Tournament: Harvard | Round: 2 | Opponent: Eagan AE | Judge: Shubh Agrawal
My sole contention is mega constellations
Subpoint A: Internet Access
Terrestrial Internet Cables are vulnerable now – risks access.
Griffiths 19 James Griffiths 7-26-2019 "The global internet is powered by vast undersea cables. But they’re vulnerable." https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea-cables-intl-hnk/index.html (CNN Analyst)ELmer
Hong Kong (CNN) - On July 29, 1858, two steam-powered battleships met in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There, they connected two ends of a 4,000 kilometer (2,500 mile) long, 1.5 centimeter (0.6 inch) wide cable, linking for the first time the European and North American continents by telegraph. Just over two weeks later, the UK’s Queen Victoria sent a congratulatory message to then US President James Buchanan, which was followed by a parade through the streets of New York, featuring a replica of a ship which helped lay the cable and fireworks over City Hall. In their inaugural cables, Queen Victoria hailed the “great international work” by the two countries, the culmination of almost two decades of effort, while Buchanan lauded a “triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle. The message took over 17 hours to deliver, at 2 minutes and 5 seconds per letter by Morse code, and the cable operated for less than a month due to a variety of technical failures, but a global communications revolution had begun. By 1866, new cables were transmitting 6 to 8 words a minute, which would rise to more than 40 words before the end of the century. In 1956, Transatlantic No. 1 (TAT-1), the first underwater telephone cable, was laid, and by 1988, TAT-8 was transmitting 280 megabytes per second – about 15 times the speed of an average US household internet connection – over fiber optics, which use light to transmit data at breakneck speeds. In 2018, the Marea cable began operating between Bilbao, Spain, and the US state of Virginia, with transmission speeds of up to 160 terabits per second – 16 million times faster than the average home internet connection. Today, there are around 380 underwater cables in operation around the world, spanning a length of over 1.2 million kilometers (745,645 miles). Underwater cables are the invisible force driving the modern internet, with many in recent years being funded by internet giants such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon. They carry almost all our communications and yet – in a world of wireless networking and smartphones – we are barely aware that they exist. Yet as the internet has become more mobile and wireless, the amount of data traveling across undersea cables has increased exponentially. “Most people are absolutely amazed” by the degree to which the internet is still cable-based, said Byron Clatterbuck, chief executive of Seacom, a multinational telecommunications firm responsible for laying many of the undersea cables connecting Africa to the rest of the world. “People are so mobile and always looking for Wi-Fi,” he said. “They don’t think about it, they don’t understand the workings of this massive mesh of cables working together. “They only notice when it’s cut.” Network down In 2012, Hurricane Sandy slammed into the US East Coast, causing an estimated $71 billion in damage and knocking out several key exchanges where undersea cables linked North America and Europe. “It was a major disruption,” Frank Rey, director of global network strategy for Microsoft’s Cloud Infrastructure and Operations division, said in a statement. “The entire network between North America and Europe was isolated for a number of hours. For us, the storm brought to light a potential challenge in the consolidation of transatlantic cables that all landed in New York and New Jersey.” For its newest cable, Marea, Microsoft chose to base its US operation further down the coast in Virginia, away from the cluster of cables to minimize disruption should another massive storm hit New York. But most often when a cable goes down nature is not to blame. There are about 200 such failures each year and the vast majority are caused by humans. “Two-thirds of cable failures are caused by accidental human activities, fishing nets and trawling and also ships’ anchors,” said Tim Stronge, vice-president of research at TeleGeography, a telecoms market research firm. “The next largest category is natural disaster, mother nature – sometimes earthquakes but also underwater landslides.” A magnitude-7.0 earthquake off the southwest coast off Taiwan in 2006, along with aftershocks, cut eight submarine cables which caused internet outages and disruption in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. Stronge said the reason most people are not aware of these failures is because the whole industry is designed with it in mind. Companies that rely heavily on undersea cables spread their data across multiple routes, so that if one goes down, customers are not cut off. How a cable gets laid Laying a cable is a years-long process which costs millions of dollars, said Seacom’s Clatterbuck. The process begins by looking at naval charts to plot the best route. Cables are safest in deep water where they can rest on a relatively flat seabed, and won’t rub against rocks or be at risk of other disturbances. “The deeper the better,” Clatterbuck said. “When you can lay the cable down in deep water you rarely have any problems. It goes down on the bottom of the seabed and just stays there.” Things become more difficult the closer you get to shore. A cable that is only a few centimeters thick on the bottom of the ocean must be armored from its environment as reaches the landing station that links it with the country’s internet backbone. “Imagine a long garden hose, inside of which are very small tubes that house a very, very thin fiber pair,” Clatterbuck said. That hose is wrapped in copper, which conducts the direct current that powers the cable and its repeaters, sometimes up to 10,000 volts. “The fibers are wrapped in urethane and wrapped in copper and wrapped again in urethane,” he said. “If we’re going to have to put that cable on a shoreline that is very shallow and has a lot of rocks, you’re now going to have to armor coat that cable so no one can hack through it.” Cables in less hospitable areas can be far thicker than garden hoses, wrapped in extra plastic, kevlar armor plating, and stainless steel to ensure they can’t be broken. Depending on the coast, cable companies might also have to build concrete trenches far out to sea, to tuck the cable in to protect it from being bashed against rocks. “Before the cable-laying vessels go out they send out another specialized ship that maps the sea floor in the area when they want to go,” said TeleGeography’s Stronge. “They want to avoid areas where there’s a lot of undersea currents, certainly want to avoid volcanic areas, and avoid a lot of elevation change on the sea floor.” Once the route is plotted and checked, and the shore connections are secure, huge cable laying ships begin passing out the equipment. “Imagine spools of spools of garden hose along with a lot of these repeaters the size of an old travel trunk,” Clatterbuck said. “Sometimes it can take a month to load the cable onto a ship.” The 6,600 kilometer (4,000 mile) Marea cable weighs over 4.6 million kilograms (10.2 million pounds), or the equivalent of 34 blue whales, according to Microsoft, which co-funded the project with Facebook. It took more than two years to lay the entire thing. Malicious cuts The blackout came without warning. In February 2008, a whole swath of North Africa and the Persian Gulf suddenly went offline, or saw internet speeds slow to a painful crawl. This disruption was eventually traced to damage to three undersea cables off the Egyptian coast. At least one – linking Dubai and Oman – was severed by an abandoned, 5,400 kilogram (6-ton) anchor, the cable’s owner said. But the cause of the other damage was never explained, with suggestions it could have been the work of saboteurs. That raises the issue of another threat to undersea cables: deliberate human attacks. In a 2017 paper for the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange, British lawmaker Rishi Sunak wrote that “security remains a challenge” for undersea cables. “Funneled through exposed choke points (often with minimal protection) and their isolated deep-sea locations entirely public, the arteries upon which the Internet and our modern world depends have been left highly vulnerable,” he said. “The threat of these vulnerabilities being exploited is growing. A successful attack would deal a crippling blow to Britain’s security and prosperity.” However, with more than 50 cables connected to the UK alone, Clatterbuck was skeptical about how useful a deliberate outage could be in a time of war, pointing to the level of coordination and resources required to cut multiple cables at once. “If you wanted to sabotage the global internet or cut off a particular place you’d have to do it simultaneously on multiple cables,” he said. “You’d be focusing on the hardest aspect of disrupting a network.”
Mega-constellations provide fast, affordable internet that bridges digital divide – independently, competition lowers prices across the board.
