Description
The remoteness and inaccessibility of the space domain leaves it vulnerable to human-constructed imaginaries, of varying credibility. While anxiety over the use of space to surveil populations on Earth is not new, it has been given new salience in the last decade thanks to two interrelated factors. First, new technological capabilities have enabled expanded satellite coverage and improved microchip functionality, thus lending apparent credence to fears that governments and corporations could exploit these advances to continuously observe (and thus potentially control or repress) human societies. Second, a new generation of ‘celestial conspiracy theories’ has emerged over the last decade, turbo-charged by the contemporary ‘cultic milieu', or the convergence of many different types of conspiracy theories and ‘truth seeking'. (For example, the belief that Covid vaccines were actually implanting GPS-tracked microchips into people found widespread acceptance in some locales.) In combination, these new technologies and conspiracy theories are shaping an increasingly influential construct of space as a powerful site of surveillance and oppression, and we must examine the potential implications of this for our evolving understanding of spacepower and the future of space programmes.
