount of energy that's involved in moving anything off of the planet's surface or or changing uh direction in space, you know, what's called delta V, change in velocity, become quite prohibitive. So, you know, I I I again I don't I'm not an Elon Musk fan, but sometimes he comes up with brilliant things. And and he was on a late night talk show in the United States more than a decade ago, and someone asked him about space mining. And he said, look, he said, you know, if I had a a suitcase of cocaine on Mars, the only thing I could really do with it would be to enjoy it, because it would cost more than the value of that cocaine to take it back to Earth. It just the the the cost of covering that distance with anything. And so people need to realize that, you know, if you go to the moon, you you're you're dealing, first of all, with a vacuum, right? If there's a leak in your spacesuit, you die. You're dealing with extremely sharp lunar dust everywhere that will get into machines that can enter your spacecraft and kill you. You're dealing with radiation because there's no magnetic field around the moon. So that if there's a solar storm, you die. Um, you know, it goes on and on and on. Plus, you've got the logistics of getting there and back, right? NASA, we just celebrated the fact that a space agency that's been around for half a century managed to fly four people around the moon without even attempting a landing, right? So you've got all these startup companies that want to do stuff on the moon, and the question is, well, if NASA can't land someone yet, how do you propose to get there? Like, like what's your business case? How do you put boots on the ground? You're not NASA, right? And so I encourage people to be skeptical about a lot of this. Space is cool. People get excited. Investors get excited. How much of it is real? Some of it's real. Far northern areas of the Canadian Arctic, people now have broadband from Starlink. It's awesome, right? And what it's done for education for small businesses is great. India became a space power because it realized the usefulness of Earth imagery for agriculture. And for half a century, India has been able to boost its food production enormously because of satellites. I mean, space can do some really good things, but at the same time, it can become a location for an arms race. It can become a place where we could see new environmental challenges, and it can become a place for irrational investment for this bubble economy. And so, you know, part of my message to governments, and this would include the Canadian or the Norwegian government, is don't get taken in by these salespeople, right? Scrutinize what they're proposing. Is it really something that's feasible? Or are they or are they going to come back in in two or three years' time and ask you for another$100 million or krune? Um and what I find is because of this enthusiasm, because of our love of space, that we we seem to have lost our critical faculties, that we're not actually asking the tough questions. And that's what we try to do at at the Outer Space Institute. We're the people who no one likes because we come and we ask the difficult questions. We're all about identifying risk. We're all about promoting safety and sustainability. And uh that's not a message that the enthusiasts want to hear.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Okay. Let's then say, let's take make that critical thinking into action. Let's pretend you have more power than anyone, more power than Donald Trump, more power, more money than Elon Musk. You're the world's most uh powerful person for this question. Don't let it get to your head, and only use it for uh for changing one or two things about how space is governed right now. One or two things. What would you do?

SPEAKER_01 31:23

So just uh two weeks ago, the Trump administration canceled a mission, a space mission, called the sample return mission. Because there's a NASA rover on the Martian surface right now, on Mars. It's called Perseverance that has been collecting samples that are promising as providing possible evidence of the existence of ancient life on Mars. And if we could prove that life developed elsewhere than Earth, this would be one of the greatest scientific discoveries in human history. And and Perseverance, this NASA rover, has been leaving these samples in a couple of different collections, anticipating that another spacecraft would come and pick them up and take them to Earth where scientists could study them properly. And this was going to be a joint NASA European Space Agency mission. And the Trump administration has just canceled the sample return mission because they want to put more money into the militarization of space. They've cut the NASA budget by about one-third, and they've doubled the Space Force budget just in the last few weeks. So I don't I don't have aspirations to control the world or even to stop war or feed the hungry. But the one thing I would do would be to bring back that mission. And so I'm actually proposing that other countries partner, so Canada, the European Space Agency, Japan, even China, and we we do a joint sample return mission to bring those samples back. Because I actually think that if we discovered that we were not so unique, that life in fact did develop somewhere else, that this would be a a good ego um reduction exercise. That that that that that it might make us realize that our commonalities are more important than our differences, that life on Earth is uh um you know, it's not it's that we are are all together in in in a in a bigger universe and we're not we're not so special. Yeah, I think that would be a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Thank you so much, Michael. That's uh let's let's hope for that and uh let's see how humanity tackles it. It was great to listen to you and uh thank you for your wonderful insights.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Well, thank you, and I I look forward to our next meeting.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Thank you. And thank you for listening.