Novo 21 Paula Novo 3-31-2021 "Will Starlink Change the Internet?' https://www.highspeedoptions.com/resources/insights/will-starlink-change-the-internet (With over four years of broadband experience, Paula Novo is the Site Editor and Senior Writer for HighSpeedOptions. She has helped develop the criterion by which HighSpeedOptions reviews and recommends internet service providers, striving to simplify and guide the user’s decision toward the best communications services. Paula also leads HighSpeedOptions coverage of the digital divide, ISP reviews, and broadband policy.)Elmer
While it’s not the first – and won’t be the last – company to test low Earth orbit satellites, Starlink, the satellite internet division of SpaceX, is making waves in the telecommunications industry for its residential beta program launched in 2020. As the first U.S.-based firm to successfully bring LEO internet to market, Starlink shows promise where others have heroically failed. Every satellite company in history to launch a low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation has gone bankrupt, except for Starlink, that is. Said best in a tweet by Elon Musk, founder and CEO of this venture, “Starlink is a staggeringly difficult technical and economic endeavor. However, if we don’t fail, the cost to end-users will improve every year.” In the span of a decade, broadband moved from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have” – the COVID-19 pandemic simply speeding up the clock on its shift towards a utility. Yet, we’re a far cry away from total connectivity. Due to availability and cost issues (to name a few), millions of Americans don’t have access to reliable internet, which further widens the education and wealth gaps. If successful, Starlink – and LEO satellite internet as a whole – may be the first real solution for billions of people missing out on the benefits of broadband. Current State of the Telecom Industry Despite advances in technology, the telecom industry is lagging behind. And, contrary to what internet service providers and the media report, the United States’ internet options are still very limited. The three biggest hurdles standing in the way of real progress include access, affordability, and lack of competition. Access According to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 2020 Broadband Deployment Report, roughly 6 of all Americans have zero access to fixed broadband at home. And, of those without access, a majority live in rural areas. That’s about 19 million people who, even if they could afford to subscribe to internet service, are out of luck. The FCC defines broadband speeds as just 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up, which may be fast enough to check emails but won’t reliably support your Breaking Bad marathon. You can see how living in an underserved area, then, can severely limit a person’s job prospects, schooling, and social connections. Still, we can’t rate internet access without also looking at affordability. While some 19 million Americans do not have access at all, as many as one in three Americans choose to not subscribe to internet service, citing cost as a leading factor. Affordability FCC data shows that nearly 35 of Americans, or about 114 million people, do not subscribe to broadband service at their homes. Affordability – or lack thereof – is often cited as the main driver for this decision. Despite government intervention via efforts like the FCC Lifeline Program and ISP subsidies to incentivize network expansions, America still seems to lag behind other developed countries when it comes to internet cost. In a 2020 study by New America, it turns out that we pay quite a bit more for internet service than most developed countries in Asia and Europe, regardless of speed. Before factoring in data caps and other ancillary ISP fees, we pay “nearly twice as much as European countries for high-speed internet.” Naturally, the ballooning question pops up – How did we fall behind? Lack of Competition The lack of competition today may be the single greatest obstacle preventing the telecom industry (read: ISPs and consumers) from thriving. A long history of privately-owned infrastructures and government regulations has enabled monopolies to quash competition in the marketplace and ignore the demand for innovation. Unsurprisingly, the Institute of Self-Reliance released a new report finding that two of the largest broadband companies in the U.S. – Comcast and Charter Spectrum – maintain a monopoly over 47+ million American households. It also sheds light on an additional 33 million homes only serviceable by one or two DSL providers. While these are just a few examples of the current market, you can easily see how large segments of the population lack the competitive supply needed to drive down costs and push for more development. What if there was a solution to address these pitfalls with the internet? What if Americans (or, really, anyone in the world) could circumvent some of the physical and political barriers stopping us from connecting from seemingly anywhere? These are questions Starlink is attempting to answer. Ways Starlink May Change the Internet First, what is Starlink and how is it different from other internet providers? It’s an Elon Musk satellite internet company bringing life to the telecom industry. In the last year, Starlink launched over 1,000 satellites into low orbit with the goal of offering a new type of broadband. If successful, this LEO service could not only supersede traditional satellite internet like HughesNet or Viasat but also rival the likes of fiber internet in rural and remote communities. Unlike GEO satellite providers who use a few hundred large satellites orbiting over 35,000 kilometers from Earth, Starlink plans to use up to 42,000 small satellites in low orbit no higher than 1,200 kilometers. Because of these key differences, Starlink is anticipated to offer reliable speeds up to 1 Gbps with lower latency of 20ms to 40ms worldwide. Essentially, it’d combine the performance of grounded internet with the geographical freedom of traditional satellite internet so people can live anywhere on Earth while staying connected. In general, LEO satellite service represents a real chance at solving connectivity issues for anyone outside city limits. Starlink may also pave the way for tangible changes to the industry as a whole, including lower prices, faster speeds, and better economic opportunities. Pricing of Internet As Starlink enters new markets, the added competition has the potential to drive down the cost of internet over time. In a study by the Analysis Group, they calculated that when just one new competitor joins a designated market area (DMA), the price of plans with speeds ranging from 50 Mbps to 1 Gbps sees a monthly decline of $1.50. That’s it? McDonald’s saves me more than that. Not so fast, though. Remember how we said Starlink isn’t the only company testing low orbit satellites? With other ventures like Blue Origin, OneWeb, and Telesat itching to launch their own LEO constellations, it won’t be long before new players enter the market. At which point, the Analysis Group guesstimates an 8 reduction in monthly broadband prices, or about $7.50. For low-income households, that may be the difference needed to break even on bills. And, even though Starlink itself is quite expensive, its presence in the market has the potential to still benefit consumers who could choose a (now) cheaper internet provider. Internet Speeds Similarly, the buzz around LEO internet speeds has industry heads raising their eyebrows as well. While Starlink is only testing speeds of 50 Mbps to 150 Mbps right now, in time it’s expected to offer speeds up to 1 Gbps with low latency. Normally these speeds are reserved for grounded connections like fiber or cable internet. So, if Starlink manages to deliver, we may no longer be limited by our geography. Even further, the Analysis Group reports that the availability of higher internet speeds in a DMA “increases the likelihood that other providers will introduce high-speed plans to match … their competition.” In particular, they found that broadband providers are 4 to 17 percent more likely to increase their speeds on an annual basis because of competition. This goes to show that a little healthy rivalry in the marketplace first and foremost benefits the consumer. Economic Opportunity If Starlink is successful, we expect to see economic opportunity improve for billions with a B as well. With global availability, more people will have the means to compete for jobs in today’s digital age. To put things into perspective, consider the world population. Of the current 7.8 billion people, a little under half of them (40) lack regular internet access. That’s nearly one out of every two people. If LEO satellite service can make it to where geography, price, and speeds aren’t roadblocks anymore, what happens? In general, more people with internet access equates to more job access. And, as jobs continue to transition online, it’s safe to assume that people won’t be as limited by obstacles such as disabilities, poor education, and wealth disparities when they compete for openings. In these ways, Starlink has the potential to help offset poverty where many governments have failed.
It's comparably faster than current competitors.
Lumanlan 21 August Dominic M Lumanlan 8-14-2021 "How Elon Musk’s Starlink will be the future of the Internet" https://medium.com/@augustlumanlan2017/how-spacexs-starlink-will-be-the-future-of-the-internet-8f07adb4eb2 (Engineering Author)Elmer
Internet speeds, satellite equipment, and user feedback Starlink has very high internet speeds, higher than the speed of internet we currently have in our homes. Speeds average around 100 mbps but it could go as far as 200 mbps, or even 300 mbps. It has a latency of 20 milliseconds. Latency just means the time it takes for the satellite to transmit the data packets (YouTube videos, Facebook messages, Google searches, etc.) from the ground station, to the nearest Starlink satellite, which then transmits it to other nearby satellites and whichever one is closest above the user will transmit it downward to the Starlink dish that receives the data packets, which can finally reach your home router and now you’re connected to the internet and received the data packets. The process can repeat vice versa. This means that the internet connection with Starlink is much faster than our current internet connection which has around 60 milliseconds of latency. A lot of beta testers have shared their experiences online and have been picked up by the media to know more about the Starlink internet program’s capabilities and the user’s feedback about them. What they say is true: They are so happy about it, they think it’s worth it. Because its so fast and reliable to many places around the world, you can easily connect to the internet and be able to do multiple things like watch YouTube or Google search, or even work conveniently anywhere you wish, as long as you have a ground Starlink dish with you.
