Space the next frontier for critical infrastructure, says commission

Space—the final frontier.

Or at least it is if you’re trying to get the Department of Homeland Security to make it the 17th sector on the agency’s list of critical national infrastructure.

That’s been the challenge for advocates of making space infrastructure the next federally protected sector, citing threats from hostile nation states and adversaries. On April 14, the US Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC) released a report on the need for sector protection, calling on Congress to take action.

“The national security components of the space race today include not just weapons systems but also the security of critical infrastructure—much of which relies on global positioning satellites, remote imagery, and advanced communication,” the CSC said in an executive summary introducing the report’s findings.

It’s not the first time the effort has been made. Advocates and the CSC alike have been calling for the space industry to be added to the critical infrastructure list since at least 2022. But with this report, they hope that DHS will move more quickly on it.

Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, further laid out the philosophical framework for the move during an event at the McCrary Institute that coincided with the report’s release.

“We need to strengthen the space system and name it a US national critical infrastructure,” Montgomery said. “In doing so, we would close the current gaps and signal to both home and abroad that the United States is committed to the security and resilience of its space systems.”

The CSC is also advocating for NASA to take the lead as the lead sector risk management agency for space as critical infrastructure with a public–private partnership, arguing that the space administration agency is the only one that has the capabilities to manage the challenges inherent in space. Advocates for the partnership assert that the union of private and public interests will allow for innovation and spending at levels both can’t do individually.

“The journey ahead can be simplified by the government partnering, as has been said, with private companies and industry to stoke the industrial base,” Skycorp CEO Steven Kwast said during the McCrary Institute event. “Our young engineers and scientists will knock the ball out of the park.”—EH