Internet solves extinction
Eagleman 10 David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law and author of Sum (Canongate). Nov. 9, 2010, “ Six ways the internet will save civilization,”
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/12/start/apocalypse-no
Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics. Usually this results from: natural disasters, resource depletion, economic meltdown, disease, poor information flow and corruption. But we’re luckier than our predecessors because we command a technology that no one else possessed: a rapid communication network that finds its highest expression in the internet. I propose that there are six ways in which the net has vastly reduced the threat of societal collapse. Epidemics can be deflected by telepresence One of our more dire prospects for collapse is an infectious-disease epidemic. Viral and bacterial epidemics precipitated the fall of the Golden Age of Athens, the Roman Empire and most of the empires of the Native Americans. The internet can be our key to survival because the ability to work telepresently can inhibit microbial transmission by reducing human-to-human contact. In the face of an otherwise devastating epidemic, businesses can keep supply chains running with the maximum number of employees working from home. This can reduce host density below the tipping point required for an epidemic. If we are well prepared when an epidemic arrives, we can fluidly shift into a self-quarantined society in which microbes fail due to host scarcity. Whatever the social ills of isolation, they are worse for the microbes than for us. The internet will predict natural disasters We are witnessing the downfall of slow central control in the media: news stories are increasingly becoming user-generated nets of up-to-the-minute information. During the recent California wildfires, locals went to the TV stations to learn whether their neighbourhoods were in danger. But the news stations appeared most concerned with the fate of celebrity mansions, so Californians changed their tack: they uploaded geotagged mobile-phone pictures, updated Facebook statuses and tweeted. The balance tipped: the internet carried news about the fire more quickly and accurately than any news station could. In this grass-roots, decentralised scheme, there were embedded reporters on every block, and the news shockwave kept ahead of the fire. This head start could provide the extra hours that save us. If the Pompeiians had had the internet in 79AD, they could have easily marched 10km to safety, well ahead of the pyroclastic flow from Mount Vesuvius. If the Indian Ocean had the Pacific’s networked tsunami-warning system, South-East Asia would look quite different today. Discoveries are retained and shared Historically, critical information has required constant rediscovery. Collections of learning -- from the library at Alexandria to the entire Minoan civilisation -- have fallen to the bonfires of invaders or the wrecking ball of natural disaster. Knowledge is hard won but easily lost. And information that survives often does not spread. Consider smallpox inoculation: this was under way in India, China and Africa centuries before it made its way to Europe. By the time the idea reached North America, native civilisations who needed it had already collapsed. The net solved the problem. New discoveries catch on immediately; information spreads widely. In this way, societies can optimally ratchet up, using the latest bricks of knowledge in their fortification against risk. Tyranny is mitigated Censorship of ideas was a familiar spectre in the last century, with state-approved news outlets ruling the press, airwaves and copying machines in the USSR, Romania, Cuba, China, Iraq and elsewhere. In many cases, such as Lysenko’s agricultural despotism in the USSR, it directly contributed to the collapse of the nation. Historically, a more successful strategy has been to confront free speech with free speech -- and the internet allows this in a natural way. It democratises the flow of information by offering access to the newspapers of the world, the photographers of every nation, the bloggers of every political stripe. Some posts are full of doctoring and dishonesty whereas others strive for independence and impartiality -- but all are available to us to sift through. Given the attempts by some governments to build firewalls, it’s clear that this benefit of the net requires constant vigilance. Human capital is vastly increased Crowdsourcing brings people together to solve problems. Yet far fewer than one per cent of the world’s population is involved. We need expand human capital. Most of the world not have access to the education afforded a small minority. For every Albert Einstein, Yo-Yo Ma or Barack Obama who has educational opportunities, uncountable others do not. This squandering of talent translates into reduced economic output and a smaller pool of problem solvers. The net opens the gates education to anyone with a computer. A motivated teen anywhere on the planet can walk through the world’s knowledge -- from the webs of Wikipedia to the curriculum of MIT’s OpenCourseWare. The new human capital will serve us well when we confront existential threats we’ve never imagined before. Energy expenditure is reduced Societal collapse can often be understood in terms of an energy budget: when energy spend outweighs energy return, collapse ensues. This has taken the form of deforestation or soil erosion; currently, the worry involves fossil-fuel depletion. The internet addresses the energy problem with a natural ease. Consider the massive energy savings inherent in the shift from paper to electrons -- as seen in the transition from the post to email. Ecommerce reduces the need to drive long distances to purchase products. Delivery trucks are more eco-friendly than individuals driving around, not least because of tight packaging and optimisation algorithms for driving routes. Of course, there are energy costs to the banks of computers that underpin the internet -- but these costs are less than the wood, coal and oil that would be expended for the same quantity of information flow. The tangle of events that triggers societal collapse can be complex, and there are several threats the net does not address. But vast, networked communication can be an antidote to several of the most deadly diseases threatening civilisation. The next time your coworker laments internet addiction, the banality of tweeting or the decline of face-to-face conversation, you may want to suggest that the net may just be the technology that saves us.
Subpoint B: Authoritarianism
Starlink bridges the Splinternet – that solves Fake News and Disinformation propagated from censorship – affordable, un-blockable, and accessible internet is key to stop Authoritarianism.
Koetsier 20 John Koetsier 1-9-2020 "Elon Musk's 42,000 StarLink Satellites Could Just Save the World" https://archive.is/K6Lq0#selection-3087.0-3131.123 (I've been a journalist, analyst, and corporate executive, and have chronicled the rise of the mobile economy. I built the VB Insight research team at VentureBeat)Elmer
Elon Musk’s other company, SpaceX, is building Starlink, a global communications constellation that could approach a staggering 42,000 satellites. And it could be all that stands between us and a fragmented world living in virtually — and actually — different realities. How? World War II can tell us the answer. In the early 1940s a tyrannical power using fake news, hate speech, military might and hegemonic power controlled most of Europe: the Nazis. They controlled public life, news and local economies. Resistance groups dotted the European mainland, with one lifeline for non-official communication from free countries: radio. As such, radios were contraband and confiscated. One of the activities the allies undertook to support resistance fighters was shipping in radios for communication and outside news. Today, radios aren’t at risk of being confiscated. But the internet is. And as a cloud-delivered service, hijacking the internet happens largely out of public sight, in servers and routers that enable services like Netflix and the BBC and Facebook and Google. It’s called splinternet, and it’s the ongoing division of a worldwide interconnected internet into separate and isolatable fiefdoms, each of which can be controlled and managed so that governing powers can control what their populations see. The Great Firewall of China is the most well-known example, but Iran, Syria and Vietnam also control significant portions of the internet for their populations. Russia just completed technology to wall off its internal networks, servers and internet users from the wider internet. And India, in its attempt to control unrest following its anti-Muslim citizenship law, has employed a particularly heavy-handed approach: simply blocking the internet entirely. (One unintended result: contractors in India can’t reach their employers in the U.S.) Another country, United Arab Emirates, took a different approach: outlawing all messengers except one that it built a digital backdoor into: Totok. However it happens, it allows governments to control what people see, read and hear from outside sources — and censor what their own people say. Starlink can change all of that. Elon Musk recently revealed details about how people will access StarLink. It will be incredibly simple, and it will enable access to the relatively free global internet from anywhere on the planet. Starlink Terminal has motors to self-adjust optimal angle to view sky. Instructions are simply: plug in socket, point at sky. These instructions work in either order. No training required. Elon Musk What that means is that anyone can access the internet from anywhere. Chinese citizens will be able to access Google and information about Tiananmen Square. Russian citizens will be able to see external analysis of Putin’s financial dealings if even Russia blocks outside sources. Indian protesters can’t be cut off from the internet. Of course, governments will make the Starlink Terminal illegal. But that in itself will be a victory. Censorship works best when it is invisible: when people don’t even know that there is alternate information, other understandings of reality. (Chinese teenage exchange students at a relative’s house last year, for example, had never heard of Tiananmen Square, and refused to believe stories that, they felt, painted China in a negative light.) But when a device to connect to the outside world becomes contraband, the glass walls become opaque. People realize that walls have been erected to prevent them from seeing other opinions. And that is at least one step to maintaining a free, open and accessible internet globally, which should help combat fake news, propaganda and information deprivation aimed at controlling populations. And it’s a step towards making the splinternet harder to achieve. 1,000 satellites will be enough to enable basic service, Musk has said. SpaceX just launched a third batch of 60 satellites, and is expected to continue launching that many every two weeks through the rest of 2020. (For context, only about 9,000 satellites have been launched in all of space history, about 5,000 of which are still in orbit. And only 2,000 are actually still operational. So even at a quarter or a fifth of total capacity, Starlink is a ridiculously large satellite constellation and unprecedented in human history — and astronomers have legitimate concerns about light pollution.) While Musk has applied for launch permission for up to 42,000 satellites, he’s unlikely to launch them all. But at the current pace, a global and unblockable internet service should be available in less than a year. This doesn’t mean that all will instantly be rosy. Governments, of course, can try to jam satellite signals. That’s unlikely to work — or even be possible — in all places and all times, however. They’re also likely to continue to try to engage in false flag and other misinformation projects. And people seem to be pretty good at fooling themselves these days: locking themselves in reality bubbles that block dissenting narratives. But any gaps in the emerging splinternet are opportunities for different perspectives and, hopefully, true facts to emerge.
Authoritarianism causes Nuclear War.
Diamond 19, Larry. Ill winds: Saving democracy from Russian rage, Chinese ambition, and American complacency. Penguin Books, 2019. (professor of Sociology and Political Science at Stanford University, PhD in Sociology)Elmer
The most obvious response to the ill winds blowing from the world’s autocracies is to help the winds of freedom blowing in the other direction. The democracies of the West cannot save themselves if they do not stand with democrats around the world. This is truer now than ever, for several reasons. We live in a globalized world, one in which models, trends, and ideas cascade across borders. Any wind of change may gather quickly and blow with gale force. People everywhere form ideas about how to govern—or simply about which forms of government and sources of power may be irresistible—based on what they see happening elsewhere. We are now immersed in a fierce global contest of ideas, information, and norms. In the digital age, that contest is moving at lightning speed, shaping how people think about their political systems and the way the world runs. As doubts about and threats to democracy are mounting in the West, this is not a contest that the democracies can afford to lose. Globalization, with its flows of trade and information, raises the stakes for us in another way. Authoritarian and badly governed regimes increasingly pose a direct threat to popular sovereignty and the rule of law in our own democracies. Covert flows of money and influence are subverting and corrupting our democratic processes and institutions. They will not stop just because Americans and others pretend that we have no stake in the future of freedom in the world. If we want to defend the core principles of self-government, transparency, and accountability in our own democracies, we have no choice but to promote them globally. It is not enough to say that dictatorship is bad and that democracy, however flawed, is still better. Popular enthusiasm for a lesser evil cannot be sustained indefinitely. People need the inspiration of a positive vision. Democracy must demonstrate that it is a just and fair political system that advances humane values and the common good. To make our republics more perfect, established democracies must not only adopt reforms to more fully include and empower their own citizens. They must also support people, groups, and institutions struggling to achieve democratic values elsewhere. The best way to counter Russian rage and Chinese ambition is to show that Moscow and Beijing are on the wrong side of history; that people everywhere yearn to be free; and that they can make freedom work to achieve a more just, sustainable, and prosperous society. In our networked age, both idealism and the harder imperatives of global power and security argue for more democracy, not less. For one thing, if we do not worry about the quality of governance in lower-income countries, we will face more and more troubled and failing states. Famine and genocide are the curse of authoritarian states, not democratic ones. Outright state collapse is the ultimate, bitter fruit of tyranny. When countries like Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan descend into civil war; when poor states in Africa cannot generate jobs and improve their citizens’ lives due to rule by corrupt and callous strongmen; when Central American societies are held hostage by brutal gangs and kleptocratic rulers, people flee—and wash up on the shores of the democracies. Europe and the United States cannot withstand the rising pressures of immigration unless they work to support better, more stable and accountable government in troubled countries. The world has simply grown too small, too flat, and too fast to wall off rotten states and pretend they are on some other planet. Hard security interests are at stake. As even the Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy makes clear, the main threats to U.S. national security all stem from authoritarianism, whether in the form of tyrannies from Russia and China to Iran and North Korea or in the guise of antidemocratic terrorist movements such as ISIS.1 By supporting the development of democracy around the world, we can deny these authoritarian adversaries the geopolitical running room they seek. Just as Russia, China, and Iran are trying to undermine democracies to bend other countries to their will, so too can we contain these autocrats’ ambitions by helping other countries build effective, resilient democracies that can withstand the dictators’ malevolence. Of course, democratically elected governments with open societies will not support the American line on every issue. But no free society wants to mortgage its future to another country. The American national interest would best be secured by a pluralistic world of free countries—one in which autocrats can no longer use corruption and coercion to gobble up resources, alliances, and territory. If you look back over our history to see who has posed a threat to the United States and our allies, it has always been authoritarian regimes and empires. As political scientists have long noted, no two democracies have ever gone to war with each other—ever. It is not the democracies of the world that are supporting international terrorism, proliferating weapons of mass destruction, or threatening the territory of their neighbors.
Subpoint C: Agriculture
Starlink is key to Precision Ag – key to food sustainability and increasing food supply to account for exponential population growth.
Greensight 21 3-15-2021 "Can Starlink Save the World by Connecting Farms?" https://www.greensightag.com/logbook/can-starlink-save-the-world-by-connecting-farms/ (Data Management Consulting Firm)Elmer
GreenSight innovates in a number of different areas, but one of the areas we are most passionate about is in agriculture. We’ve deployed our drone intelligence systems all over the world at all sorts of different facilities. One of the most challenging has been deployments at farms, and one of the biggest challenges has been connectivity. Connected farms are a requirement to feed the world, and Starlink will make that happen. Most urban and suburban households in the United States have had easy and reasonably inexpensive access to high speed internet access for 20 years. It is easy to forget that the situation is not the same for rural areas of the country. Many areas have no access to high speed, “broadband”, internet access, with some having only dialup internet access in their homes. According to the 2015 FCC broadband report, only 53 of rural households have access to high speed internet, even using low standards for “high” speed. On average farms have even less access, and that doesn’t even include high speed connectivity out in their fields. Cellular service is spotty especially on large farms in primarily agricultural areas, and legacy satellite systems provide slow upload speeds at expensive prices. Utilizing modern internet connected technologies and cloud based systems that require constant, high speed access can be a challenge at best and potentially impossible. A 2016 research study by Goldman and Sachs projected that by 2050, the world’s food production efficiency needs to increase by 50 to support our growing population. This paper backs up this conclusion with a lot of research, but the fundamental conclusion is that farming land area is unlikely to increase nor will the number of farmers. Increased global food production increases must come from productivity boosts. Researchers feel that productivity improvements from chemistry and genomics are unlikely to yield significant increases as they have in the past. They predict that the most likely area for these improvements are with precision farming techniques, notably precision planting and precision application of chemicals and water. The term “Precision Agriculture” was coined in the late 1960s and 1970s in seminal research that projected that in the future farming would be driven by data with inputs and practices varied and optimized based on weather, measurements from the field, and accurate year over year yield measurements. Since then, many tools and technologies have been developed that have made true precision agriculture more and more practical. Precision RTK GPS can guide equipment with precision better than an inch. Drones and satellite mapping of fields using remote sensing can map out health and detect problems with the crops. In field IoT sensors will stream live data (such as our partners Soil Scout). Soil genomics and analysis can analyze macro and micro nutrient content of the soil and track the genetics of the soil microbiome (like our friends at Trace Genomics). Robotic and automated farming equipment (like our partners at Monarch Tractor and Husqvarna are building) can vary applications and planting according to precomputed variable rate application maps. Despite all these breakthroughs, precision farming techniques still have a low penetration. There are many reasons for this (more than could be discussed in this article!) but one of them is inadequate connectivity. Most of these modern technologies rely on access to the internet and in many cases it just isn’t possible. For decades subsidies and programs have been rolled out to improve rural connectivity but the reality is that connecting up far flung areas is expensive, often labor intensive, and consequently from a pure business standpoint does not make sense for the connectivity providers. Even as infrastructure expands to more remote areas, there will always remain large swaths of rural america where conventional connectivity infrastructure is highly impractical. Most of GreenSight’s data processing is done in the cloud. Several gigabytes of imagery data are uploaded from our aircraft after every flight to be processed and delivered to our customers. Our custom artificial intelligence analyses the data and informs farmers to problem areas. From many remote farm fields, uploading can be a slow process. We’ve invested heavily in the portability of our systems and our upcoming next generation aircraft will be capable of onboard processing, but despite this connectivity will still be needed to make data available for farmers and other automated agriculture systems. Advanced sensing systems like ours have to be able to integrate with connected robotic sprayers, harvesters and tractors, unlocking the productivity potential of precision agriculture. Humanity needs precision agriculture, and connected data-driven systems will be a big part of that revolution. Beyond the global necessity, the economics for farmers work too! A 2018 USDA studies indicate that connecting US farmland will unlock $50B in industry revenue. We are extremely excited about Starlink and its potential to bring cost effective internet connectivity to farms and rural areas. Starlink levels the playing field for rural areas, enabling high speed connectivity everywhere. No longer will farmers have to wait for high speed wired connectivity to come to their area or install a complex mesh network on their property. IoT data can be streamed from fields as easily as it now streams from urban homes. Starlink will be a catalyzing force for chance, advancing access to precision agriculture globally and contributing to solving global food challenges.
Food Insecurity goes nuclear – escalates multiple hotspots.
Cribb 19 Julian Cribb 8-23-2019 “Food or War” https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/food-or-war/hotspots-for-food-conflict-in-the-twentyfirst-century/1CD674412E09B8E6F325C9C0A0A6778A (principal of Julian Cribb and Associates who provide specialist consultancy in the communication of science, agriculture, food, mining, energy and the environment. , His published work includes over 8000 articles, 3000 media releases and eight books. He has received 32 awards for journalism.)Elmer
Future Food Wars The mounting threat to world peace posed by a food, climate and ecosystem increasingly compromised and unstable was emphasised by the US Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, in a briefing to the US Senate in early 2019. 'Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond', he said. 'Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security. Irreversible damage to ecosystems and habitats will undermine the economic benefits they provide, worsened by air, soil, water, and marine pollution.' Boldly, Coats delivered his warning at a time when the US President, Trump, was attempting to expunge all reference to climate from government documents. 23 Based upon these recent cases of food conflicts, and upon the lessons gleaned from the longer history of the interaction between food and war, several regions of the planet face a greatly heightened risk of conflict towards the mid twentyfirst century. Food wars often start out small, as mere quarrels over grazing rights, access to wells or as one faction trying to control food supplies and markets. However, if not resolved quickly these disputes can quickly escalate into violence, then into civil conflagrations which, if not quelled, can in turn explode into crises that reverberate around the planet in the form of soaring prices, floods of refugees and the involvement of major powers — which in turn carries the risk of transnational war. The danger is magnified by swollen populations, the effects of climate change, depletion of key resources such as water, topsoil and nutrients, the collapse of ecosystem services that support agriculture and fisheries, universal pollution, a widening gap between rich and poor, and the rise of vast megacities unable to feed themselves (Figure 5.3). Each of the world's food 'powderkeg regions' is described below, in ascending order of risk. United States In one sense, food wars have already broken out in the United States, the most overfed country on Earth. Here the issue is chiefly the growing depletion of the nation's mighty ground- water resources, especially in states using it for food production, and the contest over what remains between competing users — farmers, ranchers and Native Americans on the one hand and the oil, gas and mining industry on the other. Concern about the future of US water supplies was aggravated by a series of savage droughts in the early twentyfirst century in the west, south and midwest linked to global climate change and declining snow- pack in the Rocky Mountains, both of which affect not only agriculture but also the rate at which the nation's groundwater reserves recharge. 'Groundwater depletion has been a concern in the Southwest and High Plains for many years, but increased demands on our groundwater resources have overstressed aquifers in many areas of the Nation, not just in arid regions', notes the US Geological Survey.24 Nine US states depend on groundwater for between 50 per cent and 80 per cent of their total freshwater supplies, and five states account for nearly half of the nation's groundwater use. Major US water resources, such as the High Plains aquifers and the Pacific Northwest aquifers have sunk by 30—50 metres (100—150 feet) since exploitation began, imperilling the agricultural industries that rely on them. In the arid south- west, aquifer declines of 100—150 metres have been recorded (Figure 5.4). To take but one case, the famed Ogallala Aquifer in the High Plains region supports cropping industries worth more than US $20 billion a year and was in such a depleted state it would take more than 6000 years to replace by natural infiltration the water drawn from it by farmers in the past 150 years. As it dwindles, some farmers have tried to kick their dependence on ground- water other users, including the growing cities and towns of the region, proceeded to mine it as if there was no tomorrow.25 A study by Kansas State University concluded that so far, 30 per cent of the local groundwater had been extracted and another 39 per cent would be depleted by the mid century on existing trends in withdrawal and recharge.26 Over half the US population relies on groundwater for drinking; both rural and urban America are at risk. Cities such as New Orleans, Houston and Miami face not only rising sea levels — but also sinking land, due to the extraction of underlying ground- water. In Memphis, Tennessee, the aquifer that supplies the city's drinking water has dropped by 20 metres. Growing awareness of the risk of a nation, even one as large and technologically adept as the USA, having insufficient water to grow its food, generate its exports and supply its urban homes has fuelled tensions leading to the eruption of nationwide protests over 'fracking' for oil and gas — a process that can deplete or poison groundwater — and the building -of oil pipe- lines, which have a habit of rupturing and also polluting water resources. The boom in fracking and piping is part of a deliberate US policy to become more self-reliant in fossil fuels.27 Thus, in its anxiety to be independent of overseas energy suppliers, the USA in effect decided to barter away its future food security for current oil security — and the price of this has been a lot of angry farmers, Native Americans and concerned citizens. The depletion of US groundwater coincides with accelerating climate risk, which may raise US temperatures by as much as 4—5 oc by 2100, leading to major losses in soil moisture throughout the US grain belt, and the spread of deserts in the south and west. Food production will also be affected by fiercer storms, bigger floods, more heatwaves, an increase in drought frequency and greater impacts from crop and livestock diseases. In such a context, it is no time to be wasting stored water. The case of the USA is included in the list of world 'hot spots' for future food conflict, not because there is danger of a serious shooting war erupting over water in America in the foreseeable future, but to illustrate that even in technologically advanced countries unforeseen social tensions and crises are on the rise over basic resources like food, land and water and their depletion. This doesn't just happen in Africa or the Middle East. It's a global phenomenon. Furthermore, the USA is the world's largest food exporter and any retreat on its part will have a disproportionate effect on world food price and supply. There is still plenty of time to replan America's food systems and water usage — but, as in the case of fossil fuels and climate, rear-guard action mounted by corporate vested interests and their hired politicians may well paralyse the national will to do it. That is when the US food system could find itself at serious risk, losing access to water in a time of growing climatic disruption, caused by exactly the same forces as those depleting the groundwater: the fossil fuels sector and its political stooges. The probable effect of this will, in the first instance, be a decline in US meat and dairy production accompanied by rising prices and a fall in its feedgrain exports, with domino effects on livestock industries worldwide. The flip-side to this issue is that America's old rival, Russia, is likely to gain in both farmland and water availability as the planet warms through the twentyfirst century — and likewise Canada. Both these countries stand to prosper from a US withdrawal from world food markets, and together they may negate the effects of any US food export shortfalls. Central and South America South America is one of the world's most bountiful continents in terms of food production — but, after decades of improvement, malnutrition is once more on the rise, reaching a new peak of 42.5 million people affected in 2016. 28 'Latin America and the Caribbean used to be a worldwide example in the fight against hunger. We are now following the worrisome global trend', said regional FAO representative Julio Berdegué. 29 Paradoxically, obesity is increasing among Latin American adults, while malnutrition is rising among children. 'Although Latin America and the Caribbean produce enough food to meet the needs of their population, this does not ensure healthy and nutritious diets', the FAO explains. Worsening income inequality, poor access to food and persistent poverty are contributing to the rise in hunger and bad diets, it adds.30 'The impact of climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean will be considerable because of its economic dependence on agriculture, the low adaptive capacity of its population and the geographical location of some of its countries', an FAO report warned.31 Emerging food insecurity in Central and Latin America is being driven by a toxic mixture of failing water supplies, drying farmlands, poverty, maladministration, incompetence and corruption. These issues are exacerbated by climate change, which is making the water supply issue worse for farmers and city people alike in several countries and delivering more weather disasters to agriculture. Mexico has for centuries faced periodic food scarcity, with a tenth of its people today suffering under-nutrition. In 2008 this rose to 18 per cent, leading to outbreaks of political violence. 2 In 2013, 52 million Mexicans were suffering poverty and seven million more faced extreme hunger, despite the attempts of successive governments to remedy the situation. By 2100 northern Mexico is expected to warm by 4—5 oc and southern Mexico by 1.5—2.5 oc. Large parts of the country, including Mexico City, face critical water scarcity. Mexico's cropped area could fall by 40—70 per cent by the 2030s and disappear completely by the end of the century, making it one of the world's countries most at risk from catastrophic climate change and a major potential source of climate refugees.33 The vanishing lakes and glaciers of the high Andes confront montane nations — Bolivia, Peru and Chile especially — with the spectre of growing water scarcity and declining food security. The volume of many glaciers, which provide meltwater to the region's rivers, which in turn irrigate farmland, has halved since 1975.34 Bolivia's second largest water body, the 2000 square kilometres Lake Poopo, dried out completely.35 The loss of water is attributed partly to El Niho droughts, partly to global warming and partly to over-extraction by the mining industries of the region. Chile, with 24,000 glaciers (80 per cent of all those in Latin America) is feeling the effects of their retreat and shrinkage especially, both in large cities such as the capital Santiago, and in irrigation agriculture and energy supply. Chile is rated by the World Resources Institute among the countries most likely to experience extreme water stress by 2040.36 Climate change is producing growing water and food insecurity in the 'dry corridor' of Central America, in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Here a combination of drought, major floods and soil erosion is undermining efforts to raise food production and stabilise nutrition. Food production in Venezuela began falling in the 1990s, and by the late 2010s two thirds of the population were malnourished; there was a growing flood of refugees into Colombia and other neighbouring countries. The food crisis has been variously blamed on the Venezuelan government's 'Great Leap Forward' (modelled on that of China — which also caused widespread starvation), a halving in Venezuela's oil export earnings, economic sanctions by the USA, and corruption. However, local scientists such as Nobel Laureate Professor Juan Carlos Sanchez warn that climate impacts are already striking the densely populated coastal regions with increased torrential rains, flooding and mudslides, droughts and hurricanes, while inland areas are drying out and desertifying, leading to crop failures, water scarcity and a tide of climate refugees.37 These factors will tend to deepen food insecurity towards the mid century. Venezuela's climate refugees are already making life more difficult for neighbouring countries such as Colombia. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has, in recent decades, removed around 20 per cent of its total tree cover, replacing it with dry savannah and farmland. At 40 per cent clearance and with continued global warming, scientists anticipate profound changes in the local climate, towards a drying trend, which will hammer the agriculture that has replaced the forest.38 Brazil has already wiped out the once- vast Mata Atlantica forest along its eastern coastline, and this region is now drying, with resultant water stress for both farming and major cities like Säo Paulo. Brazil's outlook for 2100 is for further drying — tied to forest loss as well as global climate change — increased frequency of drought and heatwaves, major fires and acute water scarcity in some regions. Moreover, as the Amazon basin dries out, if will release vast quantities of C02 from its peat swamps and rainforest soils. These are thought to contain in excess of three billion tonnes of carbon and could cause a significant acceleration in global warming, affecting everyone on Earth. 39 Latin America is the world capital of private armies, with as many as 50 major guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, terrorist, indigenous and criminal insurgencies over the past half century exemplified in familiar names like the Sandanistas (Nicaragua), FARC (Colombia) and Shining Path (Peru). 40 Many of these drew their initial inspiration from the international communist movement of the mid twentieth century, while others are right-wing groups set up in opposition to them or else represent land rights movements of disadvantaged groups. However, all these movements rely for oxygen on simmering public discontent with ineffectual or corrupt governments and lack of fair access to food, land and water generally. In other words, the tendency of South and Central America towards internal armed conflict is supercharged significantly by failings in the food system which generate public anger, leading to sympathy and support for anyone seen to be challenging the incumbent regimes. This is not to suggest that feeding every person well would end all insurgencies — but it would certainly take the wind of popular support out of a lot of their sails. In that sense the revolutionary tendency of South America echoes the preconditions for revolution in France and Russia in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Central Asia The risk of wars breaking out over water, energy and food insecurity in Central Asia is high.41 Here, the five main players — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan — face swelling populations, crumbling Soviet-era infrastructure, flagging resource cooperation, a degrading land- scape, deteriorating food availability and a changing climate. At the heart of the issue and the region's increasingly volatile politics is water: 'Without water in the region's two great rivers — the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya — vital crops in the down- stream agricultural powerhouses would die. Without power, life in the upstream countries would be unbearable in the freezing winters' , wrote Rustam Qobil. Central Asia's water crisis first exploded onto the global consciousness with the drying of the Aral Sea — the world's fourth largest lake — from the mid 1960s43, following the damming and draining of major rivers such as the Amu Darya, Syr Darya and Naryn. It was hastened by a major drought in 200844 exacerbated by climate change, which is melting the 'water tower' of glacial ice stored in the Tien Shan, Pamir and Hindu Kush mountain ranges that feed the region's rivers. The Tien Shan alone holds 10,000 glaciers, all of them in retreat, losing an estimated 223 million cubic metres a year. At such a rate of loss the region's rivers will run dry within a generation.45 Lack of water has already delivered a body blow to Central Asia's efforts to modernise its agriculture, adding further tension to regional disputes over food, land and water. 'Water has always been a major cause of wars and border conflicts in the Central Asian region', policy analyst Fuad Shahbazov warned. This potential for conflict over water has been exacerbated by disputes over the Fergana valley, the region's greatest foodbowl, which underwent a 32 per cent surge in population in barely ten years — while more and more of it turned to desert.46 The Central Asian region is ranked by the World Resources Institute as one of the world's most perilously water-stressed regions to 2040 (Figure 5.6). With their economies hitting rock bottom, corrupt and autocratic governments that prefer to blame others for their problems and growing quarrels over food, land, energy and water, the 'Stans' face 'a perfect storm', Nate Shenkkan wrote in the journal Foreign Policy 47 Increased meddling by Russia and China is augmenting the explosive mix: China regards Central Asia as a key component of its 'Belt and Road' initiative intended to expand its global influence, whereas Russia hopes to lure the region back into its own economic sphere. Their rival investments may help limit some of the problems faced by Central Asia — or they may unlock a fresh cycle of political feuding, turmoil and regime change.48 A 2017 FAO report found 14.3 million people — one in every five — in Central Asia did not have enough to eat and a million faced actual starvation, children especially. It noted that after years of steady improvement, the situation was deteriorating. This combination of intractable and deteriorating factors makes Central Asia a serious internal war risk towards the mid twentyfirst century, with involvement by superpowers raising the danger of international conflict and mass refugee flight. The Middle East The Middle East is the most water-stressed region on Earth (see Figure 5.5 above). It is 'particularly vulnerable to climate change. It is one of the world's most water-scarce and dry regions, with a high dependency on climate-sensitive agriculture and a large share of its population and economic activity in flood-prone urban coastal zones', according to the World Bank. 49 The Middle East — consisting of the 22 countries of the Arab League, Turkey and Iran — has very low levels of natural rainfall to begin with. Most of it has 600 millimetres or less per year and is classed as arid. 'The Middle East and North Africa MENA is a global hotspot of unsustainable water use, especially of ground- water. In some countries, more than half of current water withdrawals exceed what is naturally available', the Bank said in a separate report on water scarcity. 50 'The climate is predicted to become even hotter and drier in most of the MENA region. Higher temperatures and reduced precipitation will increase the occurrence of droughts. It is further estimated that an additional 80—100 million people will be exposed by 2025 to water stress', the Bank added. The region's population of 300 million in the late 2010s is forecast to double to 600 million by 2050. Average temperatures are expected to rise by 3—5 oc and rainfall will decrease by around 20 per cent. The result will be vastly increased water stress, accelerated desertification, growing food insecurity and a rise in sea levels displacing tens of millions from densely popu- lated, low-lying areas like the Nile delta.51 The region is deemed highly vulnerable to climate impacts, warns a report by the UN Development Programme. 'Current climate change projections show that by the year 2025, the water supply in the Arab region will be only 15 per cent of levels in 1960. With population growth around 3 per cent annually and deforestation spiking to 4 per cent annually... the region now includes 14 of the world s 20 most water-stressed countries.'52 The Middle Fast/North Africa (MENA) region has 6 per cent of the world's population with only 1.5 per cent of the world's fresh water reserves to share among them. This means that the average citizen already has about a third less water than the minimum necessary for a reasonable existence — many have less than half, and populations are growing rapidly. Coupled with political chaos and ill governance in many countries, growing religious and ethnic tensions between different groups — often based on centuries-old disputes — a widening gap between rich and poor and foreign meddling by the USA, Russia and China, shortages of food, land and water make the Middle East an evident cauldron for conflict in the twentyfirst century. Growing awareness of their food risk has impelled some oil-rich Arab states into an international farm buying spree, purchasing farming, fishing and food processing companies in countries as assorted as South Sudan, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Ukraine, the USA, Poland, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and Morocco. In some food-stressed countries these acquisitions have already led to riots and killings.53 The risk is high that, by exporting its own food—land—water problems worldwide, especially to regions already facing scarcity, the Middle East could propagate conflicts and government collapses around the globe. This is despite the fact that high-tech solar desalination, green energy, hydroponics, aquaponics and other intensive urban food production technologies make it possible for the region to produce far more of its own food locally, if not to be entirely self-sufficient. Dimensions of the growing crisis in the Middle East include the following. Wars have already broken out in Syria and Yemen in which scarcity of food, land and water were prominent among the tensions that led to conflict between competing groups. Food, land and water issues feed into and exacerbate already volatile sentiment over religion, politics, corruption, mismanagement and foreign interference by the USA, China and Russia. The introduction of cheap solar-powered and diesel pumps has accelerated the unsustainable extraction of groundwater throughout the region, notably in countries like Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. 54 Turkish building of new dams to monopolise waters flowing across its borders is igniting scarcity and potential for conflict with downstream nations, including Iraq, Iran and Syria. 55 Egypt's lifeline, the Nile, is threatened by Ethiopian plans to dam the Blue Nile, with tensions that some observers consider could lead to a shooting war. 56 There are very low levels of water recycling throughout the region, while water use productivity is about half that of the world as a whole. There is a lack of a sense of citizen responsibility for water and food scarcity throughout the region. Land grabs around the world by oil-rich states are threatening to destabilise food, land and water in other countries and regions, causing conflict. A decline in oil prices and the displacement of oil by the global renewables revolution may leave the region with fewer economic options for solving its problems. There is a risk that acquisition of a nuclear weapon by Iran may set off a nuclear arms race in the region with countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and possibly Turkey following suit and Israel rearming to stay in the lead. This would translate potential food, land and water conflicts into the atomic realm. Together these issues, and failure to address their root causes, make the Middle East a fizzing powder keg in the twentyfirst century. The question is when and where, not whether, it explodes — and whether the resulting conflict will involve the use of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, thus affecting the entire world. China China is the world's biggest producer, importer and consumer of food. Much of the landmass of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is too mountainous or too arid for farming, but the rich soils of its eastern and southern regions are highly productive provided sufficient water is available and climate impacts are mild. Those, however, are very big 'ifs'. In 1995, American environmentalist Lester R. Brown both Eked and aroused the PRC Communist Party bosses with a small, hard-hitting book entitled Who Will Feed China? Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet.57 In it he posited that Chinese population growth was so far out of control that the then-agricultural system could not keep up, and China would be forced to import vast amounts of grain, to the detriment of food prices and availability worldwide. His fears, so far, have not been realised — not because they were unsoundly based, but because China managed — just — to stay abreast of rising food demand by stabilising and subsidising grain prices, restoring degraded lands, boosting agricultural science and technology, piping water from south to north, developing high-intensity urban farms, buying up foreign farmland worldwide and encouraging young Chinese to leave the country. What Brown didn't anticipate was the economic miracle that made China rich enough to afford all this. However, his essential thesis remains valid: China's food supply will remain on a knife-edge for the entire twentyfirst century, vulnerable especially to water scarcity and climate impacts. If the nation outruns its domestic resources yet still has to eat, it may well be at the expense of others globally. Some western commentators were puzzled when China scrapped its 35-year 'One Child Policy' in 2015, but in fact the policy had done its job, shaving around 300 million people off the projected peak of Chinese population. It was also causing serious imbalances, such as China's huge unmarried male sur- plus. Furthermore, rising urbanisation and household incomes meant Chinese parents no longer wanted large families, as in the past. Policy or no policy, China's birthrate has continued to fall and by 2018 was 1.6 babies per woman — well below replacement, lower than the USA and nearly as low as Germany. Its population was 1.4 billion, but this was growing at barely 0.4 per cent a year, with the growth due at least in part to lengthening life expectancy. 58 For China, female fertility is no longer the key issue. The critical issue is water. And the critical region is the north, where 41 per cent of the population reside. Here surface and ground- waters — which support not only the vast grain and vegetable farming industries of the North China Plain but also burgeoning megacities like Beijing, Tianjin and Shenyang — have been vanishing at an alarming rate. 'In the past 25 years, 28,000 rivers have disappeared. Groundwater has fallen by up to 1—3 metres a year. One consequence: parts of Beijing are subsiding by 11 cm a year. The flow of the Yellow River, water supply to millions, is a tenth of what it was in the 1940s; it often fails to reach the sea. Pollution further curtails supply: in 2017 8.8 per cent of water was unfit even for agricultural or industrial use', the Financial Times reported.59 On the North China Plain, annual consump- tion of water for all uses, including food production, is about 27 billion cubic metres a year — compared with an annual water availability of 22 billion cubic metres, a deficit that is made up by the short-term expedient of mining the region's groundwater. 60 To stave off disaster, the PRC has built a prodigious network of canals and pipelines from the Yangtse River in the water-rich south, to Beijing in the water-starved north. Hailed as a 'lifeline', the South—North Water Transfer Project had two drawbacks: first, the fossil energy required to pump millions of tonnes of water over a thousand kilometres and, second, the fact that while the volume was sufficient to satisfy the burgeoning cities for a time, it could not supply and distribute enough clean water to meet the needs of irrigated farming over so vast a region in the long run, nor meet those of its planned industrial growth.61 Oft-mouthed 'solutions' like desalination or the piping of water from Tibet or Russia face similar drawbacks: demand is too great for the potential supply and the costs, both financial and environmental, prohibitive. China is already among the world's most water-stressed nations. The typical Chinese citizen has a 'water footprint' of 1071 cubic metres a year — three quarters of the world average (1385 cubic metres), and scarcely a third that of the average American (2842 cubic metres).62 Of this water, 62 per cent is used to grow food to feed the Chinese population — and 90 per cent is so polluted it is unfit to drink or use in food processing. Despite massive investment in water infrastructure and new technology, many experts doubt that China can keep pace with the growth in its demand for food, at least within its own borders, chiefly because of water scarcity.63 Adding to the pressure is that China's national five-year plans for industrialisation demand massive amounts more water — demands that may confront China with a stark choice between food and economic growth. 'The Chinese government is moving too slowly towards the Camel Economy. It has plans, incentives for officials; it invests in recycling, irrigation, pollution, drought resistant crops; it leads the world in high voltage transmission (to get hydro, wind and solar energy from the west of China). None of this is sufficient or likely to be in time', the Financial Times opined. As the world's leading carbon emitter, China is more responsible for climate change than any other country. It is also, potentially, more at risk. The main reason, quite simply, is the impact of a warming world on China's water supply — in the form of disappearing rivers, lakes, groundwater and mountain glaciers along with rising sea levels. To this is coupled the threat to agriculture from increasing weather disasters and the loss of ecosystem services from a damaged landscape. 65 China is thus impaled on the horns of a classic dilemma. Without more water it cannot grow its economy sufficiently to pay for the water-conserving and food-producing technologies and infrastructure it needs to feed its people. Having inadvertently unleashed a population explosion with its highly successful conversion to modern farming systems, the challenge for China now is to somehow sustain its food supply through the population peak of the mid twentyfirst century, followed by a managed decline to maybe half of today's numbers by the early twentysecond century. It is far from clear whether the present approach — improving market efficiency, continuing to modernise agricultural production systems, pumping water, trying to control soil and water losses and importing more food from overseas will work. 66 China has pinned its main hopes on technology to boost farm yields and improve water distribution and management. Unfortunately, it has selected the unsustainable American industrial farming model to do this — which involves the massive use of water, toxic chemicals, fertilisers, fossil fuels and machines. This in turn is having dreadful consequences for China's soils, waters, landscapes, food supply, air, climate and consumer health. Serious questions are now being asked whether such an approach is not digging the hole China is in, even deeper. Furthermore, some western analysts are sceptical whether the heavy hand of state control is up to the task of generating the levels of innovation required to feed China sustainably.67 Plan B, which is to purchase food from other countries, or import it from Chinese-owned farming and food ventures around the world, faces similar difficulties. Many of the countries where China is investing in food production themselves face a slow-burning crisis of land degradation, water scarcity, surging populations and swelling local food demand. By exporting its own problems, China is adding to their difficulties. While there may be some truth to the claim that China is helping to modernise food systems in Africa, for example, it is equally clear that the export of food at a time of local shortages could have dire consequences for Africans, leading to wars in Africa and elsewhere. How countries will react to Chinese pressure to export food in the face of their own domestic shortages is, as yet, unclear. If they permit exports, it could prove cata- strophic for their own people and governments — but if they cut them off, it could be equally catastrophic for China. Such a situation cannot be regarded as anything other than a menace to world peace. Around 1640, a series of intense droughts caused widespread crop failures in China, leading to unrest and uprisings which, in 1644, brought down the Ming Dynasty. A serious domestic Chinese food and water crisis today — driven by drought, degradation of land and water and climate change in northern China coupled with failure in food imports — could cause a re-run of history: 'The forthcoming water crisis may impact China's social, economic, and political stability to a great extent', a US Intelligence Assessment found. The adverse impacts of climate change will add extra pressure to existing social and resource stresses.' 68 Such events have the potential to precipitate tens, even hundreds, of millions of emigrants and refugees into countries all over the world, with domino consequences for those countries that receive them. Strategic analysts have speculated that tens of millions of desperate Chinese flooding into eastern Russia, or even India, could lead to war, including the risk of international nuclear exchange. 69 Against such a scenario are the plain facts that China is a technologically advanced society, with the foresight, wealth and capacity to plan and implement nationwide changes and the will, if necessary, to enforce them. Its leaders are clearly alert to the food and water challenge — and its resolution may well depend on the extent of water recycling they are able to achieve. As to whether the PRC can afford the cost of transitioning from an unsustainable to a sustainable food system, all countries have a choice between unproductive military spending and feeding their populace. A choice between food or war. It remains to be seen which investment China favours. However, it is vital to understand that the problem of whether China can feed itself through the twentyfirst century is not purely a Chinese problem. It's a problem, both economic and physical, for the entire planet — and it is thus in everyone's best interest to help solve it. For this reason, China is rated number 3 on this list of potential food war hotspots. Africa Food wars — that is, wars in which food, land and water play a significant contributing role — have been a constant in the story of Africa since the mid twentieth century, indeed, far longer. In a sense, the continent is already a microcosm of the world of the twentyfirst century as climate change and resource scarcity com- bine with rapid population growth to ratchet up the tensions that lead competing groups to fight, whether the superficial distinc- Mons between them are ethnic, religious, social or political. We have examined the particular cases of Rwanda, South Sudan and the Horn of Africa — but there are numerous other African conflicts, insurgencies and ongoing disturbances in which food, land and water are primary or secondary triggers and where famine is often the outcome: Nigeria, Congo, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Chad, the Central African Republic, the Maghreb region of the Sahara, Mozambique, Cote d'Ivoire and Zimbabwe have all experienced conflicts in which issues of access to food, land and water were important drivers and consequences. The trajectory of Africa's population in the first two decades of the twentyfirst century implies that the number of its people could quadruple from 1.2 billion in 2017 to 4.5 billion by 2100 (Figure 5.6). If fulfilled, this would make Africans 41 per cent of the world population by the end of the century. The UN Popula- tion Division's nearer projections are for Africans to outnumber Chinese or Indians at 1.7 billion by 2030, and reach 2.5 billion in 2050, which represents a doubling in the continent's inhabitants in barely 30 years. 70 While African fertility rates (babies per woman) remain high by world standards — 4.5 compared with a global average of 2.4 — they have also fallen steeply, from a peak of 8.5 babies in the 1970s. Furthermore, the picture is uneven with birthrates in most Sub-Saharan countries remaining high (around five to six babies/woman), while those of eight, mainly southern, countries have dropped to replace- ment or below (i.e. under 2.1). As has been the case around the world, birth rates tend to drop rapidly with the spread of urban isation, education and economic growth — whereas countries which slide back into poverty tend to experience rising birth- rates. Food access is a vital ingredient in this dynamic: it has been widely observed that better-fed countries tend to have much lower rates of birth and population growth, possibly because people who are food secure lose fewer infants and children in early life and thus are more open to family planning. So, in a real sense, food sufficiency holds one of the keys to limiting the human population to a level sustainable both for Africa and the planet in general. Forecasting the future of Africa is not easy, given the complexity of the interwoven climatic, social, technological and political issues — and many do not attempt it. However, the relentless optimism of the UN and its food agency, the FAO, is probably not justified by the facts as they are known to science — and may have more to do with not wishing to give offence to African governments or discourage donors than with attempting to accurately analyse what may occur. Even the FAO acknowledges however that food insecurity is rising across Sub-Saharan Africa as well as other parts. In 2017, conflict and insecurity were the major drivers of acute food insecurity in 18 countries and territories where almost 74 million food-insecure people were in need of urgent assistance. Eleven of these countries were in Africa and accounted for 37 million acutely food insecure people; the largest numbers were in northern Nigeria, Demo- cratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and South Sudan the agency said in its Global Report on Food Crises 2018.71 The FAO also noted that almost one in four Africans was undernourished in 2016 — a total of nearly a quarter of a billion people. The rise in undernourishment and food insecurity was linked to the effects of climate change, natural disasters and conflict according to Bukar Tijani, the FAO's assistant director general for Africa. 72 Even the comparatively prosperous nation of South Africa sits on a conflict knife-edge, according to a scientific study: 'Results indicate that the country exceeds its environmental boundaries for biodiversity loss, marine harvesting, freshwater use, and climate change, and that social deprivation was most severe in the areas of safety, income, and employment, which are significant factors in conflict risk', Megan Cole and colleagues found. 73 In the Congo, home to the world's second largest tropical forest, 20 years of civil war had not only slain five million civilians but also decimated the forests and their ecological services on which the nation depended. Researchers found evidence that reducing conflict can also help to reduce environ- mental destruction: 'Peace-building can potentially be a win for nature as well, and.. conservation organizations and govern- ments should be ready to seize conservation opportunities'. 74 As the African population doubles toward the mid century, as its water, soils, forests and economic wealth per capita dwindle, as foreign corporations plunder its riches, as a turbulent climate hammers its herders and farmers — both industrial and traditional — the prospect of Africa resolving existing conflicts and avoiding new ones is receding. The mistake most of the world is making is to imagine this only affects the Africans. The consequences will impact everyone on the planet.
On the Aff:
- Solvency - The plan is mitigatory at best - can’t solve
Many areas have already reached the tipping point of space debris. The only way to solve the problem is through actually removing it
Wright 2007 (David Wright, Senior researcher at the union of concerned scientists in Cambridge Mass, Space Debris, Physics Today, August 2007,https://notendur.hi.is/thg29/AflfrC3A6C3B0iverkefni/PTO000035.pdf)
A study released by NASA’s orbital Debris Program Office in 2006, before the Chinese test, showed that parts of space have already reached supercritical debris densities. In particular, the study shows that in the heavily used altitude band from 900 to 1000 km, the number of debris fragments larger than 10cm is expected to more than triple over the next 200 years, even assuming no additional objects are launched to the band. The study estimates that the total population of large debris in LEO will increase by 40 in that time, even assuming no additional launches. The Debris from the Chinese test will make matters worse. An important implication of the study is that while mitigation efforts are important for slowing the increases, only debris-remediation measures such as removing large, massive objects already in orbit can hope to prevent their consequences. Remediation efforts such as robotic missions to remove defunct satellites and rockets are very expensive but are being studied
2. Turn, private companies would be more likely to clean up debris if they actually own things in space that could be endangered
3. Public governments create far more debris, which means that the aff’s impacts would happen either way. For example, in a 2007 test China shot missiles at satellites, creating significant debris
4. Private companies have demonstrated solutions
Wattles 18 (Jackie Wattles is a journalist for CNN business) . “Satellite Captures Space Junk for the First Time” CNN Business, Cable News Network, 30 Sept. 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/30/business/space-debris-capture/index.html. An experimental cleanup device called RemoveDebris has successfully cast a net around a dummy satellite, simulating a technique that could one day capture spaceborne garbage. The test, which was carried out this week, is widely believed to be the first successful demonstration of space cleanup technology, experts told CNN. And it signals an early step toward solving what is already a critical issue: debris in space.
5. Only profit motive solves debris.
Nelson and Block 18 Peter Lothian Nelson and Walter E. Block, Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics, College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, “Space Capitalism: How Humans will Colonize Planets, Moons, and Asteroids,” 2018, Springer, pp. 108, EA
Space debris is a major challenge to space exploration (Goldsmith 2015). The higher the speed (see Chap. 1 on the need for hyper speeds), the worse will be the issue of impact avoidance or damage in the event of impact. It is through the unregulated free market that solutions to intractable problems are found. Explorers will be well motivated to develop methods for detection of both minuscule and massive invisible objects and quick reaction mechanisms for avoidance of things large and small.
On the impact:
No Escalation over Satellites:
1 Planning Priorities
Bowen 18 Bleddyn Bowen 2-20-2018 “The Art of Space Deterrence” https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/the-art-of-space-deterrence/ (Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Leicester)Elmer
Space is often an afterthought or a miscellaneous ancillary in the grand strategic views of top-level decision-makers. A president may not care that one satellite may be lost or go dark; it may cause panic and Twitter-based hysteria for the space community, of course. But the terrestrial context and consequences, as well as the political stakes and symbolism of any exchange of hostilities in space matters more. The political and media dimension can magnify or minimise the perceived consequences of losing specific satellites out of all proportion to their actual strategic effect.
2 Military Precedent
Zarybnisky 18, Eric J. Celestial Deterrence: Deterring Aggression in the Global Commons of Space. Naval War College Newport United States, 2018. (Senior Materiel Leader at United States Air Force)Elmer
PREVENTING AGGRESSION IN SPACE While deterrence and the Cold War are strongly linked in the public’s mind through the nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, the fundamentals of deterrence date back millennia and deterrence remains relevant. Thucydides alludes to the concept of deterrence in his telling of the Peloponnesian War when he describes rivals seeking advantages, such as recruiting allies, to dissuade an adversary from starting or expanding a conflict.6F 6 Aggression in space was successfully avoided during the Cold War because both sides viewed an attack on military satellites as highly escalatory, and such an action would likely result in general nuclear war.7F 7 In today’s more nuanced world, attacking satellites, including military satellites, does not necessarily result in nuclear war. For instance, foreign countries have used highpowered lasers against American intelligence-gathering satellites8F 8 and the United States has been reluctant to respond, let alone retaliate with nuclear weapons. This shift in policy is a result of the broader use of gray zone operations, to which countries struggle to respond while limiting escalation. Beginning with the fundamentals of deterrence illuminates how it applies to prevention of aggression in space.
3. it’s ridiculous that if satellites were to go dark we would all immediately start firing nukes at each other. Countries would still first reach out and make diplomatic questioning to determine what happened.
On hacking: 1. Nonunique, every satellite can be hacked
2. its in companies interest to ensure their satellites aren’t easily hackable
3. their evidence doesn’t say that spacex satellites are easy to hack, just that spacex doesn’t openly show their capabilities
4. no actual impact to hacked satellites, hackers wouldn’t want to destroy the world
Contention 2:
- The goodwins 21 card just says China won’t like it, not that china would start a war over it
2. Tons of alt causes, tensions are already rising in the region anyways
3. Extend subpoint B, the neg counters and reduces Chinese aggression